The above vase and countless others on the market are actually good learning tools.

It is, I think, just as important to know what something isn't based on its elements as what something is.  Modern copies just keep getting better and better. Many years ago it wasn't much of an issue, as 98% of what you saw in shops and at auctions were either authentic or were very good late 19th C. or Republican copies. Republican copies were not made in large numbers to begin with, today the term "Republican" has pretty much become a euphemism for a "NEW".  

The idea of creating this site came to me while vacationing and visiting family members living in Venice Italy over twelve years ago.  Nothing like a good vacation to clear out cobwebs. At the time I had been pondering the state of the Chinese art market and the damaging proliferation of fakes pouring into it and realizing it was only going to get worse moving forward.  eBay at that time was well aware of the issue, as I and others had had conversations with upper management regarding the possible solutions.  They frankly weren't interested, as permitting fakes to be sold did not violate any "Trade Mark",  international, or national laws.  

So I thought perhaps we could build a "small site" linked to good honest items which were listed on eBay.  Helping enable others out there who share our own fascination with Asian's material culture/history seemed like a worthy idea. During the ensuing years, we simply changed and added things which seemed to be a natural evolution of the original idea. Over time adding a blog, many more pages, the News Letter Page, auction and other catalogs, links to museums, image archives, youtube videos (over 140 to date) and now a FORUM page.  Thanks to the internet, so much can now be done that had previously been impossible.  

It's all a learning curve none of us will ever get off of which makes it all very fascinating. Filtering out the abundance of fakes is just a new element and challenge.  In an odd way, with so many copies around, it makes getting something genuine all that much more enjoyable. 

Best, Peter

Dear Errol,

Kind of you to say so. If you're visiting Dublin, you can have a pint of Guinness on me.

I'm afraid eBay has no serious commitment to weeding out the fakes that appear on its site. Dollars are the bottom line for eBay. When the chips are down, they're none too worried about protecting you from being ripped off, as long as their money comes in. So you have to be doubly vigilant about eBay purchases, and as you say, if you haven't a lot of experience already in this particular field, you can be very vulnerable to being exploited. That said, eBay is still a great place to check out. It shouldn't be disregarded. Real things are offered for sale on it, and not only by the sellers with a sound track record for selling authentic items. Knowledge is the key. As for mine, I wouldn't ever flatter myself into thinking I've enough of it, I certainly haven't, nor ever will. I think the Qianlong Emperor said, 'self-improvement never ceases'. How true is that.

And while I'm about it, and since we're talking about sorting wheat from chaff, let me warn Forum readers off another item that's being re-cycled by our old friend, ecliptic_art. She says it's a new listing. Not really. She put it up before. It made a fair price at that time, but was evidently defaulted on. So here it is again. Follow the link and avoid!

https://www.ebay.com/itm/large-chinese-blue-and-white-porcelain-clobbered-vase-kangxi-khang-shi-marks/112892399000?hash=item1a48e94d98:g:1~oAAOSwA1paojRf

All the best,

Alan

For Peter of others with advanced experience:

So yes this is a learning opportunity

Is it universally agreed that the keys to this fake are:

• the peoples's faces?
• the Dragon's feet and other characteristics?
• the shape?

Those are the 3 primary factors that someone should know,  in understanding this as a fake?

Thx 

Dear SSmith,

An auction house porter once said to me (and he knew a lot, because he'd been handling the real thing for years and getting to know its characteristics as a result), that 'if it's not all right, it's all wrong'. This was his motto when it came to appraising things.

I remind myself of that motto a lot if I'm trying to make up mind about whether I think something is authentic or not, but in a way, it's an easy motto to come out with. What is it that we mean when we say about a piece that all the things about it are 'right', or that all the things are 'wrong'? 

Well, there's no instant overnight answer to that question. I'm afraid the answer comes through years of experience, like that of the porter's at the auction house. But you've raised three points in your post, so let me comment briefly on them.

First, faces. These can indeed be indicative of whether a piece is right or not. It takes skill for modern copiers to render them in precisely the way they normally appear on authentic period pieces, and often, the copiers don't quite get it right. The modern copies are often 'off' in some way. But being able to tell that they're 'off' comes from lots of experience of what a correct looking face should be, and a sense of that sinks in as time goes by.

Second, the dragon's feet and other characteristics. Yes, dragons too, like faces, can tell you a lot about the period of the piece, and also, like faces, copiers try to get them right, but they don't always succeed. If you check the link I provided to the ecliptic_art fake dragon and carp vase, you'll see a dragon with a pretty good face on it, it's a fairly good shot at a dragon face of the period that the vase is pretending to be from, namely, Kangxi. In fact, I'd guess the copyist knew that the dragon's face was one of the first things anyone inspecting the vase would check out. But forget for a moment the dragon's face. Concentrate instead upon its body. Compare what you see there with the dragon's body on an authentic Kangxi dragon and carp vase. (I think either Christies or Sotheby's have one in their sold lot archive that you can check for yourself there.) The dragon's body on the authentic vase is far more detailed and nuanced, and clearly took far longer to paint than the dragon's body on the knock-off vase. This, by contrast, was done sketchily and took comparatively little time and effort. But perhaps you wouldn't realise that was so unless you'd already got a really good idea of what an authentic version could be expected to look like. It's possible you might just stick with the face of the dragon on the knock-off vase, which as I said isn't bad, and allow yourself to be persuaded by that. So instead, compare the whole beast carefully on both vases, the real one and the fake one, and you'll see a big difference emerging in points of detail. We're back to our motto, 'if it's not all right, it's all wrong'.

Third, you mention shape. Yes, you're right again, shape is important. Certain shapes came into fashion or dropped out of fashion at certain times, so if you know what the fashions of a period are, and the shape of the item in front of you conforms, then that's a comfort. If it doesn't conform, then either you've got something very rare in front of you (not strictly impossible, of course, though less likely), or you've got a fake, and the copier doesn't realise that the shape he's using for his piece is not in keeping with the shapes prevailing in the period that the piece is pretending to be from.

Sorry to be so longwinded about all this, but I'm trying to be thorough, and as you see from my longwinded answer to you, it's a complicated set of issues that are in play here. But you know what? No pain, no gain, as they say. Believe me, though, there's lots to be gained from immersing yourself in this subject if you've time. The one health warning I have is that it can become quite addictive!

Anyway, keep at it, and enjoy this Forum! You'll be able to learn a lot from it.

Alan

Hello S.Smith,

The shape is the most easily copied and as such cannot be relied upon up by itself.   The three aspects I always look at first are,

• The whiteness of the pieces' glaze. It should be snow white and pure.
• Next is in blue and white pieces is the depth of the blue, most of the time it should be at it's darkest nearly identical to Sapphire blue.  It should almost glow. At it's softest, it should be nearly periwinkle blue, soft and very delicate. The decorations should be outlined in a darker blue and filled in artfully with washes of lighter tones. 
• Next are the bases and unglazed footrims, the foot should be very neatly finished with the glaze stopping nearly perfectly just above it. The unglazed foot paste/unlgazed porcelain, should be VERY VERY smooth, very dense and free of spottiness or impurities in the paste. Its should also be very neatly finished off.  On occasion you might see areas that look like stains, most of the time these are caused by residue from old stands, so it's important to see the difference between that and poor quality ill prepared porcelain paste. 
• As far as faces go, study them on authentic pieces, then study how they are done on obvious copies. 

In the end being able to identify authentic pieces requires looking at a lot of them and a lot of later examples and modern fakes.  Curiously, more fakes these days seem to be getting produced with numerous black pinholes in the glaze, not only under the base (which can happen a little on some real pieces, I've included one below where it hapend, but no where beyond the bottom) but can be all over the body and down into the mouths of vases and bowls. 

Always look at the combinations of the elements in total.  They should all add up! If the elements look off in any way, avoid pieces like this until you learn more. Oddball examples do exist, BUT (a big BUT) more often than not it's a later copy. 

Below are some examples for your perusal. The Yen-Yen vase sold last week at Sotheby's for $30,000, as did the light blue incense burner with figures. The other pieces are examples we've sold in the last couple years and a couple pieces that wen through eBay a week ago that were quite good also. 

Anyway, it's a start!  Hope you find the images useful. 

Best Peter

Thanks very much for the in-depth responses.  Great info and thoughts.  I'll be going thru these a of couple times.

I can tell this is going to be a bit of a daunting task ahead :):) 

Dear S. Smith,

Take your time with it, lots of interesting examples out there to look at and ponder. 

Peruse and enlarge the images on the catalogs linked below from the three auction houses.  They can be very informative. 

Christie's, Sotheby's, and Bonhams Catalogs

Best Peter

Thanks, that is one of the things I've been doing, which is part of what led me here, along with a few videos of yours. I appreciate you taking time for those.

But I will tell you tho...... the Kangxi Yen2 picture of base (3rd one up from bottom, 1st one in row).... If seeing that on my own, I would think that's a repro

In taking some things from one of your videos, the bottom is clean with little sign of any age other than the small crack in the center, I don't  see any swirl marks standing out, no traces of red from iron with age, no firing glitches, etc. 

What might I be missing to consider?

Thx