OK, finally. Quite a few days late and a couple hundred thousand dollars
short, but at least he's stopped blowing smoke and trying to shift
responsibility to someone else. There's hardly any sacrifice in giving
up his authentication service at this point, as I kinda doubt he was
going to be making much more from that operation in the future.
Still, he has apologized in no uncertain terms now and let's face it --
he is a long-time, very talented and highly-regarded restorer. He has
performed -- and should continue to be allowed to continue to perform --
a valuable service for poster collectors.
Tell you what, John, take the lemons and make lemonade. Because of all
this furor, you are in a position to say to the others "Look what
happened to me. We have establish formal standards and an organization
to back them up." Make it your personal mission to spearhead the
campaign for formal standards for the restorations industry, including
the placement of Identification seals done in ink on the back of the
linen stating which restoration/backing service did the work -- and
containing an in-house "restoration serial number" as part of that seal
which anyone could reference in a phone call or e-mail to whomever did
the work (or simply post the information on websites). As part of the
guidelines/rules, the restoration operation which did the work and
placed the seal on the back would be required to keep a permanent record
of this unique "restoration serial number" along with a detailed
description (preferably including photos) of exactly what was done to
the poster while it was in their possession.
No more of this "client confidentiality" when it comes to backing and
restoration. Those days are over. If a client doesn't want it known that
work was done -- and how much -- to his poster, then that has to now be
considered a red flag. No more of this "we don't have to make this
public, since it's only for my own viewing pleasure and I'm going to
keep it in my own collection forever."
And it will probably be necessary to go the extra step of creating a
formal guild or "underwriter's laboratory" which would only issue its
Seal of Approval to those restoration and backing operations which
agreed to abide by these guidelines. And to launch a publicity campaign
to make the entire community aware of the fact that they should only do
business with those operations who are authorized to display the Seal of
Approval. I believe that Ed and Sue of LAMP would be glad to help with
such a project -- and I would think that at this sad point all of the
reputable backing and restoration operations would be glad to join you
and cooperate with such a formal organization to protect their own
interests.
-- JR
Stephen Fishler wrote:
Received this this morning:
It is absolutely true that I made an unfortunate mistake in my
determination of authenticity of the Dracula poster. This was an
honest mistake born of my ignorance of S2 reproductions and my lack of
experience with the original Dracula poster. Joe Maddalena was in no
way guilty of any wrong doing. His auction catalog was predicated on
my expertise and I alone was fooled. I gladly accept 100% of all blame
for my mistake, and will gladly reject any more requests for
authentications.
I sincerely apologize for any and all harm that I have caused. And
promise that it will not happen again because I will no longer offer
authentication service, please give me a few days to change my web
site and to return all the new fakes that came in this week.
Sincerely,
John A. Davis
Poster Mountain Inc.
8749 Shirley Ave
Unit B
Northridge CA 91324
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