How to Tell Genuine Vintage Industrial From a Reproduction

Vintage industrial has been popular long enough that the market is now full of brand-new pieces built to look old. A few habits keep you from paying antique money for last year's import.

Look at the wear first. Real factory and workshop pieces wear where hands and feet actually touched them: the front edge of a stool seat, the tops of cross braces, the base of the legs. Reproductions are often distressed evenly all over, which never happens in a real working life.

Check the hardware. Old bolts, rivets and castings carry irregular threads, slight asymmetry and genuine surface rust that creeps from seams outward. Uniform powder-coat over perfect welds is a tell. The same eye for honest materials applies to mid-century furniture.

None of this means a reproduction is a bad buy if the price is right and you love it. It only means you should know which one you are holding. That is exactly why we are a multi-dealer cooperative: forty sets of eyes keep the floor honest.