It could be verse, it's £1200 for a Burns fake

Published on Monday 24 January 2011 18:27

A COUPLE who found a verse signed by Robert Burns etched into panes of glass in their home have been told they are worth around £1200, despite being forgeries.

The five panes were found under the floorboards of Carol and Alan Paterson's flat in Montgomery Street when they installed a new kitchen and they initially thought they may have stumbled on a lost verse of Ae Fond Kiss.

However, the panes turned out to be the work of a notorious forger of Burns' work, Alexander "Antique" Howland Smith, who was imprisoned in 1893 for passing forgeries of Burns and many others' work.

After several years, the couple have finally had them valued and said they were astonished to discover their value.

Mr Paterson, 42, a telecoms engineer and keen antiques collector, said: "I knew there would be a novelty value, but I didn't realise it was that much. We were going to get them framed but never got around to it."

He said he had uncovered the panes around ten years ago.

He said: "I lifted the floorboard and saw bits of glass. Then I thought 'There's writing on them'."

His suspicions were quickly aroused, however, because one of the windows in the couple's house also has Burns' signature etched into it.

He said: "I'd known there was Robert Burns' signature on the window. This house was built in 1896, and Robert Burns would have been well dead by then, so I knew there was something not quite right."

The couple, intrigued by the mystery, contacted the Burns Museum at Alloway and the National Museum of Scotland.

Carol, 36, a bank worker, said: "They came back and said it wasn't Robert Burns because the glass was too new, but they thought it was 'Antique' Howland Smith. Apparently he lived in this area.

"It's the same poem over and over again. Each says Ae Fond Kiss and it looks like a verse that hadn't been found. Perhaps he'd been practising."

Patrick van der Vorst, founder of the online valuation site www.valuemystuff.com, which valued the panes, said that Howland Smith was of interest to collectors in his own right.

He said: "It's not just with Burns forgeries, but with old masters paintings or impressionist paintings. When they get forged by famous forgers then they can actually make some decent money"