This is never apparent in the case of the genuine cups where the pierced decoration is first drilled and the surface afterwards chiselled from the solid welded cup. The colour of the metal is also a great guide to authenticity, the true hilt being of admirable metal, lustrous and black; whereas most of the fabricated examples are of a heavy leaden colour. Occasionally variations on the usual fashion of decorating the cup hilts are indulged in, as for instance in the case of the hilt represented in our next illustration (Fig. 1566), where an incrustation of silver covers the surface of the cup. Here the workmanship is good; but the hilt is unlike any true hilt the author has ever seen.
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Fig. 1567. Bascinet
A French forgery of about 1890
Perhaps the most dangerous of all forgeries are those emanating from the latest "school" of forgery to which we are about to allude.
We refer to a whole series of art objects—for the fabricators in question made no attempt to restrict their labours to producing armour and weapons alone—which as far as we have been able to ascertain emanate, or rather used to emanate (for the supply ceased about 1912) from a factory situated some sixty miles from Paris. Armour, weapons, silversmiths' work, enamels, carvings in ivory, and even types of furniture all came from this same studio. Founded on the designs of skilled artists, executed by the most expert of workmen, and "aged" with the greatest cunning and in accordance
