courtesy: James Bendon
courtesy: James Bendon
| Fournier forgeries |
| "François Fournier (1846–1917) operated as a forger in Geneva from
1904 onwards. According to Varro Tyler’s Philatelic Forgers, Their Lives and
Works, Fournier, unlike many of his contemporary forgers, did not seek to defraud the
public. He described his material as facsimiles and promoted it to collectors who could
not afford to purchase genuine items and to uneducated collectors as a preventive measure
against being their being deceived by dishonest stamp dealers. Following Fournier's death, his former employee, Charles Hirschburger, continued the business until his own death in 1927. Subsequently, in order to prevent the stock from falling into unscrupulous hands, l’Union Philatélique de Genève purchased the entire lot, some 400 kilograms in weight, from Hirschburger’s widow. After printing the word ‘FAUX’ on the front or the word ‘FAC-SIMILÉ’ on the back of the forgeries, representative selections were mounted on album pages by students from the Geneva School of Arts and Crafts. These pages were housed in 480 special loose-leaf albums which were sold in 1928 to interested individuals and organisations. The balance of the stock was burned. Over the years many of these albums have been broken up to satisfy the demands of collectors of individual countries." text: James Bendon "Fournier was a forger active in the first part of the 20th. century when it was not thought to be incorrect to complete a collection by buying copies of stamps not available or affordable to the collector. Fournier also sold forgeries produced by others such as Spiro. One or two of the used items bearing forged postmarks on the pages shown were probably produced by Spiro (at least the postmark). After Fourniers death the remainders were bought by the Philatelic Union of Geneva who made up nearly 500 albums each comprising many pages. These were sold to dealers as reference collections." " The standard of these forgeries of world-wide stamps is quite good but cancellations bear little similarity to genuine ones. Sperati's forgeries are of a far better." text: Paul Hirsch A complete Fournier album: http://www.geocities.com/claghorn1p/ |
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courtesy: James Bendon |
courtesy: James Bendon |
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 courtesy: James Bendon |
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 courtesy: James Bendon |
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 courtesy: James Bendon |
 courtesy: James Bendon |
Note: The pages that are courtesy of James Bendon can be seen in bigger size at James Bendon , where they also can be bought.