Dangers of Producing replica ethnographic weapons and art

TVV · 29th July 2007, 07:40 AM

I completely agree that replicas, especially well made ones, are dangerous as they can easily be passed on as fakes. However, here are two points, I feel necessary to bring up.
First of all, I think we, the collectors, are the ones to mainly blame. After all, we are the ones willing to pay high prices for the artefacts, thus creating a market for forgers. If we did not drive the prices up, noone would be forging swords, as making a good sword is actually hard and costly. Fortunately, I do not think that most of the best examples of ethnographic weapons can be mass produced cheaply - they need to be hand made, and sometimes the technology is not easy and only a few people can do it, their products as expensive or even more expensive than the authentic items, such as in the case of wootz. As long as we do not drive prices completely out of sanity, the forgers will be limited to ancient weapons and the more primitive examples.
Secondly, I actually think real sized replicas are necessary. I have friends who are reenactors, many of them reenacting battles from the 19th century. These reenactments help discover important information about battles from the past, as they are our only way of recreating the events, during which the weapons we collect have been used. I personally like weapons because of their historical significance, as witnesses and participants in heroic deeds I will never see. Anyway, some of the equipment my friends use consists of replicas, and some of it consists of authentic items. I know many cases, in which authentic weapons have been damaged - blades nicked and bent, gun butts broken, uniforms torn. Even the thought of somebody running around woods with a precious 19th century Balkan shihsane and clashing an authentic yataghan makes me cringe. Therefore, I do support replicas, as in many cases they help preserve authentic weapons, not to mention that they help us see how the real weapons have been used. After all, I am very much against cutting tests with an old blade, especially if it is a rare and valuable example.
To some it up, there will be fakes in any collecting field with high enough interest and prices, and while I do not think that a limit on the production of replicas will help much, if at all, on fighting fakes and forgers, I believe replicas are necessary and their benefits by far outweigh their eventual downsides.

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29th July 2007, 07:40 AM	#2
TVV Member Join Date: Dec 2004 Location: Bay Area Posts: 1,664	I completely agree that replicas, especially well made ones, are dangerous as they can easily be passed on as fakes. However, here are two points, I feel necessary to bring up. First of all, I think we, the collectors, are the ones to mainly blame. After all, we are the ones willing to pay high prices for the artefacts, thus creating a market for forgers. If we did not drive the prices up, noone would be forging swords, as making a good sword is actually hard and costly. Fortunately, I do not think that most of the best examples of ethnographic weapons can be mass produced cheaply - they need to be hand made, and sometimes the technology is not easy and only a few people can do it, their products as expensive or even more expensive than the authentic items, such as in the case of wootz. As long as we do not drive prices completely out of sanity, the forgers will be limited to ancient weapons and the more primitive examples. Secondly, I actually think real sized replicas are necessary. I have friends who are reenactors, many of them reenacting battles from the 19th century. These reenactments help discover important information about battles from the past, as they are our only way of recreating the events, during which the weapons we collect have been used. I personally like weapons because of their historical significance, as witnesses and participants in heroic deeds I will never see. Anyway, some of the equipment my friends use consists of replicas, and some of it consists of authentic items. I know many cases, in which authentic weapons have been damaged - blades nicked and bent, gun butts broken, uniforms torn. Even the thought of somebody running around woods with a precious 19th century Balkan shihsane and clashing an authentic yataghan makes me cringe. Therefore, I do support replicas, as in many cases they help preserve authentic weapons, not to mention that they help us see how the real weapons have been used. After all, I am very much against cutting tests with an old blade, especially if it is a rare and valuable example. To some it up, there will be fakes in any collecting field with high enough interest and prices, and while I do not think that a limit on the production of replicas will help much, if at all, on fighting fakes and forgers, I believe replicas are necessary and their benefits by far outweigh their eventual downsides.