These days the modern fakes are so incredibly made, even the materials / stuffs used are actually recycled ancient fragments from authentic broken/shattered pieces of porcelain or metals.. so that even Carbon dating and chemical analyses .. shown the object to be "real" ..thousands of years old. Best is to avoid ...
The problem is that "art" has become an investment, status indicator and tax avoidance machine based solely on (perceived) scarcity. Quality reproductions do not threaten art itself, nor enrich the makers. They threaten the financial edifice that "art houses" supports. I don't agree with forgeries, but identified quality reproductions at a reasonable cost would do a lot to educate and inform the public. In 2004, actor Steve Martin purchased a 1915 Heinrich Campendonk from a Paris gallery for $850,000 and had an expert authenticate it. After Martin sold it two years later (at a loss), the painting was discovered to be the work of a massive forgery ring that pulled in $48 million off fake Max Ernsts and others
The entire art auction market is flooded with fakes. Rich people shudder at the thought that they've spent millions on fake paintings and antiques, so the problem is more or less suppressed to retain the 'value of investments 😢'
What is hilarious (and this is a story that a museum curator told me) is that people want authentic ancient pieces out of vanity not out of art appreciation. They believe that owning a Ming is better than owning a modern piece made exactly the same way, using exactly the same material and masterful craftsmanship by the descendants of the people who made the Ming dynasty piece. But what they forget is that the Ming Emperors didn't get ancient Mings, they got pieces made weeks prior by the same ancestors of the people making the modern same exact pieces. Those Emperor didn't want pieces made by cavemen, they wanted the best their time could produce. Why would you want a vase made 1000 years ago when you can have the very same vase made by the great great great great .....great grandson of the artist who made the piece 1000 years ago ? Because of Vanity. If you truly appreciate the art then you just want the same quality not the old piece. This is not like a Picasso, you do not buy the artists name when you buy ancient Chinese ceramics (except for some teapots) you buy the craftsmanship, because there were tens of thousands opf workers making the imperial pieces and none of them signed their names on the pieces, the stamp is an imperial stamp, so there is no difference between a skilled worker 1000 years ago and a skilled worker today, they will both produce the same masterfully created piece. Da Vinci's great grand kids are not Da Vinci, and there is a difference between what he did and what his descendants can make. But those Ming Vases were made by anonymous craftspeople which history has long forgotten. A ming is valuable because it belonged to an Emperor, not because of the quality of the craft, because you will get the same quality (sometimes even better quality) in the highest skilled ateliers of Jingdezhen today if you are willing to pay what the emperor was willing to pay 1000 years ago. Unless you are a museum or a historian or a craftsperson , you have no reason to own a Ming, unless you are vain, and there is no pride in being vain. It is actually quite pathetic. Buy amazing pieces made by very skilful and talented people and become the owners of today's masterpieces and tomorrow's ancient art. That7s whjat the Ming emperors did.
Real appraisers have a saying "when you visit an antique market and something looks authentic, then look at the seller's nails and attitude and ask for the price". These means that if the seller has clean nails and talks and behaves like he was educated, he is probably selling you fakes, and if he looks like he barely makes ends meet, he is also probably selling you fakes. The difference is the price. If a well groomed well behave educated person asks for a high price, it is definitely a fake, if the poor uneducated looking person asks for a high price it is a fake. If they ask for a high price because they assume it is real then ask them why don 't they sell it via an auction house for 2000 times what they are asking you ? This question only annoys the fakers. The educated people who know they own the real deal are already going through auction houses ! The uneducated poor ones are not aware of the auction houses and they just want to sell stuff to put food on the table. If they ask for a really high price, they are selling fakes, if they ask for a really low price they also know they are selling fakes. If they ask for a reasonable price and the item looks authentic, then negotiate or ask a lot of questions about the origin of the items, where they found them, who gave it to them, why those items ended up in their hands, etc,... fakers hate those question (rich and poor alike). If they become elusive and annoyed, move on because these are fake, if they are eager and willing to answer your questions then you may have a real deal. When this happens i ask them if they are willing to make a deal with me, and let me buy one piece for cheap, not sell any other piece for 1 week, and if it is real i will come back and buy everything else they have for a much higher price. If it is not real i will not come back a week later. If they agree, you have an honest seller. But make no mistake, if it is cheap it probably is worth nothing, if it is expensive it is probably worth nothing, if it is insanely expensive, chances are you have an authentic piece. Don't underestimate sellers, they are smarter than buyers. Sellers know when they are selling fakes, and they know when they are selling authentic pieces. The difference is how much they need money or not. The more the person needs money to survive the cheaper you will get the piece for. The less the seller needs money to live, the more expensive the piece will get (aka sotheby). I went to china and found many many fakes among reputable dealers, with insane price tags attached to them. But i went to china town in Yokohama Japan and found authentic pieces that the sellers had for generations when they left China and settled in Japan and they sold them for 50 bucks when in fact they are worth hundreds of thousands. It is usually pieces that are not for sale and are just decorating the place, like a restaurant or a place which has nothing to do with the piece.
Maybe if China hadn't destroyed its entire past during the cultural revolution, they wouldn't need to buy pieces (looted) by the west in western museums. If anything the west by looting, saved chinese history. Chinese destroyed 99% of its imperial art, and people were asked to destroy any antiques they had, by the CCP, so china can only blame itself for losing all their most valuable pieces. The best chinese antiques are in western and japanese museums and especially private collections today, not in china.
Authenticity of art is not as important as feeding your family. I am never going to shed a tear over a billionaire who got cheated by a counterfeiter who barely makes ends meet making fakes to feed his kids. The corrupted billionaires and the art market as a whole are the ones who deserve to be punished, not the people making fakes that the super rich are dumb enough to buy. Punish the real criminals who sell fakes KNOWING they are fakes like those bigs auction houses. My grandmother used to sell fruits and vegetables, and every day at least 10 people would steal some of her fruits and vegetables. She never got mad at them because she knew they stole it out of hunger. So she would set aside a basket of damaged fruits and veggies for them and asked them to steal from this basket. One day while she was selling her fruits and vegetables a huge storm broke out. The thieves all gathered to help her save her produces and helped her back into her house safely. They didn't take one fruit that day.
The video's conclusion regarding the prevalence of fakes in the art market warrants further examination. While the high percentage seems plausible considering the abundance of low-quality artifacts, a more nuanced approach is necessary. An overreliance on connoisseurship and art historical expertise, while valuable, presents limitations. Scientific testing should be a fundamental requirement for sellers and auction houses, along with a return policy for objects failing such tests. For instance, X-ray fluorescence (XRF) analysis can definitively differentiate between nephrite and jadeite, the two primary types of jade. Nephrite dominated Chinese art until the 18th century, when jadeite from Burma became prevalent. Similarly, thermoluminescence (TL) testing by reputable labs can effectively determine the authenticity of porcelain. Likewise, scientific techniques such as elemental analysis, cross-sectioning, and corrosion product crystallographic analysis can be employed to assess the authenticity of bronzes.
I was taken to a womans home in a horrible ancient street in Shaoxing (I lived there) to see some 'antiques' to buy. The area had no plumbing and hardly electricity and looked like an area from bygone times. In the house her mother and daughter sat on a bed that was supported on tins containing some product to ward off rats and insects and the floor was dirt. In the second room was 'antiques' stacked up to the ceiling, some incredible mountain scenes in jade type stone with their own silk lined crates. Some of the pieces were massive. I bought a small jade piece and another ceramic piece fully knowing they were modern despite what the woman claimed. The 'real' antiquities I have came from a small town in India where the children found them in the mud when the river was low. They date from around the 14 th century.
I love the idea of the chinese government hiring professional thieves to retrieve authentic ancient chinese pieces from museums around the globe, which were stolen from china by the west ! That is badass ! A friend of mine who worked at the British Museum in paris was approached by a chinese guy (at his own house, that's how much research they did) who proposed him 5 million pounds to help him and his team inside the museum. To this day he regrets he didn't agree !
@@Hannari-xt6nr The Chinese were to embarassed by their own culture that they destroyed so much and the rest they traded or sold off for pennies. Many of these artifacts that you call stolen would not exist if they had not left the country. China is a victim of itself. The same goes for Greece and Egypt who did the same but China beats them hands down. If China wants their antiques back then either pay or fake them as they fake everything these days and 90% of what is in their museums is fake anyway.
I went to an auction near Paris two years ago and it was full of oriental antiques, all sorts. The prices where quite low surprisingly. I at once spotted a chinese vase converted to a lamp, estimate 60/80 euros so I stayed until it came up almost at the end. Most objects sold for around their estimate but this vase made over 5000 euros, more than any other piece at the auction that day. I had seen a young Chinese guy at the preview sending pictures of the objects with their marks via his phone giving people time to research.
There was a village in Hunan province in China That makes the Best imitation ancient bronzes. Their products are been sold for tens of millions outside on Auctions as even professionals can't tell, even museums in China buy from them and make specific orders as the ancient techniques of making and casting Very complex bronzes are thought to have been lost long ago is again resurrected in the hands of those villagers. So If some Body walk in your pawn shop with a ancient bronze statue, it is fake until proven it's real.
I have a few song bowls one is white like yours with that flower design on it , my other is red with a white area with flowers in it marks are engraved in the bottom and so hard to read but a green bowl just like mine sold for 1 mill like 9 years ago
The forgers dont make that much but the middle men do. Its obvious. Making copies of artwork is not a crime, selling it as original perhaps is, but its not the artisans fault.
Everything is real and original unless it is declared as an original made during many many years or as an ancient it an art value can be very high don't need it to an antique level 😔😂🤣
