Specializes in fine Chinese antique furniture and objets d'art.
CONTES D'ORIENT
Showroom:
G/F, 52 Hollywood Road,
Central, Hong Kong
Tel:(852)2815 9422 Fax:(852)3010 4298
Email: info@contesdorient.com
Warehouse:
Rm. 1207-1210, 12F., Hing Wai Center
7 Tin Wan Praya Road, Aberdeen, Hong Kong
Tel:(852)2554 0200 Fax:(852)2554 7953
Open by Appointment Only.
Please phone (852)2815 9422.
Gallery Oi Ling:
85 Hollywood Road, Central, Hong Kong
Tel:(852)2964 0554
email: info@galleryoiling.com
|
|
October 25, 2002 : Wall Street Journal
Chinese Craftsmen Churn Out Expertly Distressed 'Antiques'
By KAREN MAZURKEWICH
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
ZHONGSHAN, CHINA -- Standing amid piles of dirt-encrusted Chinese furniture
outside their shop, Li Chan and Li Pang are debating just how honest they
should be about the age of some ancient-looking wooden doors.
The paint on the 6-foot doors is peeling and the iron fixtures are corroded,
but they have the aged finish that many antique hunters love. They were salvaged
from old buildings in Northern China, says Li Chan. And the price is good,
only $194.
Her partner Li Pang interrupts. "Don't tell them they are antiques," he says. "Say they are 20 or 30 years old."
Ms. Li demurs. "No, tell them they're older."
But Mr. Li's conscience is pricking him. The doors aren't antique at all,
he admits. He explains that he scavenges old pine lumber from around China,
fashions the wood into doors outside his shop and leaves them out to weather
the timber and metalwork. Then comes a layer of paint, and "before the paint
is dry we add mud," he says. "When we remove the mud, the paint peels." The
goal is to make the product look, at the very least, 100 years old. Sometimes,
the finished products look like they were built to hold back Mongol invaders.
A display in the Gu He market in Zhongshan, China. The provenance of these
products isn't known, but Gu He craftsmen produce a substantial amount of
fake antiques.
Throughout southern China, thousands of factories and countless individuals
are churning out brand-new furniture and accessories that will be passed
off as antiques and later turn up with exorbitant price tags in antique shops
from New York to Hong Kong. The fakery is fueled by the booming international
market for antique Chinese furniture, and by the fact that China is running
out of genuinely old pieces.
The Gu He complex here in Zhongshan, which houses the Lis' shop, is the
nation's largest. Stalls and workshops sprawl from either side of a dusty
road, a jumble of furniture and baubles spilling out into the fields: red
lacquer wedding cabinets, carved courtyard screens, rectangular stools, Tang
Dynasty terra-cotta horses and Tibetan chests.
Some of the offerings are the real thing, some are reproductions billed
as such, but most are fakes with fabricated histories. Here, an undiscerning
shopper scooping up a narrow altar table labeled "late Qing Dynasty elm wood,"
would be shocked to learn how hard craftsmen have labored to make it look
old.
Dealers are increasingly part of the scam. As the supply of genuine antique
Chinese furniture dries up, dealers who once traded in the genuine articles
are switching to making replicas and selling them as old.
The southern province of Guangdong is the heartland of this growing industry.
The area has a long history as an authentic antiques center, but "10 years
ago, many people came from the north and set up temporary shacks on this
vacant land to sell furniture," says Jin Xiang Yu, the entrepreneur behind
Gu He. He bought the land in 1998 and started charging rent to the stall
holders. Other immigrants moved in. "Then naturally, the place became a furniture
market," Mr. Jin says.
Last year, Guangdong exported $2 billion of wooden furniture, half of it
going to the U.S. Data on how much of that is marketed as antique aren't
available, but dealers can charge far more for items that are believed to
be old.
Heeding the call of this massive market, Chinese craftsmen are working harder
and harder to fashion cheap new furniture into expensive antique items.
"It takes a long time to learn the tricks," says Deng Gao Fa, as he smooths
clay on a table. His upstairs workshop is crammed with plastic buckets filled
with dark chemicals and bags of silk yarn used to rub solvents into a stack
of new wooden tables. Mr. Deng says the chemicals make the new wood more
stable and less likely to crack, but he admits that the ingredients also
serve to make the new tables look old enough that a dealer can present them
as antiques. "We can even make it look older depending on what the clients
want," says Mr. Deng, before family members working alongside him tell him
to hush up.
All that hard work makes it difficult even for professionals to spot the
fakes. "In the beginning ... they didn't have the chemicals and knowledge
to make good fakes," says New York dealer William Lipton, who has been dealing
in Chinese antique furniture since the late 1970s. "Now they have more savvy.
When I go to China the fakes are so good, I tell them that I'm going back
to my warehouse and I'm going to dissemble the piece -- if it's not right
I'm going to bring it back. It's the only way I can tell."
Taipei dealer John Ang, who conducts seminars twice a year on Chinese furniture,
attributes' the mainland craftsmen's expertise to the hundreds of pieces
that go through their workshops every year. "They know exactly how to reproduce
the joints and age the patina," he says. Still, to the practiced eye, there
are good fakes and bad fakes. Strolling through Gu He, Hong Kong antiques
dealer Oi Ling Chiang picks out dozens of items that have been manufactured
to look old. She determines immediately that doors from the Lis' shop are
fake. Bending down to examine the smooth timber at the bottom of the doors,
she sees the circular imprint of an electric saw. If the door was original,
there would be wear and tear evident, and no signs of modern tools.
Ms. Chiang has visited many large antique and reproduction factories in
Guangdong, but this market upsets her. Much of it is junk, she says. "I hate
this market -- it comes across that Chinese things are trashy, cheap rubbish."
At the Wan Feng Antiques shop, Ms. Chiang studies a Tibetan drum, which
might once have been used by monks during religious ceremonies. The wood
and leather instrument has a painted red and green dragon around its circumference.
Sales assistant Cheng Yu Ping tries to convince Ms. Chiang that it's old.
But Ms. Chiang isn't fooled. The painting is too colorful and the strong
smell of shellac suggests that it was recently applied.
To demonstrate her honesty, Ms. Cheng points to floral-patterned Tibetan
cabinets in another corner and declares that they are new.
"That's what kills me, because she says some are old and some are new, so you believe her," says Ms. Chiang.
Buyer Beware
Antique experts assessed Chinese pieces that were sold to amateur buyers as antiques. A sample of what they found*
| The 'antique(s)' |
Real Identity |
Expert Comment |
Sale Price |
Actual Value |
| A 100-year-old Chinese leather box |
A new box with thick wood inserts made to look old |
The
lining looks faded and old, but it's simply fabric lining a newly constructed
box; lacquer and fixtures on the outside of the box are new |
$57.69 |
Negligible |
| Two Chinese elm tables with stone insets from Shanxi Province (Qing Dynasty circa 1850) |
New elm wood tables with stone insets, probably made in Zhongshan |
Tables
don't have the right proportions for Qing Dynasty pieces -- they should be
larger, more rectangular and have support braces or arches underneath; curve
of the feet should be rounder; the lacquer on the tables is new |
$2,435.80 |
$769.20 |
| A Song Dynasty, 12th-century 'Yingqing twin-fish bowl' |
A new yingqing (shadow blue) porcelain bowl |
The
bowl is too heavy the incised pattern on the interior is not consistent with
Song Dynasty pieces -- the decoration is stiff and awkward; there are uncharacteristic
spur marks on the base of the bowl |
$205.12 |
$25.64 |
*Comments from Hong Kong antique experts Oi Ling Chiang, Charles Wong, Andy Hei and Christie's ceramics expert Pola Antebi
Note: All prices converted from Hong Kong dollars
The
director of the Zhongshan Furniture Trade Association, a Mr. Deng (he wouldn't
reveal his first name), isn't bothered by the deceptions. He believes the
onus is on the buyer.
"The stores in the [Gu He] market in general sell genuine
antique furniture," he says. "But it's up to the customers to bring along
an expert to help them verify the antiquity of the piece. For tourists, they
should not expect the furniture to be 100% guaranteed."
Write to Karen Mazurkewich at karen.mazurkewich@wsj.com
?/span>
| |
|
|
