What you are looking at
Reference sets for identifying a piece: styles, factory marks, hallmarks and signatures. These are not articles you read once — they are material to consult, which is why they live here and not in the journal.
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Antique, vintage or retro
The three words are used as synonyms and they are not. Which one is chosen changes the price, what you can demand of the seller and the export paperwork.
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Dating furniture by its marks of manufacture
Dovetails, saw marks, screws and nails: the traces a tool leaves behind, and how they let you place a piece in its period without being an expert.
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How to clean antique furniture without ruining it
What you can do at home, what is never touched, and how to tell dirt from patina. The line between cleaning and ruining, before it is too late.
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How to tell if a painting is original
What you can check with light, a loupe and ten minutes, and what needs a laboratory. The difference between original, copy and reproduction.
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How to tell whether an antique is genuine
Genuine is four questions, not one, and the costliest is the one almost nobody asks. What you can check, what needs a document, and what each attribution means.
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Spanish furniture styles, reign by reign
Charles IV, Empire, Ferdinandine, Isabelline, Alfonsine and Modernista: what an antique dealer looks at to place a piece in its period.
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Spanish silver hallmarks: how to read the marks
Spain never had a national hallmarking system. Which three marks a piece carries, why the standard was not 925, and how to spot solid silver.