Ethnographic Arms & Armour - View Single Post

Philip · 30th June 2019, 11:53 PM

As we all know, the marketplace for "archaic", "historic" etc bronze objects is awash with fakes -- just got through reading an old thread on lantakas on this venue, E-Prey is loaded with dodgy stuff from China, and check out the shelves full of Luristan weapons in galleries from Grey's Mews to NY' s Lower East Side...

Provenance, if reliable, helps a lot when making that decision to bid or buy. Yet in the long run, nothing beats empirical expertise in the field, and the expert technical analysis, when push comes to shove. Ontario's ROM has a landmark collection of Chinese bronzes assembled early in the last century if not before, but seeing something behind glass can be only so helpful when considering an item with a hefty market-rate price tag.

A decade a dealer colleague asked me for an opinion on an archaic Chinese bronze helmet he got from a New England estate, it was part of a late professor's collection, largely assembled during his residency in China and elsewhere after WW II. I admit to not being a bronze expert, but I agreed to examine it anyway. The form looked good, along with patina, gauge of metal, deco technique, yadda yadda. I was ready to be convinced... But knowing my limits, I got the owner's permisson to send it to a friend who specialized in antiquities. He performed a simple test to an area of patina and bingo! he found it to be as kosher as a ham sandwich.

So all my opining based on visual comparisons with published examples, and analogies applied to the surfaces of stuff I've seen from 2 feet away in museums, was all for naught.

What about the provenance? Obtained in the late '40s ir early 50s, decades before the rise of the Chinese knockoff industry, collected by an academician no less? I knew that the Chinese were reproducing archaic bronze and writing about it as far back as the Ming Dynasty, but some inquiries with the art crowd taught me that there was still some artisanal production of quality copies even into the turbulent 20th cent. and that some of this was created for presentation or gifting purposes.

This example is wandering far afield from a simple dagger-ax but I thought I'd put it out there to give an idea of the scope of the issue.

Oh, am pleased to report that my colleague got his money back out of that helmet!

30th June 2019, 11:53 PM	#6
Philip Member Join Date: Dec 2004 Location: California Posts: 1,036	As we all know, the marketplace for "archaic", "historic" etc bronze objects is awash with fakes -- just got through reading an old thread on lantakas on this venue, E-Prey is loaded with dodgy stuff from China, and check out the shelves full of Luristan weapons in galleries from Grey's Mews to NY' s Lower East Side... Provenance, if reliable, helps a lot when making that decision to bid or buy. Yet in the long run, nothing beats empirical expertise in the field, and the expert technical analysis, when push comes to shove. Ontario's ROM has a landmark collection of Chinese bronzes assembled early in the last century if not before, but seeing something behind glass can be only so helpful when considering an item with a hefty market-rate price tag. A decade a dealer colleague asked me for an opinion on an archaic Chinese bronze helmet he got from a New England estate, it was part of a late professor's collection, largely assembled during his residency in China and elsewhere after WW II. I admit to not being a bronze expert, but I agreed to examine it anyway. The form looked good, along with patina, gauge of metal, deco technique, yadda yadda. I was ready to be convinced... But knowing my limits, I got the owner's permisson to send it to a friend who specialized in antiquities. He performed a simple test to an area of patina and bingo! he found it to be as kosher as a ham sandwich. So all my opining based on visual comparisons with published examples, and analogies applied to the surfaces of stuff I've seen from 2 feet away in museums, was all for naught. What about the provenance? Obtained in the late '40s ir early 50s, decades before the rise of the Chinese knockoff industry, collected by an academician no less? I knew that the Chinese were reproducing archaic bronze and writing about it as far back as the Ming Dynasty, but some inquiries with the art crowd taught me that there was still some artisanal production of quality copies even into the turbulent 20th cent. and that some of this was created for presentation or gifting purposes. This example is wandering far afield from a simple dagger-ax but I thought I'd put it out there to give an idea of the scope of the issue. Oh, am pleased to report that my colleague got his money back out of that helmet!