Hi Alan,

another nice example is this one:

https://www.ebay.com/itm/19th-century-chinese-famille-rose-porcelain-bowl-dish-daoguang-mark-and-period/113166488613?hash=item1a593f9425:g:-pQAAOSwlulbV5l9

On first sight the plate looks authentic. If you take any of the detailed pictures and magnify it as large as possible by mouse over you clearly see that it's screen printed. This kind of fake is quite new to me - taking a picture of an original plate and then printing it onto a fake. Really clever. By the way, I don't know how they did the hairline, it almost looks printed too.

Dear Shinigami,

Thank you for bringing this one up - screen printing will replicate a very persuasive image unless, that is, and as you have done, you magnify the image and inspect it diligently.

Alan

Hi Alan and Shinigama,

Absolute joke this seller is selling fake items to unsuspecting buyers!

Here is another 3 for the list. The first one being offered as a 19/20th century 'china carved jade hardstone statue of a buffalo'. It is not jade it is bowenite and about 6 months old and worth a few dollars.

The second one is a bitong described as 19th century. This is done by a laser with deliberate made cracks and also worth just a couple of dollars.

The 3rd one is a cinnabar plaque on same stand. Also described as 19th century. This is new and made of resin and very badly at that also worth about five dollars.

Mark

Fortunately at high magnification on that daoguang plate you can clearly see the printed dots . I have seen this before, on a scroll weight I bought on ebay last year. I agree the large hairline is strange , why would you add such  extensive damage?

At some point the fakers will get better, I'm sure,  and eliminate the obvious artefacts of printing.... 

Mark , 

is there a simple way to tell the difference between bowenite and jadeite/nephrite?

Dear Shinigami,

in the past I have been responsible of R&D in a big manufactory Company of silk screen printing machines. So I have some experience in that field?.

You are right, the original image has been printed with the silk screen printing technique, which allow you to lay down a thick layer of enamels. But screen printing is only apt to print on flat or cylindrical surfaces.

Then in case like this, the image is first silk printed on a flat surface, and then the enamels are picked up by the silicon rubber pad of a pad printing machine.

Both systems are integrated in a single machine, where for each piece the image is first silk printed, then transfer printed by the pad printing section.

Because of the highly adaptive silicon pad, the image can be printed on uneven surfaces like the dish.

The system can be seen by googling for “pad printing technique”.

Dear Mark, instead, I am interested in knowing how you can see that the brush pot is carved by laser. Is that easily distinguishable?

Giovanni

PS: I didn’t know about this section of the Forum, just found it. No risk of being sued?

Dear Mark and everyone who has contributed to this thread,

It's shocking that this eBay seller continues to thrive. I've pointed out her fakes time and time again on this Forum, so at least Forum members here can be warned off her, but of course, there are dozens of others who aren't members here who have no idea what she's up to and who are taken in.

She must be making a lot of money out of this. I have to say, if there were some way of reporting her fraudulence to eBay, I would report her in the blink of an eye. 

Alan

Dear Giovanni, 

thanks a lot for explaining the printing technology. I learned a little bit about them years ago in university, but didn’t know about the pad printing. 

Also very interesting to hear about the laser carving from Mark. Recently we had the case of three lacquer boxes looking the same with identical cracks on the bottom. I suspected some kind of 3 d print, but of course laser would be the solution.  Incredible what they can do today. 

Hi Tam,

Yes there is if you have a trained eye and years of experience.

To put it simply bowenite can be distinguished by the eye from nephrite jade which is normally a bit less translucent and less waxy. The one on offer is far too translucent and waxy for real jade and hence bowenite. Also the carving style is all wrong to be from said period. And the price is too-good-to-be-true!

Bowenite is actually part of the serpentine family group. It has a hardness on mohs scale of between 4 and 6 . So a scratch test may or may not determine if it is bowenite if not performed correctly, as some serpentine group and other quartz group are harder than 6.5.

Jadeite jade CANNOT be scratched using a sharp edge knife. Nephrite will have a smooth texture while jadeite jade will have a slight ripple if you run the tip of your nail over it. If you have both and do that you will feel the difference straight away.

Also if you use a loupe and jade light you will see the difference in the grain between bowenite/serpentine and jade and jadeite jade. They are all different.

Some serpentine's group are slightly magnetic whereas jade/jadeite is not

Then you also have the problem of dyed bowenite/serpentine That can be very difficult to tell from a picture.

I have posted for you an article, although a bit old, back in 1982 it was something I used when I was studying gemology way back then. It is about 90 pages long but will serve you very well as it has done for me. It is very well written and easy to follow and probably better than myself going on and on for the next four hours. 

I hope you read (and others) and enjoy the article and always keep it by your side.

In the end, one must handle as much nephrite and jadeite jade as you can in order to gain confidence in the market. The same I suppose applies with antique chinese porcelain.

I love nephrite jade and jadeite jade and other and have been buying and selling same for more than 30 years. Chinese antique porcelain is not my strong point, that's why I am on this forum to learn as much as I can from the real experts like yourself, Alan, Xin and others and of course Peter.

Of course nothing beats a strong eye where detail is of the essence.

There is a website that was or still being run by a hands-on jade buyer both rough and carved, dealer, GIA certified, very nice guy although I think he may be slowing down these days. His website is www.jadeitejade.com

Hope that helps you out Tam

Hi Giovanni,

If you look carefully at the said bitong on on offer you will see very sharp edges, suggesting that it is done by laser. This something that I have only learnt to be careful about in the last few months, and I think Tam has posted something about it from memory. It is something that up till recently was never heard of, but now anything goes with fakers coming up with new things all the time. One must have eyes in the back of your head just to keep up with them. Since this seller only seems too sell fakes I can only after looking at said conclude that it was probably done by laser, and not  a very good job at that

That's why I always keep the likes of the fakers (like this one) in my saved sellers list so I can see what the latest trend or faking is going on.

Best regards

Mark

Thank you, dear Mark, for the hints about laser carving.

And thank you for that pdf “paper” about jades, I will read it with interest. I do not deal with jades in general terms, but I do collect snuff bottles and through them I did start to appreciate jade, especially nephrite jade.

Dear Alan, that of reporting sellers of fake items to ebay is completely useless. If you access the page “Report this seller”, you will see that you are forced to use an option, and the one of our interest is not there.

Ebay knows very well that the Antique market on the vein is full of fakes. Paintings, Tribal Art, everything.

The fact is that, if they stop the fake market, they will lose 90% of the income. It’s a shame.

Giovanni

Hi,

Thank you all for the interesting information.  It is so useful for novices like myself, I learn so much from discussions like this.

About this seller, as she is in the UK, can she be reported to trading standards?

Best wishes,

Julia

Thank you Giovanni and Julie for your comments.

Giovanni once you start buying nephrite and jadeite jade you will become hooked by it's sheer beauty. ? 

I recently scored a superb true pure white 'mutton fat' snuff bottle with a coral lid dating to the 19th century for US$250. It was one that fell through the cracks and was missed by everybody attending the auction. Market value @ US2500+

BTW if you or Tam ever see any carved items that have the same colour (pale greenish-yellow) with translucent and black pit marks that are the same as the one pictured it is bowenite. Nephrite jade does not look like this at all. If you scan through ebay on jade figures you will 100's of these types of carving on offer.

Hi Julie, I don't know about reporting as such with UK laws. On the subject of jade in excess of 90% of jade on offer around the world whether on ebay or other is either serpentine family group, glass or class B or C jade. You will rarely find authentic ones at bargain prices. You might look at over 1000 before you find just one.

I will post further information in the future regarding the process of telling the difference between nephrite, jadeite jade and fakes pretending to be so. BTW the link to the website is run by Arthur Lau. He is a very nice and helpful guy.

In my previous post it was only a cover-start post regarding nephrite and jadeite jade. I am currently under a lot of pressure from the equity market with massive losses to bear with.

Regards

Mark

Thanks very much Mark for your great posts about jade and bowenite, and for the article . I read on the wikipedia page that bowenite is sometimes called 'Suzhou jade', so that is confusing too. I wonder whether Chinese collectors distinguish in the same way , the term 'jade' in chinese or 'yu' is much more common than the English term and seems to be applied to a wider range of stones, and modified depending on the type of stone. 

Several years ago I visited the jade cutting workshops of Suzhou, many streets of small craftsmen and dealers, but I was taken there by a friend and knew very little about jade, as now. I can appreciate the beauty of mutton fat jade and the deep green nephrite, but ordinary jade leaves me a little indifferent , and you need to be a real expert to date jade , so I leave well alone. For most Chinese people, jade has a mystical and spiritual quality, as protector or something,  but for me it's just a stone, a bit like agate - it can be beautiful or it can be ordinary.

On the question of computer carved bamboo, yes , several years ago again I bought an intricately carved brush pot on ebay , sold as antique, but soon discovered (or was told) that it had been laser cut. The carving was just too precise , detailed and 'clean', and of course there was no evidence or trace of hand tools. Live and learn .... 

I also had the same thought as Julia , surely these traders selling fakes are of interest to trading standards officers in the UK?

If they were selling fake Gucci bags on ebay then they could be prosecuted , so why not fake antiques?

Maybe the proof is harder to gather - no original manufacturer to give evidence against the trader, and no way of confirming the date of manufacture, but in the case of the Daoguang plate , the evidence of modern printing techniques should be clear enough. I suspect the problem is these small traders are not big enough to interest trading standards. And of course the unsuspecting buyers have not complained/don't know what they have bought.