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YOU ARE HERE:>> REAL or FAKE>>Fake Classical pottery page 4

  From Tisiphone123

 1^st August 2006

Well, this site was certainly an eye-opener, and I have a feeling I've just learned an extremely expensive lesson about fakes - one that will cost me in excess of $1000 if I'm extremely unlucky. I bought three items from a seller on eBay with over 1700 feedbacks and 99.9% positive.

Having used the tests so brilliantly put on this site, I came to the heart-attack conclusion that they were, you've guessed it, FAKES.

Greek Apulian Lekythos with a Lady's head

Lebes Gamikos.

I do have a REAL skyphos and a REAL Apulian cup, so the tests were fair. I even used a modern, touristy, Greek, terracotta jug just to liven things up a bit.

* The pottery is more highly fired than ancient pieces: the resonance is too high when they are 'pinged'. Both were tested against the authentic skyphos and a cup which both gave relatively dull resonance.

* The pottery is heavier than ancient pieces.  The skyphos is over 5 inches across and 4 inches high - much larger than either lekythos - and is actually much lighter.

* The 'encrustations' simply wiped off as a fine powder. I actually managed to get the area around the bases and the underside of each lekythos totally clean! Amazing no-one in 2300 years has thought to do the same thing! A tissue was wiped very gently around these areas and the powder came off immediately. The similar sort of encrustation is immovable on the skyphos.

* The encrustations were evenly coloured, even as they were wiped away. The encrustations on the skyphos are not uniform in any way, even on the surface.

Here are pics of the fake dirt on the left and real dirt on two different genuine lebes

And the base of the fake is suspiciously devoid of accretions. Compare with a genuine one.

* The paint is too vivid; both actually appear to have been repainted and the different layers are quite obvious. Both the cup and skyphos are extremely dull black, almost matt.

* The lekythoi are suspiciously shiny and the tone is more uniform than ancient examples: no temperature variation in the modern kiln. Both the skyphos and the cup present very uneven, dulled paintwork.

Some black glazed ware can actually retain a marvellous glossy surface.

* The water test: ancient items soak water up very quickly and dry out very slowly (anything up to a few days). Water was applied to the bases and they were dry in 30 minutes. Modern Greek terracotta was dipped for the same amount of time as a control and both dried out in the same amount of time.

What really sent my heart racing was the series of photos here  which shows the wares of The Netherland Man. The palm lekythos is IDENTICAL to the one I'm sending back to this seller who, just a few weeks ago, put an identical one on eBay. So that's three I've seen in a very short space of time. Amazing that they survived 2300 years and suddenly reappear at the same time in the same place.

Some really interesting information about reproductions of classical pottery......being sold on eBay as genuine.

>>>>>honest reprodutions