How to Make a Fake 300-Year-Old Document

This is a two-step process:-

(1) Obtain an image that you would like to appear on your valuable historic document

(2) Obtain a sheet of blank paper that is three hundred years old.

Obtain an image

Most likely this will be a map or a painting. The internet is awash with old maps and old images. Find such an image that will impress your friends. One of my friends is a fisherman and sails as far as Greenland, so I would probably look for an ancient map sketched by the artist aboard Erik The Red’s ship, but choose what you want be the interests of the person you’d like to impress.

“Impress”, not “fool”, because we wouldn’t want to fool a friend now, would we?

Load the image into an image modifying program and experiment with “sepia”, “black and white”, “gray-scale”, “charcoal” and so on until you are happy. Print the changed image to regular paper and over the next few days check to see that it really does look old.

Now we need to make it old.

Obtain an old sheet of paper

For this you will need a piece of ordinary cotton string – chalk line – about twelve or eighteen inches long.

Then you need to find somewhere where are found 300-year-old books. Where are such places? Well major libraries and rare-book stores. Note that an online rare-book store will not do. You need to be in private possession of a rare book for about five minutes, and to the best of my knowledge, online rare book stores never send rare books out on spec. And you don’t want to fork out a $5,000 deposit just to impress your friends.

So here you are on the fifth floor of the Toronto Reference Library. You have requested the 1507 edition of “The Golden Legend”, and the piece of cotton string lies within your manila folder that contains a half-dozen sheets of blank paper of various sizes and materials, and your pencil.

You don the cotton gloves (provided by the library) and sit at the far end of the room facing the desk librarian.

Read the book, studying each page carefully. Turn the pages at the rate of about one per minute. Make meaningful notes with your pencil on your blank notepaper. In short, act like a student doing research.

Towards the end of the book you will find one or more blank pages. (Inspect any non-fiction books in your personal library at home).

While the desk librarian is distracted with another client, pop the cotton string in your mouth, and leave it there for a minute or two while it takes on a load of saliva. It is true that there is less DNA in water from a bottle but (a) Do you think the library will allow a bottle of water near a book from 1507 and (b) Do you think the library will miss a blank page?

While the desk librarian is again distracted, pop the wet string from your mouth and stretch it along the inside edge of that blank page. As close to the spine as you can get it. Do NOT poke it in tight with your pencil; that would leave a tell-tale pencil mark.

Close the book and place your hands on it, looking thoughtful for a minute or two. Remember that you are a research student.

While the desk librarian is again distracted, return to the end of the book, grasp the blank page with your forefinger and thumb, and pull gently. The moist paper fibres will part allowing you to use your left hand to pull the book way from the sheet of paper. Remember to move the book, not the sheet. You want any motion to be seen as you moving the book aside, not you pulling out a sheet of paper.

With your 500-year old blank sheet of paper sitting on your note paper, close your manila folder and return to studying the book.

Then return the book to the desk librarian, allow them to inspect your manila folder with its blank sheets of paper in various sizes and condition. Exit the library.

At home print your modified image on your 500-year old sheet of paper and impress your friends.

I don’t see why you should have to spend money to impress your friends, so let THEM cut a small strip from the edge and let THEM pay to have the paper carbon-dated by some expert that they choose and trust.

You’re welcome!

Search