For those of you that enjoy the "Lovejoy" television series or the books by Johnathan Gash by the same name about the world of art and antiques, (also the novels of Ian Pears,) will know that sometimes part of the mind-set of the counterfeiter is the challenge of seeing if she or he can fool the experts! Can you imagine the secret delight of some art forger going to some toffee-nose art gallery and seeing a Picasso that he knows he/she secretly painted ten years ago and is still fooling art snobs! Now, of course, this doesn't make it the right thing to do and could cause emotional pain and embarrassment not to mention financial damage to the unsuspecting. I enjoy the remark that Lovejoy makes on one occasion: "Copyist, dear, he's only a forger when he gets caught!" One of my great uncles was a blacksmith/cabinet maker who probably sailed rather close to the wind with some of the "antiques" he sold. He was known to marry old pieces of damaged furniture, bury things in his garden to age them, etc. While it is said he never represented them as originals I am not sure he ever set people straight if they believed they were originals. Hmmm...I wonder if he built any bicycle frames... Lawrence Bradley (Tacoma, WA, USA)