Will the Real George Washington Please Sign Here

As part of Fraud Week, Past is Present takes note of master forger Robert Spring.

From the post...

How did Spring actually create his forgeries?

Here is where the newspaper account of Spring’s life becomes so detailed it reads almost like a how-to guide to forgery:

Every one has seen the old-fashioned washstand, with a round hole in the top, in which the washbowl was placed. Spring took such a stand, placed a pane of glass over the hole, over this a genuine Washington signature, and over this a sheet of blank paper. Then beneath the glass he placed a lamp and darkened the room. Thus the signature was illuminated from beneath and could easily be traced on the blank paper. … He easily stained the paper to the color of age, and would crease it and give it a worn edge by wearing it between this stocking and the sole of his shoe.

Upon first read this account, I wondered: why Spring would have to stain the paper to age it? After all, one of the reasons he even began this life of crime was the tempting possibilities of reams of old foolscap contemporaneous with the genuine Washington artifacts. Yet unused paper that has been stored away from light and air will age quite differently than paper that has been out-and-about in circulation, so it makes sense Spring would have to “rough up” his paper supply, even if it was the right age.

The stained paper was one of the first things that stood out as odd when I first examined the two Spring forgeries at AAS in person. It’s hard to describe exactly what seemed wrong with it: the staining is almost too perfectly irregular, perhaps? The best way I can put it is that it reminded me of an elementary school history project for which I had to write a letter pretending to be from the eighteenth-century. I soaked my letter in tea in an attempt to make it look more authentic, although mine turned out a little spotty. Did Spring resort to this same tea-staining method to artificially age his forgeries? Were the examples that survive at AAS done on the original Revolutionary-War era foolscap that Spring purchased, or had his supply run out forcing him to substitute later 19th-century paper and more tea to achieve the effect? Perhaps these are questions for the History Detectives!