-----Original Message-----
From: Museum discussion list [mailto:[log in to unmask]]On
Behalf Of Katrina Guy
Sent: December 17, 1999 08:47
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Etruscan/Archaic artifacts
... In this museum, we have two
ceramic artifacts on display that are said to be a vase(pieced together)
from archaic Greece and Archaic style Etruscan tomb statue (although the
label simply says archaic and gives dates of 650-500BC for it). ... I was
told that they were genuine.
Recently, I was reading False Impression, the book about art forgeries
where I discovered that the archaic is one of the most widely faked styles
in the antiquities world, from Roman times on. When I checked into it
further, I found that the provenience from the British dealer was very
vague (i.e. the vase and the tomb statuary had been found in archaeological
sites from a vague area, at least a "100 years ago". When I asked more
about them, I was rather angrily told that they genuine, and that our
conservator had a masters in this kind of thing.
***** Your doubts are reasonable. Without provenance, ANYTHING like this can
be a fake (and even WITH provenance it can be a fake!). It is hard to judge
the authenticity simply by looking at one of these items. Remember too that
some fakes or replicas were made hundreds of years ago.
The thing is it still bothers me, especially since I now have awful
suspicions. I was wondering if there are any other ways I can figure this
out, with out attracting the ire of my senior co-workers.
****** Probably not. If in doubt, the museum should say so on the label. It
is a simple ethical issue. You can state the provenance, but also state that
due to the great number of fakes on the market and the nature of the
provenance, that you cannot be certain. If your superiors disagree with you
and insist upon accepting the authenticity then you should simply politely
state your disagreement (for the record, and in writing if you wish) and let
it be.
******* I lived in Italy for awhile as a child and there was a ruined fort
at the end of my street just North of Roma. The local government had
already bulldozed a road through the middle of it. We did a good deed by
reporting (to Dr. Ward Perkins [?] of the British School of Archaeology in
Roma) a previously unreported very early Christian church that was
camouflaged in a hillside in the countryside outside of Roma, up a country
lane from an abandoned Mediaeval 'castle' and its village (foundations only
of the huts). That church has a large painted mural depicting monks or
saints (they had halos) in boats approaching a city (Constantinople?) by
boat and an alter end piece of marble depicting two (now headless) toga
clad figures.
****** Are there real treasures out there that are not well documented? Of
course. Travellers have collected souvenirs for hundreds of years. The
probability is however that many such "treasures" will turn out to be fakes,
even if bought in good faith by a British traveller in Italy in 1880 for
example. The fakes that were for sale all over Italy were far better looking
than the working people's pottery shards that I found. There were aged fakes
of old bronzes, beautiful pottery with painted designs, marble carvings etc.
My mother still has some of the replicas that she bought. We bought ours
knowing that they were replicas, but many were also passed off as originals
to unsuspecting tourists. Without good provenance, you have nothing to be
certain about.
Colin Macgregor Stevens,
Curator,
Burnaby Village Museum,
Burnaby, BC, CANADA
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