http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/12/arts/design/how-franklin-thwarted-counterfeiters-.html 2014-12-12 17:40:19 How Franklin Thwarted Counterfeiters A currency printing mold from Benjamin Franklin, and some mighty precious hardware. === Benjamin Franklin’s Philadelphia printing shop made plaster molds from pressed sage leaves to create metal stamps for marking foliage patterns on Colonial currency. The distinctive contours of leaf spines, stems and veins were meant to thwart counterfeiters, and Franklin’s workers managed to keep the casting technique a secret that has puzzled modern scholars, too. James N. Green, the librarian at the Such a discovery has been made in a vault at the Hardly any early American metal printing blocks survive; most were melted down into raw material for new type. Fragments dating to the 1600s have been excavated at Colonial shillings on paper, however, are relatively common. They bring a few hundred dollars each at Artifacts from America’s centuries of battles against currency forgers have become popular museum displays as well. Mark Tomasko, a collector and historian who has collaborated with institutions including the Museum of American Finance and the American Numismatic Society on related He has sought out material related to the American inventor Jacob Perkins; in the 1790s, Perkins developed steel plates for printing currency that were considered nearly impossible to fake. Perkins’s engraving ART TO GET A GRIP ON Buyers have been paying tens of thousands of dollars for hardware pieces as ordinary as drawer pulls and doorknobs designed by celebrated architects and artisans. In April, a pair of sinuous The prices are relatively low, however, when compared with furniture from the same tastemakers. Rateau’s metal lamps and chairs routinely bring over $2 million each. Aalto’s signature birch cantilevered chairs have sold for more than $45,000 each at auctions. Buying hardware gives collectors a chance to touch and use the products of a major figure, rather than just hang them on a wall, Richard Wright, a Chicago auction house owner, said in an interview. “You interact with them,” he said. “It is a miniature expression of the architecture.” Committed buyers sometimes actually adapt entire interior designs to fit these accessories, Peter Loughrey, an owner of In October, at a Wright sale, An especially enthusiastic subgroup of fans simply frame hardware for display or keep it loose for easy handling, rather than mounting anything on house parts or furniture, said Allen Joslyn, the president of the At Mr. Joslyn’s home in New Jersey, hardware has accumulated, even atop the furniture. “When you want to sit down,” he said, “you have to clear the doorknobs first.” Academic studies of early-1900s luxury hardware are also underway, as parts of books and exhibitions about the Philadelphia metalsmith Samuel Yellin that the Leeds Art Foundation in Philadelphia (formerly the American Decorative Art 1900 Foundation) is developing. Robber barons and elite universities commissioned custom products from Yellin’s workshop, which had hundreds of employees and took in millions of dollars a year. Fantastical iron bestiaries and vines covered its products, from candlesticks to staircases. Yellin called hardware “the salt and pepper of architecture,” said the foundation’s curatorial director, Dr. Joseph Cunningham. Hardware assignments gave the staff a chance to produce playful iron dragons and foliage motifs on a small scale, and homeowners could always remove the pieces if their tastes changed. “You can entertain a whim on a door handle,” Dr. Cunningham said. Because Yellin’s clients would have touched the hardware often as they went about their daily routines, he added, “it’s very impactful to live with.”