Earlier this year (was that really way back in January??) I wrote this blog post about having real art versus prints in your home. Or, as one of my designer friends says, accurately and damningly, “Why are we putting photocopies on our walls?”

That was more of a meditation than a how-to, and since the headquarters at Sallie Hess Interiors is wildly awash in vintage art right now, I figured I would use these examples to give you a quick primer before you go browsing this weekend. We’ll cover taking it apart and figuring it out, and how to assess condition, in part 2, next week, promise, pinky swear. I’ll even add some more take-apart videos to my Instagram over the weekend.

The biggest hurdle to owning original art is, well, buying it. Many of you worry that you don’t know what you are doing, so you don’t do it at all. Don’t worry. We’re going to get through this together.

Maybe you worry about whether you are getting scammed, or whether you’re paying too much, or whether it’s “real,” or who the artist is, or whether the frame is terrible, or whether you should be allowed to like it, or whether other people will think it’s ugly. Please let me allay most of those fears. Who cares, honestly, who likes the art on the walls of your home? You like it, that’s enough. Frames are replaceable. You’re not aspiring to find the next Rembrandt and sell it for 9 figures, right? So the only part of that list that matters is not getting scammed or buying a fake, and we will figure that out together in this blog post.

Being a watercolorist myself, I like to buy works on paper. I have a special place in my heart for them, because I know how perilous the process is. I like the transparency and immediacy of them. That’s a personal preference. But the bargain hunter in me likes that they tend to get overlooked at flea markets and shops all the time. They might look like a print, and remember, we don’t put photocopies on our walls.

(Like I said, we are drowning in art over here. HMU.)

The most important rule in buying vintage art is to bring a magnifying glass. You can get one of those small pocket ones and keep it with you in the car or your purse all the time. With a magnifying glass, you can see if the work has pixels. Pixels mean digital reproduction vs. handmade. Alas, sometimes I don’t have a magnifying glass with me, and I have been fooled. I do love this little toucan, but he is not “real.”

You can especially see it in the grays. It’s even signed! But there are pixels in the signature as well.

If there are brushstrokes, congratulations, you have a real painting! The chimney below here is to show you that a watercolor usually won’t look like it has brushstrokes, as the oil above. But it definitely won’t have pixels.

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Often, with works on paper, these are signed in pencil. Examine the signature as well; it should look granular and soft and not pixelated, too. Sometimes later frame jobs cover the signature, which makes it hard to look at without taking it apart. As I’m looking through my stacks of vintage finds, I’m seeing a lot of this. The pear is actually part of a very large pencil drawing, which is mind-blowing, but you can see I will have to take it apart to find a signature. It’s probably under the mat.

We’ll go over condition investigation in part two, Once You Get It Home, next week. You might remember I posted this video on that on Instagram, but we’ll do another one or two and link that in part two. I have a lot of art to process, and I might as well do it this weekend.

With your magnifying glass, maybe even without, you should also be able to see the pebbly texture of the paper.

This example above is very patterned paper which I mostly just use for my swatches, but it shows the principle. Good watercolor paper is mold-made out of cotton pulp, and it is heavy, like rough card stock. The way the paint settles into the crevices is what makes it look like a watercolor (if that makes sense?) and when the pigment settles out, that’s called granulation.

Here are two examples, one a vintage painting I bought recently, and one of mine, in progress.

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Cotton paper is archival-quality, and will not have as many condition issues down the road, provided it isn’t framed badly. Unfortunately, it’s usually not all that obvious what kind of paper the artist used, unless you luck out and get a watermark, but as long as the framing job hasn’t been aggressively bad, you’ll likely be okay. Again, more on that in part two, next week.

If it looks like there are blocks of paint with no strokes or pixels, it’s likely an original print, like this geranium from the 1970s. Here are two more, one from the 1950s and one from the 1990s. (Sorry about the glare; the biggest irritant with works on paper is the glass situation.)

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“Real” prints, by which I mean artist-made hand-made prints, are usually made in stages, laying down different colors with successive printings. Sometimes they are called serigraphs (as in in seriatum), or silkscreens, or lithographs, or wood cuts. These are slightly different methods to get to the same place, but it basically means that paint or ink is laid down on a plate (wood, stone, metal, glass) and then pressed onto the paper to transfer the image to the paper. So the artist paints it backwards. Cool, huh?

Frequently, you can see a physical indentation around the perimeter of the image, where the plate pressed into the paper, like this small print that hangs in my powder room.

Two other tells, seen well on the 1990s one by local Alexandria artist, Betty Kubalak, I posted above:  First, it is signed and numbered, also usually in pencil. Artist-made prints are done in short runs. This one says 2/12, meaning it’s the second in a pressing of 12. The lower the second number, the fewer total were made (sorry to be Captain Obvious here), and the lower the first number, often the more valuable—less obvious but makes sense when you know that the closer to the beginning, the more crisp and bright the colors are, etc. And the second “tell” is that it sometimes has uneven edges along the design image—not always on purpose and not always by accident, but is a result of the series of plate pressings not lining up exactly.

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Works on canvas can be tricky too. If you see a work on canvas that’s behind glass, question it. It might have been cut off its stretchers (the wooden bits that make the frame on the back). Why? Was it cut down from something bigger? Is there damage? Be curious.

Also, be careful about believing something on canvas to be real just because it is on canvas. If you have found something at Goodwill and it’s on canvas, it might just be a big-box printed reproduction. Technology gets better all the time. Do you know your fibers? Artists won’t paint originals on polyester. If it’s shiny on the back, i.e. polyester canvas, it’s likely not original.

The big wall art manufacturers have also started a trend of overpainting printed canvases with glossy, gluey-looking gobs (sometimes clear) to make them look more homemade. Maybe they are, but if so, it was likely done in a sweatshop. Don’t fall for it.

So what now? You have something “real” in hand. Now you need to decide if it’s worth its cost. Without question, if you are buying something at the flea market or antique store, I would just say yes to anything you love that is original and under $100, especially if it’s in a good frame. (What’s a good frame? I guess we can go into frames in part…3? What have I gotten myself into?)

But, and this is such a dilemma (sorry, sorry, I know), framed art could have been damaged in the framing process, depending on when it was done and what was done. You can sometimes see discoloration around the mat that is creeping onto the painted area.

This might mean nothing more than sun exposure, or it might mean there’s mucilage (animal glue) under there. (Internal screaming!!!)

Tape, glue, bindings, bad materials—this can all lead to issues later on. Again, and I’m sorry to be a broken record, we’ll get to that next week. You don’t really know what you’re dealing with until you open it up.

One last question, which we will delve into in part 2 as well, but it does figure into the purchase decision sometimes.

Do you need to know who painted it? Or if the person who painted it is famous? Maybe. What’s in a name? If they are selling it for the name, it matters. If you are at an antique store and they have given the artist’s name and some history, it’s likely accurate. Antique dealers are pretty honest. Pricing seems to be a pretty wildly moving target, though.

If you are curious, and it doesn’t seem like a screaming deal, go poke around on eBay and Google. It might take a little bit of digging, but likely not. The more expensive, the easier it should be to find information on the artist. And if you are at an antique shop and not at a flea market or rummage sale, the dealer should be happy to give provenance information and documentation. Google is a deep dark rabbit hole, though, and you don’t need to know everything if you’ve found a bargain.

You still might get some stinkers—I do too, sometimes, even though I do like Mr. Toucan—but these simple rules should help you navigate the world of vintage art. It’s everywhere, it’s plentiful, and it still has a ton of artistic value. Happy hunting!