A few words about fakes

Most of my finds come from online sources. Sometimes I am asked how do I recognize good finds or spot fakes. Well, there are certain general directions I follow, then there is, of course, my sixth sense, that sometimes kicks in. The situation is really complex when coming to Mariskoolis, because there are several generations of bowls, made by different factories since the Fifties (AFAIK). The bowls can also be different, with different “resolutions”, depending on the age of the mould used for them. If the mould is fresh, the details are sharper. Older moulds give a less definite bowl.

The mould comes apparently from Germany, so it is also difficult to decide whether a very old bowls is a fake or just a pre-Finnish production. In any case, here are some rules I follow:

– COLOR: there is, of course, an official color chart that does *not* contain every color made. It is incomplete and stops at 2009 colors:

Marimekko Maribowl 1965 – 2009

Colours and production years:

Maribowl – size 155 mm

1965: clear, violet blue (current light blue), green, cobalt blue (1965, 1988-2006), brownish grey (swamp brown)

1968: amethyst (1968, 1988-1992)

1973: brown (1973-1995, 2002-), grey (1973-1996, 2001-), lilac (1973-1995)

1985: white (1985), black (1985, 2007-)

1988: alfa green (1988-1995), matt clear (1988, 1996-), yellow, red, light blue, sky blue, (1988-1995), Christmas green (1988-1995), Mondo green (1988-1995), Kartio green (1988-1995)

1995: green

1996: light green (1996-2004), plum, matt plum (1996-1997),

1997: matt yellow (1997-2001), matt sky blue (1997-2001),

matt Mondo green (1997-2001), matt pink (1997-2001)

2000: roseolive

2002: seablue

2003: aqua blue, lime (2003-2008), pink, sevilla orange, light lilac, blueberry blue, turquoise (2003-2006), lemon yellow (2003), lagun blue (2003), birch green (2003)

2004: red garnet

2005: pink, moss green

2006: ultramarine blue, sand

2007: olive, turquoise blue

2009: apple green, purple

This list does not contain a bunch of colors I own, that are certainly not fakes. Plus there are “experiments” that apparently were never put in mass production, maribowls with defects (uneven color, mixed hues, etc.)…

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– GLASS QUALITY: the glass should be completely smooth, not rough in any part, and perfectly transparent (well, of course this does not apply to matts :-D).

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– WEIGHT: if it is possible to hold the Mariskooli in the hand, we can check the weight of it: Maribowls are quite heavy, and the older generally the heavier.

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– SOUND: again, if we can verify the Maribowl in person, a good indicator of the quality of the glass is it’s sound. It has a very clear, I would say cristalline “voice”. If the bowl sounds off, well, probably it is fake. Or broken, like my frankenbowl.

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– SHAPE: of course, then comes the shape. Apart from the general “harmony” of the well-known Mariskooli shape, sometimes we can find “fat” bowls like these:

It is easy to tell that these are fakes.

But even if the shape is more similar to the real one, like in the following case…

There are some things we can check.

1) Usually the thinner part of the bowl is “thicker” than in the regular bowls, and the dots, seen from the distance, are not well defined and form a sort of  continuous V shape.

2) The upper scalloping is a series of identical semicircles, whereas a real Mariskooli is more a sequence of alternate V shapes (or U shapes in the older bowls), one looking up and one down.  See for yourself. Fake:

Real:

This is also real, but older:

In the following case, the central part is not very detailed, because probably the mould was a bit worn out, but the bowl is still ok:

Then there are the borderline cases… sometimes I cannot tell if the Mariskooli is real or fake. Maybe holding them could help.

Regarding the shape, there is a whole bunch of reeeeally old Maribowls that have a totally different shape from the newer ones. This, here, is an example, but I have several:

The next shot shows clearly the difference between an older bowl and a newer one:

And a closeup here:

So, it is impossible to base the judgment solely on the shape.

Of course, I’m still learning, so if you have more suggestions, they are more than welcome!

[EDIT]: I totally forgot to talk about stamps, and stickers, probably because I do not consider them so relevant. Some people think that a Mariskooli is real only if it has the Marimekko stamping coming directly from the mould. This is true only for bowls made since 2004 (officially), although I have found a couple of older bowls, dated between 2000 and 2003, that also have that stamp. Older bowls did not have the Marimekko stamp directly in the glass mass. They came equipped with stickers. There are two different types of Marimekko stickers: silk stickers and paper stickers (these are older).

The silk sticker looks like this:

But when washed, it can shrink like this:

Picture borrowed from Huuto.net

Paper sticker looks like this:

Of course, being paper, this is quite easy to be washed away… which is exactly what happened to my specimen.

In the following picture, you can see the Marimekko stamp versus the sticker:

Then the Maribowls have another sticker: the Nuutajarvi production, the older one, bears a silver-and-blue sticker like this:

Whereas the Iittala sticker, which can be found on newer bowls, is like this:

And on newer bowls:

As you can see, there are a lot of things stuck to our bowls! The point is that these stickers can help identifying a newer goblet, but they are not essential, nor enough, to identify real Mariskoolis. Stickers come off, so I do not rely on them too much. Plus, I’m certainly not willing to pay a goblet more only because it bears the “right” stickers. I use to wash my collection regularly, so stickers are likely to fall off…