The more deceived

Louis the Decorator and his chums in the antiques trade use the word ‘airport’ adjectivally and disparagingly. It signifies industrially produced folkloric objects (prayer mats, knobkerries, masks, toupins, necklaces, tribal amulets, djellabas etc) which are typically sold by hawkers to departing holidaymakers.

This is the basest level of fakery and is ignored by the otherwise doggedly catholic Noah Charney. Its defining characteristic, however, is tellingly akin to that of the multi-million-dollar scams that fascinate him in The Art of Forgery. The duped party is often not all that duped. He is, rather, mutely complicit with the swindler and has faith — that is to say a belief born in witting self-delusion and undemanding of proof — that the chattel is what it is claimed to be. Those swindlers who happen also to be makers meanwhile harbour a yearning to assert their authorship but can only do so by confessing to it or being detected.