The specialist guide to Asian antiques and exotic home decor from the far east.

February 15, 2008 1:27 am

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Do you know what you are selling? Because your customer might not.

I am noticing a trend where just about “everyone and anyone” is now selling so called “Chinese antique furniture” (or some variation of this) and misrepresenting it as any number of different things. Items made just yesterday (antique reproductions) are falsely labeled as genuine antiques and the real antiques are often completely misclassified. I recently saw an antique Tibetan sideboard cabinet labeled as coming from Mongolia. Sometimes, this is just the result of the importer not having access to good product history and background information (and thus the purpose of this specialists blog). But in other instances its pure marketing and the low-end/mass-produced is being promoted as high end/hand-made. There is an interesting article in the New York Times about this entitled “Look-Alikes Draw Lawyers’ Stares” and one quote from this article seems to really sum it up in a nutshell:

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