Faking it!

I receive a number of donations each year which consist of art or collectable property. In some cases, these items are donated for a tax receipt based upon the current retail value.

In most cases I use an appraiser, and I have a number of people who will help us as a favor. For many items, I have enough education and experience to appraise them myself, however, by law, items worth more than $1,000 must be appraised by an outside appraiser.

I don’t do this for artists donating their own work because that’s a slippery slope I don’t wish to travel. But, where possible, we get an appraisal.

Included in a group of items I received the other day, along with a 2002 appraisal done by someone I would never have thought would act as an appraiser for the jewelry and antiquities I had, was the following description:

Icon on wood panel, “St. Demetzyus Slaying the Antichrist” by Tivko Kostodinov, 19th century. An example of wood carved and painted with layering of gold mounted on wood plaque. $300.

A label on the back of the piece said all of that except the value, and was written in some European language that I didn’t recognize. When I saw the piece (this piece was among a group that were in storage for 10 years) I immediately felt my “fake alarm” go on.

This was a tourist thing, I was sure, but it had been appraised before and I was not an expert in the area. I took it forward to someone in the know and asked his opinion.

Several times in the past I felt the “fake alarm” go off and my feelings were corroborated by my friend, who was the appraiser who would look at this one. He corroborated a fake Krieghoff painting I looked at recently, and saw for sale on eBay six months later.

His look, better than mine, had me in stitches. “Arthur”, he said, “its plastic!”

Now that was one for the books! The thing is a great plastic forgery sold to an unsuspecting public at some other time, and fooling an educated guesser in 2002 because, I believe, of the label. They didn’t have plastic in the 19th century!

This morning I told the donor and thankfully he took that well. Most of the gift was pretty good!