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Hello,
If you are reading this you are probably either a Kugel collector or have an interest in them. At one time in the early 2000’s I became one of the largest Kugel collectors in the world with over 600 Kugels in my collection including some of the most rare one of a kind Kugels known.
I owned the rarest Kugel, the amethyst orange, the only known cobalt blue pinecone, three different colors of strawberry, all 3 sizes of berries including the only known 2 5” in red and dozens of one of a kind colored variations of grapes.
I spent years traveling and studying them all over the world. I photographed dozens of collections for my book, “Christmas Rarities” which has a section on Kugels.
I am 78 years old and I have been collecting ornaments since I was a child. My book, “Christmas Rarities” published in 2007 was a 4 year project traveling around the world photographing rare ornaments. I’m fairly certain I’ve seen more rare ornaments than most collectors, after all, of the 15000 ornaments I photographed and of the 1500 or so in the book over 600 were seen only once in all the collections and over 500 were seen only twice in all the collections. I imagine I contributed 400 or 500 of the photos from my personal collection which was quite extensive so I think it would be fair to say my resume is fairly knowledgeable if not impressive.
I started selling off most of my Kugel collection around 2010 but I have kept abreast of the market on and off. Over the years many collectors continue to contact me asking for advice and I am happy to respond.
Recently, in April of 2025 I joined a Facebook group about antique Christmas ornaments. Someone posted a photo of Kugels asking about them and I posted a reply. A few days later I received a message from someone who said they had purchased a Kugel years ago and were worried it had been re silvered. It brought back memories of the buyer of most of my rare Kugels, Jack Krisky who found a chemist who was able to re silver them. More on Krisky later.
Unfortunately, I am currently involved in a situation with an old friend of mine, Tony Johnson who ripped me off, who owes me money and has stolen some of my items that I sent him to sell. (You can read that story here: lowcountrytilecontractors.blogspot.com) I had recalled as well that Johnson had purchased some Kugels from Krisky (I had introduced them) and a story he told me about how he had sold a red grape re silvered for 4K to someone.
Over the past 35 years or so I had received bits and pieces of information and evidence that made me question if the Kugels were from Germany but it was like a puzzle with a lot of missing pieces and when I moved to Asia in 2008 fulltime and sold off most of my collection I pretty much let it go except for a post on my blogsite a few years ago.
People can thank Tony Johnson for stealing from me and reminding me of a few of his Krisky stories plus the inquiry from the collector in April for having me put it all together.
I think I have been able to connect most of the dots. Not all but most. My research and evidence collected over the past 35 years leads me to believe Kugels did not come from Germany but from India with the exception of some balls perhaps. I believe “German” Kugels are the largest hoax and fraud perpetrated on Christmas collectors in History.
So I decided to do an in depth story on them that is long in coming but needs to be done. Here is my story and here is my evidence along with my conclusions. You be the judge.
In 2004 I paid 40K for a huge Kugel collection from Scott Tagliapietra. It came from one collector and included over 450 kugels in it. Many were considered very rare. It included balls, ribbed molds, strawberries, grape molds, artichokes and the one of a kind super rare amethyst orange.
For decades Scott Tagliapietra has been one of the best known dealers in German antiques including Santas and ornaments. He has been a contributor to the Antique Road Show for years. He is a long time member of the Golden Glow Club. He is also a crook.
Among the collection I purchased were a dozen or so 10” grape molds. Some were duplicates. I decided to sell some of the dupes on Ebay so I listed one. This was around May or June of 2006. I received an email (at that time you could contact the seller) from a guy (Eric) who told me that it was a fake from
India. He told me he knew who sold it to me (Scott) and he told me where it was made (India) and by who (a man named Ashfaque see attached card). He told me the shop was in a place called the “fools market” which is a huge marketplace and well known. (You can Google it). He sent me 3 emails which included a lot of info about Kugels, where they came from, the story behind them and the crooked dealers who imported them.
I was incredulous and pissed at the same time. I told him that I would be brain dead and open to a huge lawsuit to accuse Tagliapietra without proof. I told him I lived in Thailand and ironically he told me he was going to be in Thailand next month and would meet me and we could fly together to India and he would take me to the place and shop in India where the fakes were made. He gave me his USA phone number. When he did not contact me the next month I called the number and spoke with his girlfriend who said he was traveling. But he never contacted me again. After many attempts to reach him I gave up.
I decided to fly to India and see if I could find the fake Kugels Scott had sold me. When I first joined the Golden Glow Club I had been warned by several GG dealers that Scott dealt in repainting orns and mixing and matching Santas etc and selling them as original but I didn’t think about it at the time. It was a fool’s mission (nice play on words there) but I had been royally ripped off so I got my Visa (see attached) and flew to Mumbai in July of 2006. I spent the night in a hotel and the next morning I hired a cab to take me to the marketplace which if I recall was about an hour away. The place is gigantic. I had no idea where to start so I just started walking up and down the dirt streets. I had photos of the fakes and started showing them to the street folk and merchants but after a full day of walking and looking in shops I gave up.
I went in to a tea shop (they are tea not coffee drinkers in India) and while just sitting there totally depressed some kids walked in and starting trying to speak to me in Hindi. I had no clue what they were saying so they grabbed my shirt and I followed them to a shop (that I had already been in) and hanging from the ceiling were a dozen or so of the identical fake 10” grape Kugels Scott has sold to me. I could not flucking believe I had found them. I paid off the kids and while Ashfaque the owner was not there a salesperson
sold me one in each color of the fakes for as I recall less than $5 bucks ea. Not the thousands I paid for them from Scott. I took photos and got a business card from the guy. (see attached) He was quite nice and he never tried to con me in to thinking they were antiques from Germany.
I went back to Thailand and provided Scott with all the evidence and the choice of exposing him or giving me some of my money back. He sent me a check. I never agreed not to expose him. He actually demanded I send him back the fakes which I never agreed to and did not do.
I contacted Craig McManus, the most prominent Kugel collector in the USA at the time and told him the whole story and asked him what should I do? He told me to keep my mouth shut that if it got out there the value of Kugels would drop to zero. (I already posted this story years ago on my blogsite so it isn’t a new made up version). He of course has one of the largest collections in the world surely valued in the six figures. I also contacted the Golden Glow board members who all covered it up as did Craig. Some of the biggest frauds in Christmas collecting were Golden Glow Board members. I decided to contact all the Kugel collectors I knew from traveling around the country and Europe photographing collections for my book, ”Christmas Rarities” but I did not go public until much later.
Btw, Craig McManus knew the person who owned the collection I purchased He knew some of what was in it. In fact, I sold Craig a piece or two from it later on. I am convinced that Craig must have purchased a lot of his collection from Scott or Jim Morrison or maybe he was one of the dealers at Wright’s in 1989. But more dots connecting. Who did he buy his rare red strawberry from? Had to be one of them. Of course he didn’t want me to go public. His collection might become worthless.
I was actually kicked out of the Club for exposing a lot of the fraud in it. That is a story also posted on my blogsite.
I’ve mentioned it before but almost every Kugel collector whose collection I photographed had at least one fake Kugel in their collection. Jo Wagner had at least 3 fakes purchased from Scott. Barbara Brunner was with me in Germany when we met a collector and he was stunned to learn he had several fake Kugels in his collection.
So the fake Kugels have traveled around the world.
This is the story Eric told me. In 1988-89 for whatever reason there were two major buyers of Kugels from India: Richard Wright of Antique Road House fame and maybe the number one dealer worldwide in antique dolls and Lawrence Cooper from England also an antiques dealer whom I later spoke with in a phone conversation. He admitted he had been buying Kugels in India back then but of course he did not admit he sold fakes.
According to this guy Eric, Wright and Cooper both traveled to India independently of each other in 1988 or 1989 and bought 8000 Kugels. One question that I never asked was why India? What made them go there in the first place? How did they know the Kugels were there?
Here is part of one of his emails to me in July of 2006. Note my visa to India (see below) dated in July of 2006 below purchased soon after my emails from him.
“The 8000 kugels that came to market came in to Birchrunville PA (Wright’s home) and dealers and collectors came in from all over the world literally to buy them. I literally watched dozens of 10” grapes with leaves in red, blue, green etc in MINT condition being sold in large lots and not for little money. (Likely the same 10” fakes Scott sold me. They all had leaves on them and were in MINT condition). They were selling for $2000 ea wholesale which is a pittance for what they are selling for now.”
“But at the end of the day Richard and Brian (?) and their English competition Lawrence Cooper ended up losing a ton as well as screwing the kugel market for a decade. You just cannot dump that amount of merchandise on a market and expect it to be absorbed no matter how rare they are. Not only that but the Indians (India) got smart and a guy named Ashfaque from Mutton street in Bombay and his brothers started reproducing them. Brian (?) and Richard and Lawrence got taken for the high 5 figures each on a large lots of these fakes as they were buying sight unseen for 2 years with all going well until the repros hit and hit they did.”
I think it is fair to believe that most of the dealers at that gathering knew the Kugels came from India because they were all buddies of Wright.
Eric had written that a lot of the dealers in ornaments, dolls, Christmas, Easter and Halloween all got together once a year at Wright’s house and would brag about how they had ripped off clients. Scott has done it for decades. (Read my blog:(goldenglowclub.blogspot.com)
Personally, it is difficult for me to believe as a Kugel “expert’ they did not know they had purchased fake molds. If they had never seen the later molds from the first 8000 they bought they should have been highly suspicious.
If you read Eric’s email again and note he said for 2 years after they bought thousands “sight unseen” when they received them they had to know that they were fakes and for sure they dumped them on the market anyway: Wright, Cooper, Scott, Morrison and a host of others sold the fakes. They had to try and recoup their losses. And think about this as well. If you dump one strawberry a year out there for 4-5K you are doing pretty well. They got greedy with the 10” fake grapes and finally people caught on. You can still see them being sold every day on Ebay which cares not they are fakes. They never did care. Newbies even today are being ripped off for thousands of dollars at auctions and Ebay. The stuff is junk.
An obvious question is why were there 8000 antique “German” Kugels in India in the first place? How did that many get there and surely there were thousands more. The answer is they weren’t German in the first place. There have been a lot of folk tales about Kugels how the Rajahs hung them from the ceiling of their palaces etc but there is no evidence of such.
It’s interesting to me that someone would go to India and bring back 8000 Kugels not knowing if he could sell even one of them. For sure no one knew back then wtf they were. My guess is Richard Wright was such a well known antique dealer that he conjured up the scam by saying they were antique German Kugels that had been imported by the Rajahs to put on their ceilings. He made up the story and that is how the folklore story got started. Brilliant if true.
If you read all the Christmas books done by Snyder, Maggie Rogers, George Johnson, Bob Merck, Robert Brunner etc they all make the claim but none of them support it with any evidence. They basically just copied and pasted in different words what a previous author wrote. Snyder’s book on Christmas is a classic but I don’t think he even mentioned Kugels. I think Roger’s book back in 1977 or so was the first to mention it. I had emailed all of them asking them for their source. None ever wrote me back.
What I don’t understand is why none of the dealers asked if they were really German where had they been hiding all these years. And why weren’t there any from Germany being sold in Germany or to the USA market like the figurals were being imported starting in the early 1900’s.
I started collecting ornaments in 1954. By 1990 I had a huge collection of rare ornaments. I had joined the Golden Glow Club the first time in 1982 but quit as it was only about lights back then. I re joined in the 1990’s and never even saw a Kugel at any conventions until the early 2000’s. Where were all these antique German Kugels? We saw hundreds of other glass ornaments but no Kugels.
There were in fact glass blowing factories in India going back centuries so it is quite possible and probable Kugels came from India or at least the 8000+ Wright and Cooper purchased were made in India not Germany. 8K or 10K or more grape Kugels don’t get to India by swimming there. They were made there.
One of the regrets I have is for as much research I did about Kugels being produced in Germany and France it never even dawned on me at the time to look at India. When I purchased the 450 Kugels in one purchase from Scott I was told they all came from Germany. I remembered what members told me about Scott that he was a crook and I do remember the one question I asked Scott was did he guarantee that they were antique German Kugels which would mean they were produced in Germany and he said yes. But he lied to me.
I think it is very likely that some balls were German made as we know there were glassblowers. And we have evidence that the French made Kugels and grape Kugels as well. Someone sent me a photo from the early 1800’s showing huge 20” grape clusters made in France. But there is no evidence the Germans made any other type of Kugel other than balls and even that is skeptical but probable. Certainly the Indian glassblowers could have made the balls.
I posit this question. If collectors knew the Kugels came from India and not Germany would they have become a collectible and would the value be as much? I doubt it. It’s more likely that since we all know Christmas ornaments originated in Germany somebody decided to claim the Kugels came from there too to keep the values up. It made logical sense. Keep in mind while we know figurals were made from the early 1900’s when did the Kugels hit the market? After 1989. So where in Germany were they hiding all these years? They weren’t. They were never there in the first place.
I think my theory makes more sense than any other theory. And who the fluck would actually fly to India to research the claims? Nobody. Only me because of a tip. Collectors are very naive. Look at all the crap they buy that we know now are fakes and still being sold on Ebay. And let’s be honest. When a collector sees something purported to be antique and found suddenly in grandma’s closet they all want it and will pay any price for it. Ebay proved that point. So too the illegal selling and buying at the Golden Glow Club Conventions which had a rule you could not buy anything before the convention opened up but we all did it a day or two beforehand. All the major collectors and dealers did it. And of course the Board members all knew about it.
Wright and Cooper were the first Kugel importers but they sold mostly to dealers around the country. One main dealer was Jim Morrison (Mr Christmas who ran the Christmas museum in PA now closed). Morrison was Lawrence Cooper’s middleman in the USA and according to Cooper owed him a lot of money. He must have sold hundreds if not thousands of Indian kugels and fake molds. I had purchased one of the fake 10” amethyst Kugels from Ruth Riege who was considered a Kugel expert for $500 that she had bought from Jim at one of the conventions. I forgot the year. She was a retired schoolteacher or librarian (I forget which) who I was able to track down. She said she was never a Kugel expert but because she had bought some Kugels from Jim people gave her that label. She was mentioned as such in Brenner or Johnson's book. I had actually met Jim at his location in PA and asked him about his Kugel sales and all he would say to me was he eventually stopped selling them. Maybe he learned they were fakes or maybe he didn’t want to get caught.
So were the 10” fakes that Scott sold me part of the original 8000? Was the 10” amethyst grape Kugel I bought from Ruth Riege who bought it from Jim Morrison part of that first batch of 8000 Kugels? Probably or at least from the Kugels they bought after that. Do you see the dots all coming together?
I tried to find the person who owned the Kugels purchased from Scott and found out she had passed away but her friend spoke to me in a phone conversation and told me the lady was a huge antique doll collector and that she had bought a lot of dolls from Richard Wright and probably bought the Kugels from him as well. (More dots connecting)
Depending on the color the value of a Kugel goes up exponentially the colors ranging in rarity from silver-amber-cobalt blue-red-amethyst. A silver grape Kugel may go for $500 but an amethyst grape Kugel may go for $5000. I sold many rare amethyst Kugels to a guy named Joe Krisky for example for 5K or more. More on Krisky later.
Ok so back to my belief that most Kugels are Indian and many are fakes. The folktale states that Woolworth bought the first Christmas ball ornaments in 1905. And yet there are no Kugel’s in any catalogues from Woolworth’s. Not even Kugel balls. Think about that. Again where were the Kugels if made in Germany?
Jim Morrison published a book on antique Christmas cards (the name escapes me) back in the early 2000’s. I believe it included over 250 antique Christmas cards of trees from Germany roughly from the late 1800’s to around 1930 or so. There is not a single Kugel of any type including balls in any of the trees. Not a one. ZERO. I even mentioned that to Craig McManus and he was dumbfounded.
And of course none of the Kugels became popular until the boys came back from India in 1989. Another tell. Most of the colors on the 10” grapes that Scott sold me are not consistent with the same colors seen on other grapes or balls. The reds are different as is the amethyst etc. And the turquoise color I have never seen on any type of kugel other than the fake 10” grape.
There is other evidence. ALL the strawberries AND all the other berries ALL have the same type cap on them. That tells me they were made by the same person or family. Ashfaque perhaps? Lol If you find one that isn’t it has probably been recapped.
And of course the pikes are higher on the later fakes. And that cap is only found on that 10” grape mold. All other grape molds have assorted caps which tells me multiple people or families made the grape molds. It still doesn’t mean they came from Germany.
I’ve probably seen and certainly photographed more Kugels than almost anyone in the world. I’ve seen all the colors of each and all the sizes (berries came in 3”, 5” and 7.5”). Craig has a red strawberry that he showed me as well. It clearly had a fake cap attached to it. And Craig knew it was a fake. He had been taken. There are very few people in the world that know how to re cap a Kugel. It is not easy. I am one of them. And of course to make it look legit you need old wiring and an old bronze ring which has not been severed (those are French)
It is also very interesting that the fruits: berries, strawberries, pine cones (2 known) oranges (come in silver and blue with one known in amethyst) and artichokes (silver, green and cobalt blue) that none of them showed up until the early 2000’s excluding the grape molds.
None of the fruit molds were included in the 1989 hoard brought back from India. Of course they had destroyed the market for a decade when they flooded it with the 8000 Kugels in 1989 as Eric the whistleblower has said.
Consider another piece of evidence. Although the strawberries are extremely rare consider the fact that not a single one of them had any silvering problems. They all had perfect silvering. Same for the 10” grape molds Scott sold me and that you still see today everyday being sold on Ebay. You rarely see perfect silvering in Kugels.
Those strawberries sold for 4-5 thousand dollars. They are worthless in my view.
Could it be that this guy Ashfaque is still around and started making the fake fruits? I Googled his shop and it seems to be still in existence.
Unless someone can come up with evidence I am wrong I think my theory will stand the test of time.
And btw, I forgot to mention that years ago a collector had sent me a photo of a 10” grape same as the ones I bought from Scott and asked my opinion about it. I told him it was an Indian fake. I asked him where he purchased it and he told me at auction that came from Richard Wright’s estate sale. He died in 2009. So more proof.
Now, having said all that we move on to the corrupt dealers. I’ve already mentioned Scott Tagliapietra and Jim Morrison but there are several others. And btw Scott also deals in mixed and matched Santas and other Christmas items as well as Easter items that he sells as original and he repaints ornaments and has been doing this for decades. When I told the Board of Directors of the Golden Glow Club they kicked me out of the club. To this day all of them have covered it up. McManus was the President at one time and he covered it all up. Bill Steeley got ripped off paying 10K for a repaired Santa and he covered it up. All of them covered it up for decades.
Btw, people ask why would the guy named Eric want to out Scott? I was skeptical myself until I went to India. Turns out Scott and Richard Wright who are/were (Wright is dead) Gay. A lot of these dealers used to meet up at Wright’s house and according to Eric brag about how they ripped
off buyers. And it wasn’t just Kugels or Santas but dolls, Easter and Halloween antiques. Monica Laetham emailed me years ago about how she purchased a Santa for 10K from Scott and found out from Scott’s lover at the time, Joey Zinn who worked for Scott mixing and matching cloth etc to make the Santas look original. I have a blog post about all that. And there have been many others who have emailed me over the years about Scott. Anyway, this guy Eric was staying at Wright’s house and apparently Scott got jealous so he framed Eric accusing him of stealing something from Wright. I do not remember how it all ended.
There is a guy whose name on Ebay was Royal Rob back in the early 2000’s. He is also one of the largest kugel collectors in the world. And another crook. He knows everybody. Eric knew him. He told me the guy was corrupt. He used to win all the kugel auctions on Ebay because I guess he had deep pockets. Nobody liked the guy.
So this guy Royal Rob who lives in Ohio finds out I bought the super rare collection and he emails me asking what was in it. I sent him a photo of the cobalt blue strawberry. (They are very rare) and he wants to buy it from me. He is emailing me every other day. So one day he emails me with photos of guess what? The 10” fake grape molds from India. At the time I did not know they were the fakes. I found out later that Margaret from Switzerland had found them in a garage sale in Germany and sold them to this guy Royal Rob for $25 ea. So RR sends me a photo of the amethyst one and says he will trade me for the blue strawberry straight up even though the 10” amethyst grape he says is worth 10K. lol He said he had one of each color and that they were very rare.
When I bought the collection from Scott I was a totally naïve Kugel collector but most of these guy knew better.
When I turned him down he would send me emails using the most foul words I had ever heard. A real nut job.
Now we come to two more corrupt sellers. Joe Krisky and Tony Johnson. Joe Krisky contacted me when I started selling my kugels on Ebay around 2010. He was a guy with super deep pockets and he was obsessed with Kugels. He would tell me that he put down huge reserves to make sure he won all the auctions on Ebay. Like Royal Rob earlier.
In fact, he later on published a book on Kugels under the name of Tucker Beasley.
So Krisky sent me a photo of a kugel he purchased in June of 2010. I told him it was one of those same 10” fakes from India. Same cap. He even took the cap off. Note photos
I probably sold him 50K worth of my rare kugels. I also brokered his purchasing quite a few kugels from Jo Wagner from Wisconsin. I was authorized to purchase any kugels in good condition with good silvering. He purchased about 25K worth of kugels from her which I paid for and shipped to him. This was sometime in the Summer of 2010 if I recall correctly. He was trustworthy with his payments. I had included one rare blue grape Kugel with leaves that had poor silvering. When he got it he was not too happy with me but it led to him finding a chemist who figured out a way to clean out the silvering and replace it with new silvering. Doing that doubled the value of the Kugel. How many of the hundreds he owned did he re silver? Did Krisky tell his buyers some of his Kugels were re silvered? He certainly did not tell the auction houses.
Btw, one way you can tell if a Kugel has been re silvered is to look for any “bump” or pit mark. This would mean the chemist did not get all the old silvering out or missed some of it. If the rest of the Kugel is perfect it has been re silvered.
As time went on he would constantly pester me for leads and connections to more people who had Kugel collections. I introduced him to Tony Johnson and he emailed me on Aug 20, 2010
"Hey John,
I have spoken now on the telephone with Tony (Johnson) a number of times... we will probably meet F2F at a show in Philadelphia later this year... really nice guy.
I have also gotten to know Betty Bell... she is the one with the silver grape... we had a long chat about it... and now I think she recognizes what she has... and has put it away.
For the record I know Betty Bell and she is a class act and honest dealer.
When we went to GG, we picked up 12 kugels, including an French amethyst ball and a blue strawberry... which we later learned belonged to Jo Wagner. Other than that... no, we are looking for leads.
Now, Krisky must have forgotten he purchased a lot of Jo Wagner’s Kugels thru me in the Summer. But when I photographed her collection she DID NOT HAVE THE BLUE STRAWBERRY. I would bet money she bought it from Scott Tagliapietra who I would bet money he bought it from Richard Wright.
Are the dots starting to connect for all of you? btw Krisky paid $4500 for it. It's probably worth $45 bucks at best.
(Jo Wagner and her husband were fairly large Kugel collectors for years. When I photographed her collection for my book I had to inform her that several pieces were fakes. She informed that that would be impossible as she purchased them from Scott Tagliapietra. Lol When I re read recently Krisky's email to me that he bought the blue strawberry from Jo Wagner the bells started to go off.
More from Krisky's email to me, "Certainly finding the big scores require connections... do you know a guy named Bill Tattersall? (I knew Bill fairly well and had talked to him many times over the years but he was reclusive so I never mentioned Bill to Krisky). I am just getting to know him... he is a collector and many-times eBay competitor with me!
Says he has been collecting kugels for 20 years... out of FL.
I know this is difficult from Thailand... but do you have any other connections you can hook us up with... seems to be slim pickin's without that kind of help.
About the red ribbed ball... I have gotten good at putting caps on and am thinking I might not find another one, so would like to think about it... what is your price again? It is 5" in diameter,
no? Let me know... if you could have it shipped."
Joseph Krisky
So now we have Krisky being obsessed with the Kugels and finding a chemist to re silver them and hooking up with Tony Johnson at the 2010 GG Convention and Tony sending Krisky Kugels to re silver. Tony had emailed me that he had sold a red grape Kugel for 4K to someone that had been re silvered. I was stunned and left speechless. I did not want to know if he told the buyer or not that it had been re silvered.
There is nothing wrong with re silvering Kugels or re painting ornaments although many purists would disagree with me. What is wrong and what is criminal is to sell them and not tell the buyer. Before Krisky got divorced he told me he owned hundreds of Kugels and had spent well over 6 figures for them and that was in his early years of collecting them. He certainly re silvered a lot of them.
Tony Johnson also told me that Krisky had been selling fake amethyst Kugels on Ebay. So did Krisky find a way to have fake molds made as well? This was back around 2020 when he told me that story. Now if you read my blog about how Tony ripped me off and owed me money and stole my ornaments note he also emailed me on April 4, 2025. I reminded him of his Krisky connection and this is what he emailed me back.
| Fri, Apr 4, 2025 10:45 PM |
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“ First of all, regarding Krisky, I have names of everyone involved in his many schemes. That's all I have to say about his business dealings, other than the fact that it's odd to me that you would associate with a person that single handedly destroyed the kugel market and made your berry kugel sell for a fraction of it's worth before he stuck his nose into everything. “
So apparently Tony Johnson knew all about Joe Krisky’s fraud but went along with it. He never exposed Krisky or told anyone about his fraud including the Glow Club where Krisky and he were members. Why? Because he was also involved selling re silvered and possibly fake molds to buyers.
I never knew about any of Krisky’s mis deeds until long after I had sold him all my Kugels and Tony told me the stories about what he and Krisky were up to. The berry Tony is talking about is a super rare 7.5’ green berry I had sent him to sell for me but he ripped me off. He owes me money and stole my items. See the blogsite: lowcountrytilecontractors.blogspot.com.
I had reminded him about the red Kugel he told me about that he had re silvered by Krisky and sold to a buyer for 4K.
The bottom line is Tony never outed the guy but dealt with Krisky and sold either fakes that were silvered or had others re silvered which he then sold on Ebay or elsewhere.
Here are a collection of emails from Krisky back in 2010 that are interesting reading. The first one referring to the blue grape Kkugel I bought for him from Jo Wagner that he was not happy about.
"Hey John,
Firstly note that I am not complaining in any way... I am grateful for the opportunity to have it and very much appreciative for your efforts in getting it to me. My questions are purely academic in nature.
Thanks for the note... I have been working diligently on this with an antique glass guy ( he rebuilds old glass windows, fixtures and mirrors ) and we have made some progress.
Here in Oregon there was a huge arts and crafts movement and there is a lot of old glass and copper or glass and brass fixtures in the 100+ year old houses. This guy makes his living restoring these one-of-a-kind pieces + the odd Tiffany lamp... he an expert in glass and mirrors of all kinds.
He notes that there are 4 different kinds of mineral deposits on the red ribbed ball... iron oxidation ( rust ), copper oxidation ( verigris ), silver oxidation/tarnishing and calcium ( efflourescence ). The reason I asked about water is that each of these is cause by water...
If you think about it, water on a brass cap with a iron wire would produce the rust + verigris.
The silver tarnishing is a mystery. The calcium deposits are only on the top hemishere. They are usually caused by water-borne calcium precipitating from the water... as in the formation of stalagtites in a cave. He is guessing that the ball was sitting upside down for a time in a very wet environment... causing these deposits to form.... or water dripped on it from above... which
better explains the rust and verigris in the bottom of the inside... but should have caused drips of the calcium down the ribs... but the bottom is completely clean.
The good news is that via 4-5 treatments including some rather harsh chemical baths and a fair amount of time on a 100 year old buffing wheel designed to smooth bevels in glass, it looks like it is now mostly clean... inside and out... though I have to say, that it was all very worrisome
to talk about... since I have had it over there, I have been waiting to hear about some ugly outcome... like catastropic breakage or accidental etching of the glass. I guess he is an expert so I should relax.
The last part of the story is that this guy has a formula for putting the silvering back... which I have confirmed on a few test balls... and remember that blue grape that you bought for me from the Wagners...
it is now perfect with mint condition and restored silvering. Some of the old fixtures are mercury glass shades... so he has worked for 40 years at perfecting the process... it works great.
It will probably take a couple more weeks to get it all done... I am on a long business trip next week. I will let you know what happens.
You do not happen to have a 1.5 10 lobed cap sitting around anywhere? The next step is to find a suitable cap.
Thanks again,"
Joe
This email clearly proves the fact that Krisky had many kugels re silvered. The question is did he tell the buyers they had been re silvered? I doubt it.
I contacted Joe Krisky twice and tried to get his side of the story and to respond to Tony Johnson's claims (whatever there are) but he hung up on me. I do not know what he did other than re silver Kugels and certainly sell them without informing the buyers but apparently there is much more according to Johnson who seems to be trying to cover his own ass at this point. So there you have it my friends. I think if you look at all the evidence and connect all the dots it is pretty clear to me that Kugels especially the fruit molds did not come from Germany. Kugels did not appear on the USA market until 1989 or so unlike German figurals starting in the very early 1900’s. If they were really German they would have hit the market at the same time the figurals were being shipped to the USA. We should have seen them in stores and certainly on Christmas cards of German trees during a 40 year span. Someone came up with the idea to pawn off the Indian Kugels as antique German Kugels to protect the values. Probably Wright. The Indians later on produced the fruit molds and fake grape molds and the buyers got taken for a ride but they sold them anyway to dealers.
It is also fair to say that there is a lot of fraud in the Kugel business that has been going on for a long time and which has been covered up by the Golden Glow Club Board members and others.
A lot of people have been ripped off for huge amounts of money through all this fraud. I know this is going to bother a lot of Kugel collectors many of them friends of mine but the scam needed to be brought up again. too many people and organizations and auction houses do not care and happily look the other way some intentionally covering it up like the GG Club and Craig McManus. Frankly, by now any honest Kugel dealer has to know they were probably made in India but certainly not in Germany. And who is to say if Wright and others had been honest where they bought them they may (the real legit old ones) would have had some value. We will never know.
John Lightner
*Anyone wishing to email me with any info or questions can reach me at jlightner1@gmail.com.
Here are photos of the fake 10” grape mold and pine cone as well as the visa to India in 2006 and the business card from Ashfaque’s shop in India where I bought the fakes.          |
