Fraud, Fakery and False Business: Rethinking the Shrager versus Dighton 'Old Furniture Case'

Fraud, Fakery and False Business: Rethinking the Shrager versus Dighton 'Old Furniture Case'
ISBN-10
1441178503
ISBN-13
9781441178503
Category
History
Pages
240
Language
English
Published
2011-09-08
Publisher
Bloomsbury Publishing
Author
Abigail Harrison Moore

Description

In 1922, Adolphe Shrager having made his fortune during the First World War, approached the London dealer Basil Dighton for advice on purchasing antique furniture. Dighton sold him about five hundred items but shortly afterwards Shrager discovered that one of his 'collector's pieces' was judged to be a fake and grossly over-priced, and he sued. The trial, held in early 1923, became a cause celebre, but it can be viewed as a case study of a much wider set of social and cultural concerns: the fact that Shrager lost both the first trial and the appeal, despite demonstrating on numerous occasions that he had a clear case against Dighton, raises questions of race, prejudice and class, where the establishment closed ranks against Shrager, the nouveau riche Jew and alleged war profiteer. This book - the first on the Shrager Dighton case - is the result of the author's original archival research.

Similar books