Association of
Collectors
M. Jancakova
Miscellaneous
No 2, 2003 Past Issues
15. ing. Milan Humplík:
Exlibris
forgery.
Once
a time we find between exlibris which we in good
believe changed or bought a strange thing which
can turn out to be a forgery. This discovery does
not have to be such dramatic as a forgery of a
banknote, but it does not lack the interest.
The collectors who collect only marks of
contemporary artists, do not know a lot about this
subject - maybe sometimes they notice a
"loaded" topic or remarkable similarity
in design solution, but it can happen. This is
different at old works. For example there are more
plagiarisms and loan-motifs of drawings made by
Mikolas Ales than the real exlibris which Ales
made. (See also articles of P. Vodehnal in Knizni
znacka no. 1 from 1950 and of K. Samsinak in News
no. 1 from 1976). In this case was probably most
important the likeness, magic of drawings together
with the extraordinary popularity of M. Ales, that
was actually born in the moment of his
death.
Very close to forgery are also artificial exlibris.
This are marks where was added some legend to the
drawing or graphic without knowing of artist. For
all we mention 3 etching exlibris on the name J.
Dlabac with graphical work of O. Stafl from the
beginning of last century.
Not
very long ago one of the Dutch collectors sent us
a print - line block on the name F. a K. Lunakovi
for designating of artist. Because the Czech name
was written with correct acute and wedge we
suppose to be a Czech artist, but the style does
not look like any Czech artist. For an amateur was
this work too sophisticated. After a small search
and thinking it turned out that this is an
"adaptation" of exlibris made by respect
American artist Ismael Smith which he drew 1920 in
USA with the legend Maimie Cohn. If we compare
both versions we see that the plagiarist left all
drawing without modification and without
embarrassment only changed the name of the owner
and added to it some fish. And probably because he
would no have a guilty conscience he removed the
signature of Senor Ismael Smith and the year from
the right bottom corner.
Ismael Smith (born 1886 in Barcelona, died 1972 in
White Plains in USA) was sculptor and graphic
artist who studied before the first world war in
Paris and since 1919 lived with small breaks in
New York. He is from the generation of Catalan
modernists which react on the late secession. To
this group belong also architect A. Gaudi and
graphic artists A. de Riquer and J. Triado. Smith
made between 1907 - 1930 about 80 exlibris which
the collectors value very high. Around 1930 he
closed his artistically career.
American collectors society ASBCD (American
Society of Bookplate Collectors and Designers)
published in her yearbook 1988/89 detailed work
list of exlibris made by I. Smith together with a
broad study of his life. The information from this
study was also used for this article. It is
interesting that in the work list are mentioned
also two other forgery, one of them use the same
drawing as the mark F. a K. Lunakovi and this is
also on a Czech name V. a J. Buckovi (Czech
grammar is not mentioned) and says that the
forgery occurs exclusively in European collection,
particularly in Belgium, in USA they don't know
them.
Published in Knizni znacka 2/2003, page 40-41,
author Milan Humplik
Email ivanbohac@seznam.cz