Jimi Hendrix Experience set: Opinions please

It has taken me many years to pluck up the courage to post this set.

I bought it at auction before the days of the internet, or at least before auctions were on the internet and I had access to it. The auction house I bought it at specialized in autographs and was based in Nottingham, England. I bought a lot from them. They let some skillful Beatles forgeries slip through, two of which I managed to buy, but on the whole their quality control was good for the time. I think I paid a fairly realistic price for the JHE set, in contrast to the aforementioned Beatles items that went under the market price.

My reluctance to post was partly based on the two Beatles duds, partly because the JHE autographs have no inscriptions or known provenance and partly because the piece seemed almost too prefect to my (now) very skeptical eyes.

The recent flurry of Hendrix activity on this site has encouraged me to look at the set again. To my mind the set looks real. The Noel and Mitch autographs seem consistent with many other authenticated examples. The "e" and "d" of Jimi's autograph are not typical but the autograph flows so well and the pen pressure looks so right that I somehow can't believe it's forged either.

Anyway, here it is:

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Permalink Reply by Samuel Mumenthaler on March 21, 2024 at 1:31am

Looks good to me!

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Permalink Reply by a pug called eva on March 21, 2024 at 2:18am

Thanks Sam, sorry I missed your event at El Lokal. Hope it went well.

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Permalink Reply by BallroomDays67 on March 21, 2024 at 8:05am

It looks good to me too. Nice set.

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Permalink Reply by Josh Board NEW & Improved on March 21, 2024 at 9:20pm

They're real

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Permalink Reply by a pug called eva on March 21, 2024 at 11:06pm

Thanks Sam, Ballroom and Josh.

To say I'm relieved would be an understatement. I always thought it unlikely that a forger could have so successfully forged all three autographs and, most particularly, made them look so natural but knowing how many Beatles fakes were being sold through reputable auction houses in those pre-internet days, I always had my doubts, especially as there was no provenance.

I had the set framed together with a vintage music magazine cover soon after buying it. I'm busy the next few days but I'll upload an image of the whole piece next week. In the meantime, here is the full display window. I wonder if that is Jimi's sweat at the bottom!

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Permalink Reply by Eric Keith Longo on March 22, 2024 at 5:27am

I like it very much! Very clean, bold contrast, no cello tape or stains...no pen issues and nicely placed signatures. Thumbs way up! :-) Excellent eye appeal.

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Permalink Reply by a pug called eva on March 22, 2024 at 6:40am

Thank you very much Eric. If anything, all those positive things you mention made me doubt it - in the sense of being almost too good to be true. With the Jimi you can just about see how the pen moved through the empty spaces (e.g. J to i and n to d).

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Permalink Reply by michelle on March 22, 2024 at 7:23am

Congrats Pug, that must be a relief and a half

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Permalink Reply by a pug called eva on March 22, 2024 at 10:51am

Thanks Michelle. It's good to know that I haven't been admiring a forgery all these years. The financial aspect is also not to be underestimated of course.

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Permalink Reply by a pug called eva on March 27, 2024 at 8:14am

I promised to post an image of my framed JHE, so here it is. I had the framing done soon after buying the set around 25 years ago. I asked the framer to use my copy of the Music Maker magazine from June 1967. I love that cover. The framed piece wasn't hanging on the wall for long and it was never subjected to direct sunlight.

I also took what might be a slightly better close-up of the autographs so I thought I'd post that too:

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Permalink Reply by Mark Saunders on March 27, 2024 at 8:23am

Beautiful

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Permalink Reply by Eric Keith Longo on March 27, 2024 at 8:31am

Now that is so well done! The mat is perfect with the paper, the inner mat in red popping the test in the image... And the frame matching the tones in the image - all this makes the signatures really prominent. Well done and a beautiful set! Also, a nice "guide" to good framing!