NEWS and OPINIONS

Fine Fake or Ancient Treasure?

There is nothing wrong with buying a quality contemporary reproduction of an ancient piece, as long as the price reflects the period! However, as the price of genuine pieces skyrockets so does the temptation for skullduggery! 

We will here try to outline a few basic tests that may help save a prospective buyer the pain of discovering that their latest masterpiece was made last week! 

Many perfectly genuine pieces are too readily condemned as fake simply because they are not beautiful to modern eyes. There are plenty of provincial objects, not from the main stream that has been widely studied and published, that are perfectly genuine, so beauty should be used as a standard for deciding if you want to live with the piece, not necessarily as a judge of its age. 

If you do make a mistake you are not alone. The world's museums are full of expensive and beautiful examples of the faker's art! 

For some amusing reading on famous fakes try:

• Thomas Hoving. False Impressions, The ex-Director of the Met!

• Michael van Rijn. Hot Art, Cold Cash, sometime scoundrel.

• Always try to get the seller to give a guarantee of antiquity. If mutually acceptable experts condemn the piece you should get your money back 
• Trust your instinct, if first impressions say it is wrong, it probably is. If it seems too good to be true, it probably isn't.
• Look for details that don't make sense, very often the faker works from photographs and doesn't have one of the back so errors creep in. For example a ribbon that goes nowhere, a piece of clothing or jewellry that has no means of support. 
• On sculpture, with the permission of the seller, wet a small area and smell it. Does it smell of dust and earth and ancient tombs or acrid modern chemicals? The same sniff test applies to paintings, without wetting them first!
• Discretely try to scratch a less important area with a fingernail. If the patina comes off readily there may be a problem. Especially if the metal, or stone, under the patination looks fresh.
• Try to decide if there is a strange mixture of styles. If the dress is Bayon style on a Phnom Da figure it is probably new, or very late.
• Look for suspiciously fresh lines on worn sculpture, especially around the eyes and costume detail, it may be recut.

December 2000. After many months on the road the latest shipment of beautifully cleaned and restored original Tibetan furniture is finally in the Gallery

Beware of the excellent reproductions recently flooding out of China. Great decoration, but they are not valuable antiques!

TOWARDS STONE TESTS THAT WORK.

Stone testing not so easy!