Fake! The Many Facets of the Forger’s Art

Home > Magazines > BAR > March/April 1997

In a recent issue of BAR,a London antiquities collector Shlomo Moussaieff bemoans the fact that collectors, among their other difficulties, are the constant prey of fakers. Moussaieff knows whereof he speaks. No serious collection of archaeological artifacts, public or private, has failed to “swallow” its share of fakes and forgeries.1 For an exhibit called “Fakes and Forgeries” that I curated several years ago at the Eretz Israel Museum in Tel Aviv,b Mr. Moussaieff lent us two genuine silver Athenian tetradrachmas of the fifth century B.C.E., each of which bore deep chisel marks. These chisel marks point to the […]

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Footnotes

See “Magnificent Obsession,” BAR 22:03.

See Fakes and Forgeries (exhibit catalogue; Tel Aviv: Eretz Israel Museum 1989).

One that we plan to cover in an upcoming issue.—Ed.

See Siegried H. Horn, “Why the Moabite Stone Was Blown to Pieces,” BAR 12:03.

Endnotes

The difference between fakes and forgeries has recently been defined as follows: “A fake is a genuine article, if of somewhat mediocre character, that has been made more interesting and desirable by deceitful reworking. A forgery, as in the matter of banknotes, is an article made newly and wholly for the purpose of deception.” Oliver Watson, “Fakes & Forgeries of Islamic Pottery,” in the Victoria and Albert Museum Album, 1985.