How not to get ripped off 101; Fake Antique Tribal Art. The market for authentic tribal art has seriously taken off in the last few years, and with it the production of copies and fakes. This is a brief overview of what I’ve noticed and some tips on how to recognize fake antique tribal art.
Traditionally the European and US market for tribal art and artefacts was a pretty elite space. Collectors were mostly from certain groups;
Anthropologists and other academics, including museum curators,
The super rich and sophisticated Art fraternity, inspired by the likes of Picasso who was greatly influenced by African Sculpture,
Old monied families with links to the Colonies and Empire,
and a few beat-nick world travellers & bohemians, people who’d travelled themselves in the years before or just after WW2.
The market was small and most of the collectors were either dedicated and knowledgeable through obsessive study, or had direct links to the colonial collections of the last three hundred years. (all this is important for reasons we’ll come back to…)
But this landscape has changed radically in recent decades, There’s a whole new generation of enthusiasts interested in the indigenous, spiritual, and traditional arts of cultures beyond the West.
This, combined with the arrival of the world wide web, has brewed up a perfect storm for an explosion in fake antique tribal art.
Fake, Copy, or Souvenir?
I’ve written before on what makes a true fake, – it’s a piece that has been made or adapted with the deliberate intention of deceiving the buyer.
And in a minute we’ll go into that in detail…
But first I need to give a quick nod the many copies and souvenirs on the tribal art market that are not actual fakes, but could be (and often are) mis-sold as authentic antiques, often by mistake and sometimes on purpose.
Souvenirs
Everywhere that has tourism generally has local craftsmen & women who make copies of the local traditional arts to be sold as souvenirs. These are not fakes unless they are pretending to be antique, although often objects are created honestly but in the historical styles.
Souvenir tribal art made in the first half of the 20th century was commonly made by the traditional artisans of the region who had also made, – or at least been taught to make the authentic originals. So those early souvenirs can be of really wonderful quality and highly authentic materials and craftsmanship – the main difference being that they were made to be sold to visitors rather than being kept and used by the local people themselves.
This is frequently seen with Oceanic and African souvenirs from pre 1970. There were also many beautiful objects made for resale by artists on the First Nations reservations in the US & Canada, and also by Aboriginal craftsmen and artists from Australia.
Early souvenirs can be really nice pieces sometimes, the problem only comes when they are sold as Authentic – to be authentic in this field an object should have been made for use within the culture from which it originates, and ideally it should also have been owned and used within that community for long enough to show signs of age, use and patination.
* I feel like an exception to this needs to be made with the work of Artists who’s work tells stories, such as those depicted in Aboriginal works, the stories are real, the telling/showing is real, the artists are of the culture, to me that all seems pretty authentic even if the pieces are made to be sold to the outside world.
Copies
These days there is ongoing production of copies of just about every type of indigenous / tribal art and artefact you can think of. These might be made for export by craftsmen from the region (like many souvenirs) – but just as often they can be made anywhere, including in small factories on another continent. Thailand for example produces both copies and fakes of traditional art from places as far away as Afghanistan and Europe.
There are loads of cottage industry workshops making copies of traditional African art and masks across Africa for export to the west. The quality varies wildly. Some have been half-heartedly made to look a bit older but are not serious attempts at fakes and are fairly easily identified with a little practice. There are hundreds of these pieces for sale on ebay with rather scant descriptions that just say old or rare.
Good fakes tend to be made by an individual or in small family workshops, A lot of effort and skill goes into a good fake and it’s likely to be priced considerably higher than the inferior copies, and sold with a made up story of it’s history.
Fakes – what to look out for;
Is it too good to be true?
if it looks just like that thing that sold at Christies for half a million quid then proceed with extreme caution….
Are there others?
a really good first check is to run searches on ebay and google images, I’m going to assume here that you are not looking at pieces being offered for big prices in galleries and salerooms – (if you are these should come with a written guarantee of age & authenticity), Many lower quality fakes are produced in large numbers and a bit of online digging often turns up dozens of very similar pieces which is a massive Red Flag.
With ebay you can often see a seller has been selling the exact same pattern of fake over and over again.
. Is the style ‘right’ for the period its claiming to come from?
If possible look up some book or museum examples of authentic pieces and compare the artistic style, size, and materials used. Many museums now have huge online image libraries of their collections.
Are the materials ‘right’?
if there is cloth is it handwoven or machine made? Are the dyes natural or synthetic? Is this in keeping with the supposed age? Are any metals used in keeping with historical examples? Is it made of hardwood or soft wood? – and does this match with authenticated pieces that you can compare with?
What’s The back Like?
Some fakes are commissioned by dealers who will email a photograph from a sales catalogue or museum archive of what they would like copied. Often these copies are made only looking at a 2 dimensional image of the front of the piece to be imitated. So the craftsman has to do the back from their imagination of what they would expect it to look like. This can lead to details that don’t quite fit or a very plain back that doesn’t match up with the level of workmanship on the front.
Patina
Everyone says a good patina is almost impossible to fake, but fakers will have a bloody good crack at it!
The only way to get really good at judging this is through experience.
In the meantime check for things like smell – an original antique patina shouldn’t smell of smoke or tar, or chemicals. Check for a patina that is too uniform, or that doesn’t seem to correspond with the use of an object – for example a ritually used piece which might have been oiled or received libations on the head or shoulders or hands. Encrusted patination is often faked on dodgy ‘Power Figures’ and Fetishes.
Does the patina leave a stain on your fingers or on a cloth if you touch it? (warning – don’t go rubbing stuff that doesn’t belong to you and then damaging it! Especially bronze which is ruined by having the natural patina polished off).
Genuine patination is built up gradually over many years, and it is very hard to fake. It usually has a rich soft warmth to it and there will be areas where some of the layering may reveal itself.
Try to see and handle as many genuine pieces as possible to grow familiar with the different ways that surfaces evolve over time.
Weather & Wear
If a piece would have traditionally been kept outside does it have the sort or weathering you might expect? Bare in mind that fakers will char, bury, & cover objects in mud and dung to try to replicate authentic signs of age and use. Is there evidence of fading where you might expect it or is the colour suspiciously uniform?
Old pieces will show natural smoothing and wear on the parts that were regularly handled or where a moving part had friction with another surface.
The older a piece is the less likely it is to have any sharp edges, especially on high contact areas.
For example, old Hindu brass and bronze figures from the 18th century and earlier often have their faces worn smooth by being touched during daily ceremony. Indian village shrine idols often have a red stained impression worn in the stone of the forehead from the practice of giving a tikka mark during daily puja, sometimes these come onto the market when they are badly damaged or replaced. Look for appropriate wear on the parts used to pick a piece up, or the holes for any fastenings and on wooden figures that would have stood outside, check the base for old signs of insect activity or rot.
Be aware that some metal fakes are made from casts of the originals, so if the original had been worn smooth the fake will replicate this – but these second generation casts lose a bit of clearness of detail from the places where that detail would had remained – they have an overall look that isn’t quite right, especially around any damaged areas they tend to appear too uniform, basically they look like second generation castings.
Masks worn in dance will have a patina inside from sweat and hair oils.
Very old bead stringing holes will have become smooth and wider at the edges from the friction of the beads rubbing against the cord.
Look for tell-tale machine marks on metal that should have been finished or beaten by hand
and get familiar with natural pigments and old types of paint, these have a particular texture and only come in certain limited colours which can be another clue that something isn’t right.
What Else is The Seller Up To?
You may have already checked to see if there are other highly similar pieces sloshing about on the general market, but what else is this particular seller offering?
There’s a lot of variables with this approach but things to watch out for include an overly large stock of stuff from one region that all seems to be a bit uniform. This indicates someone with a direct line to a modern workshop.
Also if you can confidently spot one dodgy piece there’s probably others… One particular ebay dealer sells ethnographic art from many cultures and a lot of it looks great, with every listing announcing ‘ from old collection with 19th century provenance!’ but I know enough on Himalayan art to see that his ‘antique’ Tibetan and Nepalese objects are often fairly recent, – this leads me to be extra cautious about his other wares…
Also are they shipping lots of stock from a country that doesn’t allow the export of indigenous or antique objects? (A lot of places don’t allow this but couldn’t care less about copies and fakes).
Provenance
This is a difficult word for a lot collectors and dealers alike. The gold standard for antique tribal art is that it has recorded and traceable Provenance.
This is why those elite collectors I mentioned earlier are so important. The provenance of a piece is the history of where and when it was acquired, who has owned it, and any time it has featured in a book or famous collection or prestigious sale.
So a really good provenance might include a Sothebys sale receipt from years ago, photos in a catalogue proving that it was exhibited in such and such a gallery or famous collection, and documents that show that it was previously inherited from some aristocratic ancestor who was stationed in the colonies in the 1890s… This is why something quite modest looking might sell for tens of thousands of dollars in the international art world, but the same piece if picked up at a market will be worth a tiny fraction of that price.
The truth is that there are some excellent fakes out there and a watertight provenance is one of the ways to be absolutely sure that;
a) a piece of tribal art really is as old as it looks,
and
b) that it hasn’t been looted, stolen, or illegally removed from the country of origin.
My personal opinion is that the big sales rooms don’t really give a fig about ‘b’ (they’ve all got form for turning a blind eye or even being involved in that stuff!) But what they really don’t want is to get caught out with something that turns out to have been made last week.
As I said earlier, that sort of provenance really is the Gold Standard.
But back down at street level there are many thousands of wonderful authentic antique and vintage pieces of tribal art that have no traceable provenance whatsoever. I don’t operate in the Art World, and I’ve never really aspired to. I like to deal in the magical things I can unearth at markets and sell them at fair prices to people who will love them as much as I do. Provenance is great if it’s available but I don’t get too hung up on it because I trust my own judgement and I’m not buying (or selling) stuff for thousands of pounds.
If you want you can insist on only buying things with the golden P, and if your ambition is to curate a serious collection with a view to one day selling it on, then you probably should. Just be ready to add a couple of zeros onto every price tag.
In Conclusion;
There is so much fascinating and beautiful art that has been made by indigenous artists over the last couple of centuries, objects that are functional & reverential, spiritual & practical, inspiring & magical, sometimes embodying all of these qualities at the same time. Whether it was created 10 years ago or 200 years ago it can have the power to change us and how we experience our shared world. It’s hard to put a price tag on such things. So if youre buying a piece because of how it makes you feel, and you can happily afford it then thats wonderful, do as you will. But if you’re buying for investment, for resale, or for the honour of owning an authentic piece with genuine history, (but you can’t afford to do your shopping at Sothebeys) then it’s probably time to start training your eye to the fine art of fakes & copies…