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A Successful Forger: Reinhold Vasters

Courtney Ahlstrom Christy

We often hear stories in the news about forgers of paintings, drawings, and prints. But what about antiques?

Meet Reinhold Vasters (1827-1909), a German goldsmith who forged an array of decorative arts and got away with it during his lifetime. 

From the time of their creations in the mid to late 19th century until well into the 20th century, Vasters’ pieces were believed to be authentic period examples, mainly from the Renaissance period. He also copied Medieval and Gothic objects as well. His creations included luxury objects like jewelry pendants, ornate cups, cabinets, candlesticks as well as religious items such as crucifixes and reliquaries. Over the years, these dubious pieces were acquired by unsuspecting museums around the world. 

Vasters already had a legitimate side of his career before we believe he started making forgeries. He was best known for making liturgical silver in Germany. For a time, he was even the restorer for the Aachen Cathedral Treasury, where he had the opportunity to have a lot of hands-on training with real antique pieces. He became intimately versed in both the style and construction of early European works that he would later replicate. Vasters was a talented craftsman who refined his skills in filigree, enameling, and embossing – all handy when recreating such historic styles.

But Vasters was not alone in his scheme. Frédéric Spitzer was a well-respected antiques dealer based in Paris (shown in this photograph wearing a Renaissance costume for a fancy dress party). His wealthy clientele included European elites and American Robber Barons. Spitzer was eager to capitalize on the appetite for collecting decorative arts among a growing bourgeois class. So much so that historians have discovered that Spitzer had a shadier side to his business, where he hired a variety of artists and craftsmen to make him “old things” for nearly fifty years. One of those artisans was Vasters. Although little documentation has been discovered, Spitzer was very likely critical to Vaster’s career in commissioning revival works, restoration of real antiques, as well as passing off his forgeries. 

A catalogue survives of Spitzer’s personal collection, which is now believed to have contained a knowing mixture of authentic pieces, modified works, and forgeries – quite like the items he sold to his clientele. A survivng photo shows the interior of his home museum, which very likely includes several examples of Vasters' work. In fact, Spitzer was probably the goldsmith’s main patron and primary source of financial support for his forgeries.

The forger’s deception was only discovered by chance in 1978, long after his death. It just so happened that Vasters’ drawings are now in the Victoria and Albert Museum collection in London. About a thousand of these designs on paper had been bought at auction in 1919 and later donated to the museum. Looking at these designs, curator Charles Turman realized that many pieces needed to be re-attributed to the 19th-century German goldsmith.

After the Vasters’ drawings were discovered, several curators at major institutions became suspicious of some of their objects, believing them to be more likely the forger’s handiwork. In fact, at least forty-five items at the Metropolitan Museum of Art have now been attributed to or associated with Vasters. The former director of the Met once remarked that Vasters “captured the style of the Renaissance so well that even today, if you were to put side by side two pieces, one by Vasters and one from the Renaissance, very few curators could tell by eye alone. He was that good, which is why all the collections were fooled.''

Nowadays, Vasters objects maintain an aesthetic appeal albeit with a new type of historical value. His pieces occasionally resurface for sale, with the correct attribution being partly the reason for garnering collector interest. Some say the corrected origin story of these works makes them even more intriguing. The surviving V&A drawings reveal only a portion of the forger’s work that we know of. One can only imagine what else was newly created and sold as genuine that has yet to be revealed.

Vasters was a successful forger who was never caught red-handed during his lifetime. While we will never fully know his motivations for making fakes, it seems to have had a lot to do with profit and perhaps a secret delight to pull off a con so well that no one was the wiser… at least for a few decades.

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© Courtney Ahlstrom Christy

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