I was going to say something then I realised i would have to write or rewrite policy for bidamount.  There are so many quagmires.

Hypothetical: 

One Bidamount are paid $30 to promote an auction....and they review the items and find many obvious fakes. I think we know that Bidamount would never promote such an auction. I know this in my gut. 

However,

Bidamount are paid $30 to promote an auction... and they review the items and notice 1 or 2 are fake, and 3 are incorrectly listed and several have the wrong era. Like i said..I am not going to write biadmount policy but let's assume they continue to promote the auction and only highlight the more appropriate item's. 

Finally the quagmire where Bidamount set higher standards than the latter scenario. 

If Bidamount adopt a policy of Contract where they will promote an auction on condition of their appraisal, and yet they cannot handle the item's then how can they supersede another 3rd party  appraisal where the 3rd party appraiser has handled the item and conflicts with the obvious plain view of bidamounts expertise that there is more than reasonable or almost probable cause to believe the item is not genuine, however bidamount is denied the hard facts of evidence of  handling the item. 

It is a difficult and complicated area. 

Finally would $30 really cover the cost of appraising 200 lots of Antiques to such a high quality Bidamount wishes to be held. Can they even maintain that standard in reality when the Auctions are outside their control. 

I guess I would agree there is a conflict when there is a question mark over an item being promoted by Bidamount. 

Peter is a business man and everything he provides us with for free, costs money.  I do not doubt his integrity for a moment, but neither do I expect him to be infallible: he is a respected expert, but also just a busy guy doing his best. 

I can see the waters are looking a little muddied; maybe the answer is to have a "promoted items" section with a clear disclaimer that whilst every effort is made to assess the authenticity of items appearing on the site etc, etc.  Or that rider could simply go on the newsletter/website (maybe it is?).  Or it could be made clear which buyers are paying to be promoted, not featuring purely because Peter is convinced the items are authentic.  It seems that an item appearing on Bidamount is subsequently regarded as having a cloak of authenticity by many buyers and the burden of the claim to authenticity gets switched to Peter instead of the seller.  

I am sure there must be a way round this but at the end of the day, it is always going to be a case of "buyer beware."

It will be interesting to see if the original pot resurfaces. Maybe we should insert the photos of it into this thread as otherwise, they will be gone?  

Dear all,

it was not my intention to comment about this issue, but unfortunately things went in that direction.

I am sorry that a thread, originally focused on an item, did turn out this way.

All my comments here have been addressed to the item itself or to the behavior of some sellers. The only comment that I make about Bidamount has been that maybe Peter have been focused only on the mark.

What I meant, although not clearly expressed, was that maybe Peter did not carefully check the pictures, the same that happened to me in the first posts here, he just saw that it was of the Western subject type, and focused on the Imperial mark. It happens.

Now, once again I am sorry that all this has been the source for comments and critics that are not related to it.  All I would like to say, in this regard, is the following.

I agree with some comments made by Nic, Ronm, Short D. and Julia.

I didn’t know that sellers can pay for being advertised on Bidamount. I do not see something wrong on that, as said by others it will not be 30US$ that will buy a favorable opinion on a wrong item, and of course Bidamount needs to have some income for maintaining all this. It is logical.

I did join this Forum after seeing many times, with my surprise and satisfaction, that my items were listed on Bidamount, sometimes even in the first list of relevant pieces. I was surprised because I never contacted Peter before, never had an exchange of mails or requests with him.

After joining, I have never advertised my sales in the “your own items” section.

I do not agree with some comments made here. If a seller has not his items on Bidamount, he should first look objectively to his items and judge quality, prices, description. I repeat, I always had some of my items on Bidamount for each sale that I made, without any request or communication.

This is not the only item that has not been correctly described by Bidamount. We have spotted others. Everybody can make a mistake, it happens, we are humans and frankly I am wondering how the thousands of items on ebay and Catawiki can be examined so quickly. It is not possible, in my view although I do not know how Bidamount is organized, to check everything accurately. If Peter has assistants, then it is impossible to control everything, something can slip through.

What I would like to see, for things being better, is less evidencing of the sales from those “supermarkets” of antiquities. If namely Chamberlain or Joanie, to be clear, are mixing good and bad things with all evidence in bad faith, they should not be presented in a way that could lead to think that everything sold by them is ok.

All the above said, I am convinced that Peter too is now seeing that that pot is not Imperial, not 18^th, not 19^th and even not Republic, and if he can’t say this openly it is not surely because of the 30US$. When huge quantity of money matters, there are many things that must be considered, like legal actions, etc. etc.  

Some caution is needed in many instances, I think.

Also, we don’t know what could be behind these things, if an object has been paid, if it is a case of shill bidding, or whatever else.

Above all, the most important thing, when buying, is always the same: you must know what you are buying.

Giovanni

Hi to all,  I have been reading this thread and as I recall it was only a few months ago that Peter was telling us all about the fake auction room. This was to his cost, as I remembered him commenting that he had been harssed by the said auction house,  so my question is why on earth would Peter then knowingly put himself in a position where his own integrity would be in question. Br Chris 

Thank you Giovanni. I think that is a very fair yet robust assessment of the situation.

We often criticise buyers and sellers for dishonourable practices, which I think is fair. After all, we are very often the victims of those practices. So let us behave with honour, Which does not mean agreeing with everything, or being afraid to criticise even Bidamount. But it does mean that the criticisms should be measured, accurate and constructive. Where there are grave concerns, it is of course natural to ask others’ opinion, but accusations should be made directly to the relevant person, in private. 

This is a fabulous forum, and everyone here is wonderful. I just think things got a little out of control. What started out as an absolutely fascinating discussion about a contentious item turned into something very personal. It was not nice to read.

I hadn’t given an opinion on the enamel bowl as I have no idea if it is genuine or not. But I will say that I do think the figures are hideous! ?

kind regards,

Nic

Dear all,

I also think the comments Giovanni has expressed are a fair and open response to some of the directions that this thread, perhaps  unfortunately, took.

As mentioned previously I do not sell/buy via eBay, but I have witnessed some rather dubious/strange 'practices' within auction houses over the past 25 years and I'am sure some of these are now also occurring via internet sale sites - there are always 'games to play'!! 

I have expressed my own thoughts concerning this 'object', so will say no more. 

One must always exercise a degree of caution when initially assessing any object, especially if you then decided to acquire base solely on images and a description, when there are so many 'yesterday pieces' been offered these days ...

Stuart

It's a while since this thread went silent but I have recently come across the previous sale of the bowl in focus at Skinner where it was dated to the 18th century and where the provenance is also noted so I thought I would post it.

https://www.skinnerinc.com/auctions/3212B/lots/308?fbclid=IwAR2ZD_Iq5mYhmVYA_lAmSZIz4WB65kvheLWf8vNY5FU7HOoOs0WNvlM_AU0

Best regards

Corey

PS: I've been locked out of the forum for a while because the facebook log-in has been disabled so I'm using a temporary account.

There was by the way another enamel in the same sale that was dated to the 19th century and also had the same provenance. Now I wonder if that one is also a fake?

https://www.skinnerinc.com/auctions/3212B/lots/307

UPDATE: The bowl is not modern. There is an identical or near identical pair of bowls seen in this video from The Value (appearing just briefly from 0:57 - 0:59). The pieces from the video should be in The Pavilion Sale - Chinese Ceramics and Works of Art @ Christie's Hong Kong, 4 April 2017 but strangely I can't seem to find them on their site.

The skinner bowl is obviously the same one sold on ebay. Chamberlainantique must have bought it from Skinner. 

I looked for the bowl in the christies auction results for the april 2017 sale and I couldn't find it. It means:

1. They did not sell

2. They were removed from the sale prior to the auction day. Perhaps because to many people questioned the authenticity?

Would be interesting to find a catalogue of the sale and see what estimate/description christie's had for them. 

Is it possible christie's removed them from their sale one one of them ended up at Skinner two years later?

It is a bit strange considering all the visibility skinners auctions are getting that such  "important imperial" bowl would sell for 40% of what it sold on ebay. It looks like skinners bidders didn't like it as much as the people on ebay. 

Yes, the reason why we can not find it on their website is probably because it didn't sell. I have tried to see if I could find the catalogue for sale online but so far without results. The bowl at Skinner is not the same as those at Christie's. Among other differences the purple color of the lid looks much lighter in tone but the picture is to blurry to see if it is painted with the same pattern. It's quite possiple that there is only one bowl at Christie's and that it's a reflection in a mirror inside the display cabinet that gives the impression of a pair. The lighter purple color of the lid could be because the thin line that makes the drawing of the swastika is done with the darker purple color on the background (the broader areas) painted with the lighter purple color as opposite to the bowl at Skinner. And if that is the case then it's quite possible that the two bowls originally made up a pair since such pairs were often made with small differences. But I guess we must contact Christie's to get more information about the bowl in the video. 

Hello,

because of a related search, I went back looking at this old thread. With my surprise, I have seen that ALL the pictures that was proving beyond any doubt that the item in question was new, has been deleted. Not every picture in the long thread, but only those proving the dubious nature of the item. Why that? In my postings, it says that I have modified the post (supposing that I deleted the pictures), which I didn't. Is there an explication for that?

Giovanni

Does anybody knows if pictures posted here are deleted after some time, may be because of space saving? What is strange is that not everything disappeard, only pictures.

Regards,

Giovanni

Hi Giovanni, 

My understanding from experience is that some but not all pictures appear to be either missing or deleted after a period of time. 

Can't be 100% sure, however I think personal posts with attached pictures are deleted/other whereas as links to auctions/other tend to remain for a longer period.

I know some or most of my pictures posted a year back or so are no longer available for view.

Mark 

Thjank you dear Mark. That's a pity, because the documentation of the Forum is lost that way, there will be no future references.

Regards

Giovanni