Novel ways to fake ancient goods

Summary:BEIJING -- Some of China's most innovative businessmen are working in the booming forged antiques market.

BEIJING – Strolling through Beijing's Panjiayuan Market, it's easy to imagine you've entered an antique treasure trove. Hawkers here sell blue and white porcelain, jade trinkets and Cultural Revolution-era memorabilia. If the prices seem too good to be true, that’s because they are. In the past, it was possible to pick up some rare finds at Panjiayuan; today almost all the "antiques" on sale were actually made just a few years, months, or weeks ago.

Fake Chinese antiques aren't only limited to Beijing's dirt markets; they have also appeared at auction houses and in museum collections worldwide. As the incomes of China's wealthy and middle classes rise, a mixture of national pride and get-rich-quick dreams have led to a surge in demand for antiques – and a boom in forgeries to meet that demand. In fact, the fake art market in China is so large that, according to Artron, a Chinese art research company, some 250,000 people are believed to be working in the industry. 


"I have a certain admiration for those making perfect copies. It's not something that can be embarked on without spending a lot of money and effort," says Lark Mason, a Chinese antiques expert who runs his own auction house and appears regularly on Antiques Roadshow. "You have to search out the right materials and have the skill set and tools to recreate the exact process of how the object was originally made."


Creating quality fakes requires big investment but there are big profits to be made. Ningyi Zhang is a dealer who specializes in antique European clocks, a market which he says is devoid of fakes because it would cost more to fake these clocks than to buy them today." By comparison, with Chinese porcelain, someone with a good fake can make 15 times their investment," he explains.


"The fakes being made in China today are in response to the strength of the Chinese economy," says Mason. "There were extraordinary numbers of fake Italian renaissance bronzes produced from the 17th to the 20th century, because at that time the collecting market and economic power was centered in Europe and the U.S."

A growing number of Chinese people have the money to buy antiques, and like Westerners before them, they are, says Mason, "from a cultural perspective, from a aesthetic perspective but also from nationalistic pride" choosing to purchase antiquities from their own heritage. 

Some are also buying antiques as an investment, explains Lei Ming, an appraiser who works for several Chinese auction houses. "From the end of the 1990s, antique programs made people realize these items were worth a lot of money. The public started thinking of buying antiques as a way to get rich. The turning point was the record-breaking sale [for $28 million] of a Yuan dynasty blue and white jar at Christie's in London in 2005. People thought they could become millionaires overnight and fakes have exploded since then."


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Hawkers sell "antiques" at Panjiayuan Market, Beijing (Gabrielle Jaffe)





"Nowadays, a lot of people are repairing valuable broken porcelain with a resin that's almost impossible to detect at first. It makes it look like it was never damaged and a pristine piece is worth a lot more than a piece with even a hairline crack on it. It's only several months or years later when the resin begins to change color that you can detect it – but by then it's too late, the buyer has already bought it," says Zhang.

Enterprising, if dishonest, businessmen will continue to produce fakes as long as there is a market for them. But there are signs already that the Chinese public is beginning to grow wary. Classes teaching students how to spot forgeries have popped up all over the country and while records continue to be set at auction, this year has also seen many lots gone unsold or buyers refusing to pay up because on closer examination they believe the item is a fake. "It takes time," says Mason, "but eventually the places that are abusing public trust are going to suffer the consequences."  

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