Chinese Ge Dagger Axe

[Philip]

Originally Posted by kronckew

It would be useful to know what the simple test is, so we could use it.

p.s. - mine was really cheap

China prohibits the export of real antiques, but I'd bet they still get smuggled thru. Money talks.

Yes, and it speaks loud and clear to the right people. The notion of what a "real antique" is often determined by the guy wearing the badge. In the 1990s, a colleague who used to do buying trips to China with his parents to buy 19th cent Qing vernacular furniture for their design gallery was hassled at the airport for a early 20th cent. blue/white porclain lady's pillow shaped like a recumbent pussycat. "That's a Song Dynasty piece!!" declared the inspector, who promptly impounded it and subjected my friend to a thorough search and grilling. [FYI the Song was a medieval dynasty preceding the Mongol era].

In the meantime, buyers were being gulled into paying hefty prices for those Tang [preceding the Song] Dynasty tricolor-glaze figurines and animals in the Beijing marketplace. They had signed and sealed test certificates from labs certifying the age of the material. Plus an export permit! A Chinese dealer whom I got to know well explained how this worked. The pieces were all newly made, expertly aged and patinaed, by craftsmen who knew the originals forwards and backwards. Part of the object (bottom of statue or foot of camel) was made from original ground up clay from an authentic fragment, and incorporated into the body in a seamless manner. The lab was tipped off as to where to take the test sample from.

There was a time, a couple of decades ago, that it was possible for an arms collector to find worthwhile stuff (helmets, swords, etc) in China and find ways to get it out. The fakes were easier to detect, and those who really studied the material could tell a good 17th-18th cent. blade from touristic or Boxer Rebellion junk. There were a few collectors in the US who built nice collections that way, using a chain of trusted "pickers" including a couple of European expats living over there. Those Wild West days are over. The faking is out of control. The last guy I had who rootled out blades for me in provincial towns, had to give up because shipping out of China became more and more problematic. The last thing he found, a rare 16th cent. falchion blade with chiseled archaistic dragons on the forte, took 3 attempts to ship -- eventually it had to go to Hong Kong and from there via post to the US. Too risky.

There were time that even pieces of some significance were given the government OK for export. A dealer in London once offered an 18th cent. Chinese saber blade of multi-row twist core pattern weld steel, further inlaid with Tibetan symbols and an inscription linking it to a monastery. I managed to buy it and on the scabbard was still affixed the official wax export seal that the government was using at the time (it later switched to an adhesive seal).