Art Forger’s Handbook, The

A FINE copy! The English artist Eric Hebborn (1934-1996) explains the secrets of his forging techniqes in this illustrated work compiled shortly before his death. Drawings previously attributed to artists such as Picasso and Corot were in fact the work of Hebborn and this work provides an insight through explanations of his work. Inks, papers, pigments, monograms and signatures are all explained as well as Hebborn’s own often outrageous speculations about the nature of art and value.Balfour-Oatts staged the controversial exhibition The Difficulties of Attribution in 1994 after being introduced, by art dealer Julian Hartnoll, to the famous forger Eric Hebborn. The exhibition of “recently discovered Old Master Drawings”, complete with a mock auction catalogue was widely covered in the press and drew large crowds, earning praise and criticism in equal measure. He subsequently purchased the rights to Drawn to Trouble ISBN 1851583696, Hebborn’s 1991 confessional autobiography, which was republished as Confessions of a Master ForgerISBN 0304350230 following Hebborn’s death in 1996, with an epilogue written by Balfour-Oatts. In 1997 he completed and published The Art Forger’s Handbook ISBN 0304349143 from Hebborn’s manuscript notes, a book that achieved something approaching cult status amongst the art student and art crime communities, a second-hand copy of which can command a price of several hundred dollars. Speaking about the project in a recent interview with the BBC World Service, he said “I was so young and rebellious…there was nothing happening in the market so I had to be creative. I didn’t realise what a fuss it would cause and how we would still be talking about it, so much, twenty years later.”pp. xvii, 200, illusts #0318 First Edition (Insurance included in postage)