A Conversation with Dr. Gene Hall

In the ever-challenging realm of art and artifact authentication, scientific precision is paramount. At the intersection of chemistry, history, and cultural heritage stands Dr. Gene Hall. Dr Hall is a world-renowned analytical chemist and professor at Rutgers University, and he currently sits on the Advisory Board for the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Over the course of a career spanning more than four decades, Dr. Hall has published extensively on spectroscopy and trace chemical analysis, earned national recognition for his pioneering laboratory work, and trained generations of scientists. His research has advanced fields as diverse as forensic science, environmental chemistry, and cultural heritage preservation.

Before becoming an advisor to Vintage Verified, Dr. Hall built an unparalleled reputation for applying rigorous science to expose forgery, validate provenance, and restore trust in collectible markets. His work has touched everything from postage stamps to Jackson Pollock paintings, and now, the finishes of vintage guitars.

This article explores Dr. Hall’s journey, from his early work on Chinese postage stamps to his advanced molecular fingerprinting of paints and lacquers. It is a story of curiosity, rigor, and a lifelong pursuit of truth.

The Early Years: Stamps, X-Rays, and the Archimedes Palimpsest

Dr. Hall has been contributing to art and artifact authentication efforts since the late 1970s.

“I go back to 1979, which was when my first real authentication of collectibles began. The first collectibles I ever worked on were Chinese postage stamps. Even back then, I was able to prove the samples I was given were forgeries, because although they looked totally identical to the real ones, the pigments in the ink did not match the time the stamps were supposed to have been printed. I used a technique called ‘PIXE,’ or Proton Induced X-Ray Emission. We’d accelerate helium ions and smash them into these postage stamps, and get the X-Rays coming off.”

Those were the early days, he says.

It didn’t take long for Dr. Hall to build a name for himself in the authentication world. “From then I was connected to the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore. They wanted help reading ‘Archimedes Palimpsest.’ There was gold painted over the top of the original ink, and they wanted to know if I could read whatever was beneath the gold. Luckily, the original ink was made of iron gall. So again using a type of X-Ray, I was able to pick up that iron very effectively and decipher the texts below.”

Gene’s initial work on the Archimedes texts kicked off a years-long study and collaboration from professors around the globe to understand and preserve the Palimpsest.

Building the Duco Paint Database

The bulk of Dr. Hall’s work in authentication has come by way of Jackson Pollock and Duco paints—although that wasn’t his intention when he began cataloging Duco paint.

“In 1995 or so, I got a grant from the Eagle-Picher Company… to get out of bankruptcy, they had to fund research on the characterization of paints. We sent somebody around the country, and they compiled over 2,000 cans of old Duco and DuPont finishes. In addition to getting all of the paint cans, I also got all of the paint cards and formulas from DuPont. I have the exact formulas. So with all of this paint, I spent several years building this gigantic database of all the different pigments, mediums, you name it, going back to the late-1800s. I can see when they changed their binders, their plasticizers, etc.”

Pollock, Duco, and the Smoking Gun

After Gene had amassed this massive database, it became known that Jackson Pollock, the world-famous American painter, used exclusively Duco paints to create his masterful works of art.

“People started contacting me to authenticate Pollocks because I had the formulations and data for all the paints he was using.”

In an effort to further understand Pollock’s materials, Dr. Hall and fellow Vintage Verified advisor Dr. Tom Tague visited the Krasner-Pollock workshop in upstate New York, where Pollock created most of his works.

“We analyzed all the paint on the floor. They even had old cans of the actual paint he was using. We analyzed the pigments and the mediums. It all perfectly matched the Duco database I had already built. It was incredible.”

Gene walked us through his process for authenticating a Pollock:

“For example, when I look at a potential Pollock, I’m first looking at the pigment itself. If I see the color green, I know Pollock was using a Duco formulation that has lead chromate as the primary green pigment; so if I see a green pigment that didn’t come out until 1975, that’s a huge red flag because Pollock obviously died in the ’50s. Then, I'll look at the medium and figure out if it's an alkyd, ester, acrylic, whatever. You start to compound information until you know exactly what you’re looking at.”

Connecting Pollock to Fender

It’s no secret that Duco was Fender’s supplier of the majority of their finishes in the 1950s and 1960s. Fender was using Duco pigments and paints in almost all of their custom color instruments, as well as their clear lacquer.

Gene talks about the crossover from Pollock and Fender:

“Many of the pigments used in Fender finishes are the same exact pigments Pollock was using, because it’s just what Duco was making at the time. There is a clear connection between the paint in the cans, the paint in the chip books, and the paint on these guitars… it’s the same stuff.”

Hall says that DuPont had several patents on specific compounds in their finishes.

“Duco didn’t want to change their formulations if they didn’t have to. Why would they? They designed it the way they wanted.”

Custom Color Fenders 

For Vintage Verified, Dr. Hall’s work on Duco finish is invaluable. Custom color forgeries are prolific in the vintage market, and Dr. Hall’s database gives clear, definitive timelines and parameters in which specific chemical compounds were in use by Duco.

Dr. Hall also stresses that many of these paints were hand-mixed well into the 1960s.

“Everything starts as a white base, usually. Then, you have these charts that tell you how much of what pigment should go into the paint mixture to achieve a certain hue.”

This, Gene says, helps explain many of the varying shades of Fender custom colors in the 1960s.

“We know that the primary pigment in Fiesta Red is cadmium selenide. However, on some batches, we see concentrations much higher than others; this ultimately affects the total dilution of the white base and therefore the final shade of the guitar’s paint.”

Hall’s collaborative work with Vintage Verified has real-world implications. Just recently, an early-1960s Fender Custom Color instrument was sent to Vintage Verified for authentication. The current owner of the instrument grew suspicious of its authenticity and asked Vintage Verified to analyze the instrument’s coating. It’s important to note, this particular instrument had many of the visual hallmarks of a period-correct finish; it had the correct looking nail holes, body routes, and no obvious evidence of a prior refinishing. Moreover, under blacklight, it lit up like a Christmas tree. In fact, some experts claimed to have high degrees of confidence as to the instrument’s authenticity. 

With access to Dr. Hall’s library of lacquers, Vintage Verified was able to identify several components of the finish that were completely inconsistent with Duco, Ditzler, Rinshed-Mason, or any other known finishes of the era. Most notably, the plasticizer in the coating was never observed being used in a lacquer of any era; the finish certainly wasn’t of Duco origin, as Duco had specifically patented a different plasticizer altogether. Additionally, the medium itself closely resembled a modern lacquer formulation seen on many reissue instruments today. 

Although these situations give rise to uncomfortable truths, they also underscore the importance of objective analysis in a market often driven by myth and assumption. In this case, the evidence spoke clearly: the finish did not conform to any known lacquer formulation, and the plasticizer was incompatible with historical usage. Thanks to Dr. Hall’s research and Vintage Verified’s testing protocols, the instrument’s true history could be more accurately understood.

On Reusing Old Lacquer

We asked Dr. Hall about a popular rumor in the world of guitar refinishing: could someone strip an old guitar, like a ’60s Gibson, and reuse that same lacquer to spray a modern forgery?

Hall says it wouldn’t be that simple.

“Let’s say I take a 1960 finish and scrape it off an instrument. To make that sprayable again, I’m going to have to dissolve it in some sort of solvent. That solvent is not going to give you the same composition of the original formulation. Moreover, that old finish degraded over time, so the crosslinking of those polymers continues. That is identifiable for sure.”

He continues:

“You’re essentially starting over with a different material. Although there might be some trace of that original lacquer, by the time you got enough lacquer to spray a guitar, you’d have a totally different formulation.”

Lacquer Then vs. Now

Dr. Hall was critical in helping develop Vintage Verified’s understanding of different lacquer formulations, the specific compounds within them, and how they evolved over time. In discussing vintage and modern nitrocellulose finishes, he points to the clear differences and identifiers separating them.

“Today’s nitrocellulose lacquer is pretty far removed from the stuff they were using back then.”

The EPA began regulating nitrocellulose in 1970, and Hall says that was the point at which many paint manufacturers began to change their formulations.

“Many of the plasticizers these companies were using back in the ’50s and ’60s have been largely regulated out of the paints, mostly due to environmental and worker safety concerns.”

A Legacy of Proof

Dr. Gene Hall embodies the convergence of chemistry and connoisseurship. From uncovering forged postage stamps to decoding the palette of Jackson Pollock, and now helping to authenticate vintage guitars, his work is driven by one unyielding principle: verifiable truth through scientific evidence.