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We love these guys! After giving them
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appeared as AFC. Their logo even looks a bit like our
old one. Well, they do say imitation is the greatest form
of flattery...
Chinese Antique Furniture (AFC) Inc.
www.antique-furniture-chinese.com
Re-Made
in China
Reprinted from :http://www.gluckman.com
By Ron Gluckman
/in Beijing, Shanghai, Zongshan, Jingdezhen, Hong
Kong and Macau
|
Those
nifty wooden chests and old-style cabinets aren't
the only Chinese reproductions pouring forth from
the mainland. Imperial pottery factories have been
re-fired to churn out copy China that unwitting
collectors buy for millions, while paintings and
other forgeries flow through the finest museums
and auction houses. China has become renowned as
the world capital of art forgery, which is only
fitting, since fraud is considered a fine art in
the Middle Kingdom.
PABLO
PICASSO once proclaimed, "We all know that art is
not truth." Collectors visiting China quickly become
even more cynical. With art here, there is no truth.
Nobody
knows that better than Dick Wang, who enjoys a rare
perspective on Beijing’s red-hot market in art and
antiquities. From the second-floor window of his
gallery, Wang looks down on Liulichang, a shopping
street popular with tourists and locals alike. Many
visit the stylish Wang & Co. and show off treasures
they’ve mined from nearby markets. "All of them
are fake," he says.
 Getting burned is common, and not even Wang,
who worked for five years as an expert on Chinese
art at auction house Sotheby's in London and New
York, is immune. A few years back he bought a Tang
dynasty horse for $12,000—a steal, or so he thought.
It turned out to be a well made but worthless fake.
"I call that my tuition," he says with a smile.
Forgery
is hardly new in the art world, but China is considered
a leader in the field. Bogus pieces constitute as
much as 80 percent of the value of goods for sale
in Hong Kong, and are even showing up in museums,
auction houses, and high-end galleries. Most of
those pieces probably originate in China. ''You
find copying everywhere people collect art, but,
when it comes to art fraud, China is probably the
world capital," says one Beijing art consultant.
"There
are so many fakes in the market," adds Alfreda Murck,
who was one of the New York Metropolitan Museum's
Asian art curators. Now she authors art books in
Beijing, where she sees firsthand a market flooded
with fakes. "Telling them from the real thing is
sometimes impossible."
Liulichang
Street, Beijing’s Antique Alley, doesn’t look ominous.
A few blocks south of Tiananmen Square, it has scores
of charming wooden, tile-roofed shops displaying
weathered pottery, furniture, books and bric-a-brac.
Tourists have strolled the quaint cobbled lane for
ages, even if they aren’t hunting for any particular
treasure. Street touts pounce on potential marks,
pushing forward photo albums.
 "You want Qing?" asks one, pointing to photos
of prized porcelain. "Yuan and Song pieces, one
thousand years old, very cheap!" Huge vases, meticulously
glazed plates, and bronze statues are offered, all
at prices that are unbelievable—if the pieces
are real. None are, says Wang. "Probably ninety-five
percent of the stuff you find on the streets is
fake," he declares. And what's true in Beijing is
mirrored in antique markets across China.
One
need only tour the border areas around Hong Kong
and Macau to grasp the size of the problem. Huge
antique showrooms, one after another, tempt bargain
hunters from the wealthy former British and Portuguese
colonies.
At
Chinese Antique Market, north of Macau, 100 tin-roofed
stalls bulge with dusty tables, baskets, and carved
wooden panels. Trucks arrive regularly, piled high
with old dressers and cabinets. Most are refinished
and sold on the premises, but there is also a huge
market for reproductions or modern copies. Many
are sold as the real thing, for ridiculously inflated
prices.
Some
shops tread carefully. Sam at Yong Chang Furniture
Plant of Classical Arts avoids using terms like
antique. "These pieces are all made in the old style,"
he says instead.
Sam
respects the fine line between fraud - passing off
a forgery as genuine - and copying, which is considered
a genuine art form in China. "The best artists in
China always learned by copying," notes the Beijing
art consultant, who often works for the Chinese
government and wishes to remain anonymous. "They
did so for centuries, and that’s still the case."
 Nowhere is that clearer than in Jingdezhen,
a grim town in southeastern China. Covered by a
gray haze, Jingdezhen might resemble any other ugly
industrial city in China, except for the magnificent
12-foot-tall vases lining both sides of the main
street, home to the world’s largest porcelain market.
Small
alleys branch off in every direction, heaped high
with plates, bowls, figurines, and tacky ware such
as Mao salt shakers, Mickey Mouse casseroles, Princess
Di plates, and Pueblo-style ashtrays. Many shops
carry finer pieces that look misplaced amidst all
the kitsch: thousand-year-old urns, Qing goblets,
and ancient plates with intricately-cracked glaze.
They look authentic, but all are copies.
The
high-fire process of making porcelain was invented
in China around the fourth century. In Jingdezhen,
it became a sophisticated art form that reached
its zenith in a period spanning the Ming (1368-1644)
and Qing (1644-1911) dynasties. All imperial ware
- most prized by collectors today - was made here
by the country's best craftsmen.
Ironically,
these treasured plates and bowls were, centuries
ago, copies too. Teams labored for years to meticulously
reproduce massive dinner sets for the emperor and
his court.
Jingdezhen’s
artistry declined over various periods of upheaval
and was all but forgotten during the decades of
Communist austerity. By 1991, all but two of its
32 state-run porcelain factories were shut down,
as cheaper manufacturers across Asia and in Central
America dominated a market once so identified with
China that this was very name for the ware.
In
recent years, investors from Hong Kong and Taiwan
have revived many studios in Jingdezhen to reproduce
Imperial copies for collectors around the globe.
Nowadays, an estimated 150 factories and 100 kilns
- some the size of football fields, capable of churning
out 10,000 pieces per firing - churn out over a
million pieces of porcelain per day. Last year,
legal sales topped $100 million. Some of the pieces
wind up - intentionally or through a convoluted
trail of re-sales - in the world’s finest museums
and collections.
 Sources at leading auction houses
say that good fakes are nearly impossible to spot.
"Even dealers are fooled," says Karin Weber, who
runs a gallery above Hollywood Road, a fashionable
Central Hong Kong street packed with antique shops.
Some say as many as 80 percent of the goods offered
here are fake.
Stories
abound about the tricks used to fool experts. "Everyone
knows a dozen ways to cheat you," my guide in Jingdezhen
cautions as we move through a dark part of town
called Fan Jia Jing. Shops here don’t display antiques
- only licensed dealers in China can, officially
anyway - but queries invariably elicit the same
response: furtive glances up and down the street,
then a quick retreat to a closet or cellar, where
a carefully wrapped, old-looking piece is produced.
"They're
all fakes," my guide advises. "Everyone knows how
to do it. You rub the piece in chemicals or animal
urine to dull the shine. You use dirt and ash in
the cracks to age it."
Huang
Yunpeng is one of the remarkable characters rebuilding
Jingdezhen’s reputation. After 20 years overseeing
repairs at the Jingdezhen Ceramic Museum, he is
now the director of the Jia Yang Ceramic Studio—and
a master copier. One of his fake Ming jars, for
example, goes for $300; the original sold for nearly
$6 million at a Sotheby’s auction a couple years
ago in Hong Kong, then a record.
"I
can copy anything," boasts Huang. His Hong Kong
partners provide catalogues from auction houses
in New York and London. Museum books abound with
other masterful designs.
Huang
trains scores of workers to reproduce patterns favored
by Chinese newlyweds in New York and housewives
in Taipei. These days, talent is supplemented by
computers. Customers scan images of priceless designs
and send them by e-mail. Technology has also been
a boon to cheats. Authenticators place great value
on the chop, an elegant, intricate Chinese character
used to sign ancient pieces and an easy way to tell
fakes from the real thing. But now chops can be
copied by laser and e-mailed to ceramic shops.
 The most dependable method for testing antiques
is thermoluminescence (TL). The process, explains
Doreen Stoneham, head of England’s Oxford Authentication,
the world’s foremost TL lab, involves drilling a
small sample of powder from an object. When heated,
the powder emits a faint light signal indicating
the amount of time that has passed since the object
was fired. "Unfortunately," laments Stoneham, "this
is no longer sufficient to detect fakes." She won't
detail the reasons, but counterfeiters can predict
where the tests are likely to be done and inject
radioactive material there, says Wang.
"There’s
no scientific test that is entirely accurate," concedes
Pola Antebi, director of the Chinese Ceramics &
Works of Art Department at Christie’s in Hong Kong.
She and her colleagues rely on their senses to sift
out fakes. "We look at so many factors: the shape;
the color of the glaze and whether it’s consistent
with the period in question; the glaze texture;
the weight of the piece; and the mark [chop]," she
says. "We look at Chinese ceramics all day, every
day." That experience, she maintains, gives experts
the edge. "Forgers haven’t had the privilege of
handling authentic pieces. It takes years to get
the sense of it."
Still,
the phony goods creep through. "There are fakes
in every auction. Fantastic sums are at stake, and
it can’t be helped," says Wang. "The experts are
human, too." Embarrassing mistakes are commonplace,
adds Bruce Doar, editor of China Archaeology and
Art Digest. "Even the best museums have fakes."
New
York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, for example,
has had its Chinese works challenged often in the
past. One ongoing controversy involves the 1997
acquisition of a group of remarkable Chinese paintings,
including "Riverbank," which the Met maintains is
an exceptionally rare 1,000 year-old silk scroll.
Many scholars credit it instead to modern-day Chang
Ta-Chien, a colorful character who typifies the
blurred vision afflicting western curators who try
to categorize Chinese art. Chang is considered both
China's Picasso and one of the greatest con artists
of the 20th century.
Chang
is believed to be responsible for 30,000 paintings,
including countless forgeries. Not that that paints
him as a rogue in Chinese art circles. After his
death in 1983, several exhibitions of Chang's most
famous fakes were held. As to "Riverbank," the question
of authenticity has been the topic of numerous seminars
and several books, but remains spectacularly unsettled.
In
the field of Chinese art, it's an expensive but
hardly isolated example. "There are fantastic forgeries
out there - that's no secret," says Murck, who spent
12 years at the New York Met. She details the tremendous
scrutiny that surrounds every potential purchase.
"We could spend months on a single piece," she says.
"We'd test it and review its history."
 One reason Chinese art is so susceptible to
fraud, however, is that few pieces possess the kind
of ownership trail common in the West. Sales in
China are rarely recorded, and the artist seldom
attributed. Pieces are more commonly assigned to
periods of craft, such as the various dynasties.
Antebi describes extensive vetting procedures, including
consultation with investigators who monitor the
latest forgery techniques. "We can't talk about
the techniques for fear of tipping off forgers,"
she says. Nevertheless, she allows, "Nothing is
foolproof."
Though
the risks remain high, collectors and museums remain
enthusiastic about Chinese art, which most consider
to be undervalued. This helps explain both its current
popularity and the record prices recorded at practically
every big auction.
Hence,
even experts like Murck and Wang admit to spending
their weekends at Panjiayuan, dubbed Beijing's Junk
Market for obvious reasons. Huge piles of newly-minted
Qing dynasty wares sit alongside Mao memorabilia.
Yet there is always the hope of finding a precious
Ming plate among the junk.
Wang
once bought a small snuff bottle here for $6,000.
A month later, he sold it for $50,000. Wang says
cheerfully, "You lose some, but sometimes you win."
All pictures
by Ron Gluckman |
The
Art of Deception: Eminent economist tied to fake antiques
Reprinted from :http://archives.seattletimes.nwsource.com/cgi-bin/texis.cgi/web/vortex/display?slug=cheung27&date=20030127
By Duff Wilson, Seattle
Times staff reporter
Seattle Times
January 23, 2003
HONG
KONG — Hollywood Road is one of the world's
busiest shopping streets, a stop on the world's
longest escalator, perched above the world's busiest
harbor.
A
bustling half-mile, it is lined with more than 200
stores selling Chinese antiques and curios, or curios
purported to be antiques.
This
money-driven city of 7.3 million has established
itself as the gateway for ancient artifacts from
what is now the People's Republic of China. Hong
Kong is a duty-free zone through which antiquities
that would be illegal to export from China directly
can be legally sold and shipped overseas. Hollywood
Road is where much of that commerce occurs.
On
Hollywood Road, as in much of Hong Kong, Steven
Ng Sheong Cheung is well-known. But he is known
as an economics professor and a columnist, not as
an art dealer.
Cheung
is one of the people behind Thesaurus Fine Arts,
a Seattle gallery that deals in phony Chinese antiques,
passing them off as much older and more valuable
than they are. He also is involved in a shop off
Hollywood Road, called Dandelion Fine Arts, and
in a lab that certifies artifacts.
In
his native city, Cheung, 67, is revered as "the
Renaissance man of Hong Kong." He has taught
finance at Hong Kong University and is a personal
friend of American Nobel Prize economist Milton
Friedman. He has written 20 books. He writes a column
on finance for Apple Daily, Hong Kong's second-largest
newspaper, and another for the weekly magazine Next.
He is a calligrapher and a published photographer.
Sporting
a white, Einsteinlike coiffure, Cheung is a bona
fide celebrity.
He
was recently chosen the "hottest economist
of the year" by a prominent Chinese Web site,
and a television host said Cheung is "so hot
that he's like an academic star." The People's
Daily newspaper in Beijing predicted last year that
he will win the Nobel in economics. Cheung himself
speaks about "Steven Cheung mania."
He
is unabashed about his own brilliance. He says he
hasn't read a book in years, insisting there's nothing
he can learn from them. He boasts that he's China's
most popular lecturer and its best photographer.
"I
hate famous," Cheung said in an interview.
"I shun publicity. But people wouldn't let
me off the hook. You know I'm famous, right?"
A
naturalized U.S. citizen, he has a $1.6 million
home in Hong Kong, a $1.1 million gated home overlooking
Lake Washington north of Seattle, and a third home
in Shanghai, China.
At
Hong Kong University and at the University of Washington,
he has specialized in research, writing and lectures
on how free enterprise works. His scholarship includes
what he calls a "natural equilibrium theory"
of corruption.
Cheung
believes government regulation can actually encourage
misdeeds, saying controls are created "just
to facilitate corruption" by officials looking
to make money.
Speaking
at a 1996 conference on "The Economics of Corruption,"
Cheung said, "It is no use to put a beautiful
woman in my bedroom, naked, and ask me not to be
aroused. The only effective way of getting rid of
corruption is to get rid of the controls and regulations
that give rise to corruption opportunities."
In
an interview last week, Cheung confirmed what The
Times had been told by U.S. law-enforcement sources:
that he is under investigation for alleged income-tax
evasion in the United States. But not even federal
investigators knew about Cheung's trade in fake
antiques.
The
economist and his theories
Cheung Ng Sheong was 5 years old when Japan conquered
Hong Kong in 1941, and 13 when Mao's troops seized
China. At 21, he immigrated to Canada, then to the
United States. Like many Hong Kong Chinese, he took
an English first name.
Steven
Cheung earned a Ph.D. in economics at the University
of California at Los Angeles, then studied at the
University of Chicago under Friedman.
He
joined the University of Washington Department of
Economics in 1969 and was promoted to full professor
in 1973. He married, had two children, founded Steven
NS Cheung Inc. in 1977 and started buying and developing
real estate on both sides of the Pacific.
In
1982, he filed for divorce and returned to Hong
Kong. At that time, the Cheungs owned property in
Seattle; Wenatchee; Belfair, Mason County; Arlington,
Snohomish County; Bellingham; Anacortes; Skykomish;
and Hong Kong, according to the divorce file.
Cheung
moved back to Hong Kong and founded the School of
Economics at Hong Kong University. Increasingly
popular, he churned out books and articles. He hosted
Friedman on tours of China in 1988, 1993 and 1997.
They met with top officials, including future Chinese
President Jiang Zemin.
The
Hong Kong University Web site lists Cheung among
eight "Great Economists." The list starts
with Adam Smith. It includes Friedman. It ends with
Cheung.
Along
the way, Cheung's research in economics expanded
to include a keen interest in art.
He
started trading jade products — "a rare
special market" — in 1975, then antiques
in 1982.
Writing
in an economics text about variances in the prices
paid for art, Cheung wrote that "asymmetric
information," when one party knows more than
the other, causes deceptive and unfair conduct.
Buyers lacking information judge the quality by
price, he wrote, and a "phony high price"
was "often encountered in the arts market."
For
example, Cheung described someone who becomes a
famous calligrapher by having friends bid up the
price on his work. The higher price itself builds
reputation and leads to future sales.
He
added: "Do you want to try it out and have
fun?"
The
professor's Hong Kong shop
Half a block off Hollywood Road is a stretch of
lower-rent stores and vending carts packed along
Upper Lascar Row, more commonly called "Cat
Street." The name comes from days when the
area specialized in stolen goods; locals called
the thieves rats, and the dealers who purchased
goods from the rats, cats.
No.
3, a small store with a dirty yellow awning, is
Dandelion Fine Arts.
When
the owner of the shop next door was asked about
Steven Cheung, he pointed at Dandelion and said
with a smile, "The professor."
Dandelion
appears to have no corporate papers filed in Hong
Kong. But Dandelion Fine Arts was a trade name of
Cheung's West Coast Land Investments, a company
he started in Washington state in 1981. The Dandelion
trade name was canceled one month before Thesaurus
Fine Arts incorporated in 1998.
Cheung
says the Hong Kong store is owned by other people
— he won't say who — and that he is
just an adviser. A Dandelion clerk said the store
has its headquarters in Seattle, but the manager,
Candy Tsang, said that is not the case.
Dandelion
features pottery, bronze and jade objects billed
as coming from ancient China. Several of Dandelion's
items are featured in a catalog published by Thesaurus
Fine Arts.
As
is the case in Thesaurus Fine Arts' Seattle store,
several items in Dandelion Fine Arts come with age-test
certificates from the City University of Hong Kong,
signed by Dr. Po Lau Leung.
Leung
is a Beijing University graduate who worked as an
astronomer for 20 years before getting a doctorate
in physics from Hong Kong University at age 50.
He is a member of the Chinese Academy of Science.
He also advises the Shanghai Museum.
He
says City University of Hong Kong started doing
commercial thermoluminescence, or TL, testing on
pottery in about 1997. TL is the only scientific
method for measuring the approximate age of pottery.
Leung
says one of his first customers was professor Cheung.
Leung said Cheung did business first as Dandelion
Fine Arts, then as Thesaurus Fine Arts, and the
lab's records reflect that. Cheung would bring the
items for testing himself or send an assistant,
Leung said.
Paging
through his notebook, Leung said he tested dozens
of items for Cheung from 1997 to 2000. At first,
most of them failed: They were modern, or much more
modern than the eras Cheung claimed, and Leung marked
them as "inconsistent" with the claimed
age.
Then
Leung started giving Cheung second chances. If an
object Cheung claimed was 2,000 years old instead
tested at 400 years old, Leung said, he would offer
to provide certification for the latter, rather
than to record the test as a failure.
"After
result, I said this is fail for you, so sometimes
he change his mind, yeah," Leung said.
Leung
could not explain how his 1999 test of a ceramic
vessel bought by The Seattle Times from Thesaurus
Fine Arts found it to be 1,200 years old, while
the world's leading TL lab, Oxford Authentication,
found it to be less than 100 years old. The leading
U.S. lab, Daybreak Archaeometric Laboratory, found
it to be less than 45 years old.
The
last time Leung tested objects for Cheung was early
in 2000. Cheung submitted 10 items.
Leung
leafed through his reports: "Fail. Fail. Fail.
True. True. True. This one maybe they changed to
Ming. ... The last time, many fail."
In
the end, only four of the 10 pieces passed the City
University TL test, including one or two on which
Leung permitted Cheung to change the designated
dynasty.
About
that time, Leung recalled, Cheung told him he planned
to set up his own TL testing laboratory.
Initially,
Leung said he didn't know whether Cheung actually
had set up the lab. "I completely don't know,"
he said, adding with a laugh, "In Hong Kong,
it's very free. If they have money, they can do
that."
Later,
Leung disclosed he had suggested to Cheung that
he buy a particular piece of equipment, and further,
that he had personally provided radiation-wipe tests
to certify the annual licensing of what he called
"professor Cheung's equipment."
A
university Web site listing some of Leung's contracts
shows he certified Adsigno Thermoluminescence Laboratory
in March 2001. Adsigno is the lab that provided
the initial certification for a second piece purchased
by The Times, a pottery tile purported to be 400-600
years old and from the Ming Dynasty. That certificate
is dated March 29, 2001.
The
Oxford and Daybreak labs found the piece to be a
fake.
The
missing laboratory
Adsigno lists its address as a suite on the top
floor of the West Coast International Building,
in the heart of Hong Kong's most notorious district
for counterfeit items, where fake Prada handbags
and fake Windows software are as readily available
as cabbage and chicken.
But
the lab doesn't have offices where it says it does,
and doesn't return phone calls.
The
room listed for Adsigno is the corporate office
for West Coast International. That company and the
building were owned by Cheung and his family until
they sold it in 1997 to a company called Celinel
Ltd., based in the Marshall Islands.
A
receptionist said Adsigno was Cheung's business
and said it was in Room 508. But the sign on that
door said Colour Art Centre, and the office was
closed.
In
an interview, Cheung insisted he doesn't own Adsigno
and that he just helped set it up in order to get
TL testing for less money. He would not say who
does own the lab.
Lars
Bøtter-Jensen of Risø National Laboratory
in Denmark, the world's leading supplier of TL-testing
equipment, said he sold a $60,000 machine to Cheung
for use by Adsigno. Cheung says the money used to
purchase the equipment was not his money.
Patrick
Wang, who owns a well-regarded Hong Kong antiques
shop named Orientique, said Cheung told him about
setting up a new lab.
"He
pops into the shop. We chat," Wang recalled.
"He says, 'Oh, I bought a machine. I can do
tests for you.' "
In
telephone interviews, Cheung talked at length about
his interest in antiques. He said he's studied them
since the 1970s, initially from an academic interest
in the power of information on pricing in volatile
markets.
"When
you do research in economics, you try to find extreme
cases to go into to learn about it," he said.
"So I am talking about the power of information,
and it is very difficult to find anything that is
more variable than antiques."
As
he learned more about prices and authenticity tests,
Cheung says, he developed some expertise and met
a lot of collectors. When the Asian financial crisis
hit, "Asian collectors wanted to sell out,
and I'm the one that served as the middleman."
In
the antique market, he said, "You are only
selling the probability" that an item is real.
Cheung says nearly every antique dealer occasionally
sells a fake by mistake. "Would they willfully
put out something that they know to be fake? No.
Absolutely not. That would be suicidal to do that."
Meanwhile,
legitimate dealers in Hong Kong say fakes sold by
less scrupulous competitors are a growing problem.
Victor
Choi, the best-known antiquities dealer on Hollywood
Road, says the con men hurt everyone.
"That
is no good if some dealer does this to try to cheat
tourists," Choi said. "It cheats the whole
industry."
Duff
Wilson: 206-464-2288 or dwilson@seattletimes.com
Seattle
Times art critic Sheila Farr contributed to this
article as did free-lance reporters Tim Healy and
Connie C. Ling, both in Hong Kong.
Copyright
&\; 2003 The Seattle Times Company
|
Fake
antiques are a tradition in China
Reprinted from :http://archives.seattletimes.nwsource.com/cgi-bin/texis.cgi/web/vortex/display?slug=cheung27&date=20030127
Seattle Times
January 27, 2003
By Sheila Farr, Seattle Times art
critic
Every
year, a flashy array of fake Chinese antiquities
enters the global marketplace — from tawdry
souvenir-shop reproductions to brilliantly executed
masterpieces that curators call "scary."
Most
of those fakes come through Hong Kong, China's wildly
capitalistic gateway to the world. Trying to quantify
the trade in fakes is like trying to get your hands
around an octopus. No one keeps records of the illegal
trade.
Authorities
rarely enforce the laws against fraud. And most
people agree corrupt officials look the other way,
or even participate in the trade.
The
business in fake ceramic, jade and bronze objects
is worth untold millions of dollars each year. In
Hong Kong itself, the best estimates say that three-fourths
of the "antique" ceramics for sale are
fake.
The
reason is simple: Collectors are eager to buy the
real thing.
After
a string of stunning archaeological finds in recent
decades and the opening of China to private enterprise,
museums and collectors in the West, Japan and China
are clamoring to buy Chinese art. Auction prices
are soaring: Last year, a bronze wine vessel from
the Shang Dynasty (1766-1122 B.C.) brought a record
$9.2 million at a New York auction.
Officially,
the Chinese government prohibits the export of antiquities
and takes dramatic steps to keep its cultural treasures
from leaving the country. In the past 10 years,
China has executed more than 20 people for stealing
archaeological relics.
Yet
China does little to control fakes.
For
art dealers, then, "it requires absolutely
constant vigilance," says Julian Thompson,
Chinese art expert for Sotheby's.
Forgeries
aren't exclusive to the trade of Chinese artifacts.
Anyone who collects art knows that fakes abound,
even in contemporary art.
But
Chinese art comes with particular issues. With a
7,000-year-old culture, the Chinese have a reverence
for antiquity and a long tradition of making and
selling reproductions.
"The
idea of originality is a modern concept," says
Cary Liu, associate curator of Asian art at Princeton
University Art Museum. "If you are learning
from a master, you're copying the master. The idea
isn't to produce an exact duplicate. You end up
with a product completely different. The hand of
the artist is there."
Yet
even in ancient times, some Chinese reproductions
were meant to deceive. "It's been going on
at least 1,000 years," said Michael Knight,
curator of Chinese art at San Francisco's Museum
of Asian Art and a former Seattle Art Museum curator.
"There are notes about it: 'How to make a jade
look old — bury it in the belly of a rabbit
for umpteen years,' et cetera."
A
few rare objects are so amazing they not only baffle
the experts but retain their value despite disagreements
about their origin.
A
recent controversy over a Chinese painting at the
Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York illustrates
the point. The painting, "Riverbank,"
was attributed to the great 10th century painter,
Dong Yuan. It was purchased from renowned collector
C.C. Wang by a Met trustee, who donated it to the
museum. Some consider the piece one of the great
Chinese paintings of all time.
Yet
two of the world's top experts — scholar and
author James Cahill and Sherman Lee, a former SAM
curator — believe it may have been painted
by the 20th century artist, collector and known
forger Zhang Daqian, who died 20 years ago. In fact,
Wang acquired the painting from Zhang.
The
controversy is far from solved, but most scholars
now agree the painting is neither by Dong or Zhang,
but some other artist between the 10th and 13th
centuries.
Liu
of the Princeton museum believes the whole controversy
was overblown. He says the main thing to remember
is the amazing quality of the painting.
"Regardless
of whether it's Song Dynasty or some other period,"
says Liu, "you can't escape the fact that it's
a great object. That's a level (of artistry) where
the scholars may argue, but they still value the
piece."
The
bargain trade
On the other end of the scale are low-quality reproductions
sold as souvenirs or fraudulently marketed as antiques.
Thesaurus
Fine Arts in Seattle, like its counterparts in Hong
Kong and other cities, caters to an odd niche market
of tourists, unsophisticated art buyers and what
one dealer calls "bottom feeders" —
people looking for bargains that they might be able
to quickly resell for a profit.
Its
location among established galleries gives Thesaurus
an air of legitimacy, an impression the gallery
promotes. In a handout on "Ceramics Dating"
signed by "advisor" Steven Cheung, it
says: "There are no articles at Thesaurus that
are knowingly fake; although some of them I am not
certain. However, I have given most of the articles
only quick examinations. An article TL tested positive
typically commands a considerably higher price,
because if an auction house takes it, with a little
luck it may bring a very high price. Generally,
therefore, the better buy is the untested articles."
That
kind of sales pitch appeals to the speculative buyer
who has replaced a genuine appreciation for fine
objects with a gambling mentality.
"
'Antiques Roadshow' misleads people," says
Cheney Cowles, owner of the Crane Gallery in Seattle
and past president of SAM's Asian Arts Council.
"People don't sell things for $5,000 if they're
worth $20,000."
William
Rathbun, SAM's curator emeritus of Asian art, says
he browsed through Thesaurus when it first opened.
"I
went in once and even without my questioning, there
were these assurances that it was museum-quality
stuff," Rathbun said. "I didn't want to
argue, so I just left."
One
of the first rules for art collectors is to know
the reputation of the dealer.
Thesaurus
sells a lot through the Internet auction site eBay,
a process that's inherently more perilous for the
buyer. It's hard to get information on the seller,
and photographs of the objects can be deceiving.
"I
wouldn't buy anything on the Internet," says
Seattle collector Robert Dootson, a SAM trustee.
Even after years of collecting, he still gets expert
advice on antiquities, usually from a museum curator,
before he makes a major purchase.
Most
dealers and collectors talk about the money they
lost on fakes as "tuition" — an
unavoidable price of learning.
"It's
one of the most costly doctorates you can ever buy,"
says Robert Ellsworth, an outspoken New York dealer
and collector who has donated major works to the
Metropolitan Museum of Art and other institutions.
Yet
they all agree that the knowledge gained is worth
it and the pleasures of living with extraordinary
works of art are ample reward. The trick is to do
your homework. Ellsworth says it's buyer beware.
"That's
why I have very little patience with these people
who are buying things they don't know about,"
he said. "They deserve what they get. It's
like stocks."
Seattle
Times reporter Duff Wilson contributed to this report.
Sheila
Farr: 206-464-2270 or sfarr@seattletimes.com
Copyright
&\; 2003 The Seattle Times Company
|
EBay
- BUYING TIPS
Reprinted from :http://www.allensantiques.com/ebay_buying_tips.htm
By Anthony Allen,
Allens Antiques
Whether buying antique Chinese ceramics or other
Asian antiques on eBay or elsewhere on the internet,
it pays to follow a few simple rules:
Do not buy antiques from sellers
on the Chinese mainland. Antiques are prohibited
exports from China, in some cases carrying the death
penalty, so all you will get at best is a modern
fake, or at worst, nothing at all.
Sellers on the Chinese mainland
know of this recommendation, so they sometimes have
auctions listed in pounds sterling or Australian
dollars. If they show a shared country of domicile
on their listing, eg United Kingdom/China, avoid
them.
If the seller is Chinese in any
country, buyers should be on the alert. This is
not a racist statement but an unfortunate fact of
life; most Chinese sellers on eBay sell fakes as
genuine antiques.
Do not buy from sellers who have
secret auctions, with the user I.D. kept private.
These sellers have something to hide. Either they
do not want others to know who is bidding, perhaps
to stop them being warned, or to conceal shill bidding
on their own stock.
Do not buy from sellers who have
hidden feedback. They do not want to know what other
buyers have experienced, or else are concealing
buyers' identities to stop them being warned.
If you have any doubts at all about
the authenticity of a piece, either get someone
experienced to have a look at it, or do not buy
it.
Do not bid early. This only alerts
other buyers to the fact that something may be worth
bidding on. If one is scrolling through hundreds
of listings, mainly of fakes, those which have attracted
bids do stand out. Unfortunately, some dishonest
sellers have realized this, and shill bid under
other names, on their own stock.
If you are concerned about missing
a bid on an item, use a snipe program. I personally
use www.esnipe.com. They charge one percent, but
only of successful bids, and lodge the bid just
six seconds before the auction closes; too late
for another buyer to lodge a further bid.
When searching for genuine Chinese
antiques on eBay, use the advanced search feature
and search by country; say United Kingdom or Canada
or the U.S. This omits most of the mainland Chinese
fakes. Hopefully one day eBay will, if not outright
prohibit their sale, at least provide a feature
that omits antiques from China.
Also try searching for items that
have been wrongly listed, by using key words such
as famille, or asian vase, or oriental plate, or
Chinese vase etc
Get a guarantee from the seller
that the piece is genuine.
Do not pay by Western Union money
transfer or telegraphic transfer, unless you are
absolutely sure of the bona fides of the seller.
I am often asked who the genuine
sellers of Chinese or Japanese antiques are on eBay.
Here is a preliminary list of sellers who at the
time of review appear to be selling antiques which
were accurately described. Please note that this
is only a preliminary list, and there will be omissions.
No slight is intended if your name does not appear.
I am also happy to add to the list. By the same
token, if you do not wish to have your name listed
here, please just let me know and I will remove
it.
The brevity of the list is a pretty
sorry indictment on eBay's policy of allowing fakes
to be listed as antiques, as most sellers of genuine
Chinese antiques do not sell on eBay.
EBay's Specialist Sellers of Genuine
Chinese Antiques
antik0531, anthonyjallen, artatsunlinkdotnet, a-takeda,
bauhinia, bidancient, bidit-1, bidit-2, braiden24,
cleij, dreamcker1, eastwestgallery, edo11, eyerare,
jimwiegand, johnarts, newdynasty, scarbo3, yakimono.
Disclaimer
Use this list of specialist sellers at your own
risk, as no liability will be accepted by Allen's
Antiques Ltd for any item sold by these sellers,
that may prove to be other than as described by
them.
|
Economist
tied to fake art faces tax charges
Reprinted from :http://archives.seattletimes.nwsource.com/cgi-bin/texis.cgi/web/vortex/display?slug=cheung29&date=20030129
Seattle Times
January 27, 2003
By Duff Wilson, Seattle
Times staff reporter
A prominent economist whose Seattle
art gallery was exposed for selling fake Chinese
antiques now faces federal tax-fraud charges and
a state investigation of the gallery.
The Justice Department yesterday
charged Steven Ng Sheong Cheung and his wife, Linda
Su Cheung, with conspiracy to defraud the United
States by failing to report millions of dollars
in income from Hong Kong parking lots and other
businesses.
In a separate action, the state
attorney general announced an investigation into
Thesaurus Fine Arts, the Pioneer Square gallery
the couple owns. That investigation results from
a Seattle Times story revealing that Thesaurus was
selling fake antiques in the store and on the eBay
Internet-auction site.
The federal indictment, issued in
U.S. District Court in Seattle, caps a lengthy investigation
of the Cheungs' income from Hong Kong parking lots,
offshore corporations and secretive money transfers
from Hong Kong to the Seattle area.
The Cheungs, who are U.S. citizens,
have homes in Hong Kong, Seattle and Shanghai, China.
Steven Cheung, 67, is a former economics professor
at the University of Washington and at Hong Kong
University and is regarded as one of Asia's best
economists. He writes a newspaper column and is
a celebrity in Hong Kong.
He is charged with six counts of
filing false tax returns and six counts of failing
to file a report of a foreign bank account. He faces
up to 83 years in prison and $4.75 million in fines
if convicted.
Linda Cheung, 56, is charged with
one count of conspiracy, punishable by up to five
years in prison and a $250,000 fine.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Janet Freeman
said Cheung hid income since at least 1989 and secretly
transferred money since at least 1993. U.S. citizens
are required to report income from anywhere in the
world.
Cheung used the money, prosecutors
say, to invest in companies, including a bank and
an airplane-parts firm; to buy real estate, including
a $1.1 million home and an apartment building in
Seattle; and to buy a $294,000, 44-foot SeaRay yacht
called the "Westwind."
The 28-page indictment described
Thesaurus Fine Arts as part of the "web of
corporations" in the tax conspiracy. The store
has been closed since Sunday, when The Times investigation
was published, and yesterday a sign said it was
closed until the staff returned from vacation.
Cheung insists he is innocent and
did not know he was supposed to report the income
in question. In an interview with The Times last
week, he said, "I was framed" in the tax
case.
Cheung, who is now in Hong Kong,
has waived extradition and agreed to appear for
arraignment in Seattle on Feb. 20, Justice Department
spokesman John Hartingh said.
The indictment says Cheung tried
to hide his ownership of companies that operated
more than 50 public parking lots in Hong Kong with
annual receipts in the tens of millions of dollars,
among other businesses.
He took cash and other income from
the parking lots and sent cash and cash wire transfers
to the United States "to attempt to prevent
the tracing of funds," the indictment charges.
The IRS said the listed owner of
the businesses, Celinal Ltd. of the British Virgin
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