House On The Rock - Authenticity of The Collections

Authenticity of The Collections

Some of the apparent antiques in the House on the Rock are real, but many are not what they seem: depending on one's point of view one could call them fakes, or replicas, or original and imaginative creations in the style of antiques. Moe's authorized biography suggests that the question of authenticity is not a problem, presenting it this way:

While the Regina Sublima is a real antique, as are many other pieces and exhibits at the House, everyone knows that other pieces are re-creations designed and built on the House property. It's part of the fun—guessing what's real at the House and what is the magic of imagination and re-creation.

Much of the House's contents were built by Jordan and his associates. Balousek quotes Jordan associate Bob Searles as saying

We were creating entertainment. We were not making a historically accurate representation. There was never any need to worry about historical accuracy. We were creating a fun place.

The "Phelps Car" in the Streets of Yesterday, for example, was made by Jordan associate Bob Searles from an old carriage and some motorcycle parts. Balousek quotes Searles as saying "We could fabricate any antiques we wanted to—that was the fun of it. It was just one guy's great big sandbox, where he kept building stuff." Balousek says that Jordan sometimes bought bonafide antiques, but "usually preferred a good copy that cost less," and quotes a supplier as saying "I suspect that Jordan would pay more for a good copy than he would for an original, because he could sit in a corner and laugh about the way he fooled everyone."

In 1978, a disgruntled employee complained to the state Justice Department of consumer fraud, saying that these claims were tall tales. The "Tiffany" lamps, for example, were made by the Illinois firm of Bauer and Coble. The name of the Tusk of Ranchipoor was actually a pun on the name of Richard Rahn, a Mazomanie antiques dealer, who had built many of the fakes: "Rahn is poor." Jordan was enjoined from making false claims, the brochure was rewritten, and misleading signs were removed from the exhibit. However, the exhibits retained their colorful names, allowing visitors to surmise what they wished.

The room-sized assemblages of what appear to be mechanical musical instruments are partly illusion. Some of the instruments actually play, but the strings and woodwinds in particular do not; their sound is actually produced by organ pipes, while the moving instruments fool visitors.

Today, the nature of the exhibits is disclosed, though perhaps not emphasized, by the management; for example, the current website notes that "All the armor featured in this elaborate collection was made for The House on the Rock". This was not always the case. According to Balousek, before 1978 brochures advertised authentic Tiffany lamps, said the Gladiator Calliope dated from 1895, that the Franz Josef music machine had actually belonged to the Austrian emperor, that the Tusk of Ranchipoor was genuine ivory carved by an "unknown Punjab artisan," and so forth.

The official 1993 brochure says that the house "boasts the largest collection of Bauer and Coble lamps in the world. The management considers them finer and expects them to be more valuable than Tiffany's," and boasts that "The 'Four Seasons' panels are thought to be the only exact replica of the original and very popular Tiffany effort."