14th July 2006, 10:04 PM
Reproduced by kind permission of Jeff Hatt (aka Rufus) from UK DetectorNet
This all started from this on Ebay⦠the âfamousâ Lord Murray, Archaeologist.
http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Rare-Excavated-Vik...0004212109
I loved this so much I asked if I could reproduce it here... many thanks and happy reading..
The antiquities trade and the trade in fine art are often parallelled in the search for answers, but this is a futile exercise. The two trades are fundamentally different.
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa...041309.htm
Brodie is partly right when he say's
'I think if you investigate a piece of art, generally you can trace back an ownership history. You know who painted the object in the first place, or you hope that you know the painter. I think it is a lot more open than the antiquities trade. I think that is the crucial point. It is more open to investigation.'
The truth is that a painting must be 'known' for it to have any value in the first place and so fine art collectors are scrupulous about all aspects of provenance, because it is certainly in their interest to be so. A wobbly new 'Rembrandt' is really not a Rembrandt until that motion is stilled by the collective efforts of experts in the Rembrandt field. Origin and expert validation combine to create value. Without undergoing that rigorous and exacting process, it is next to worthless. Pity the poor collector who risks a bootsale fiver on a 'might be' Rembrandt only to spend endless sleepless nights fretting over the upcoming decision of the Rembrandt Research Project...he has already formulated plans to move up to a swanky Manhatten apartment, on the proceeds of its sale.
With antiquities we have no added market value to be made from provenance. A dodgy Attic Black-figure vase is as pretty as one with full provenance and looks just as nice in the Manhatten home of crook or judge. No-one has good reason to care much, its value is lodged in the fact that it is what is says on the very pretty tin. Where it comes from is only of concern to academics of Attic Black-figure Vases. And they are secondary figures in all this.
Our Ebay object is the bargain basement end of the scale and yet the provenance of the 'Viking' combe (sic) advertised for sale is no less important from an academic perspective. The problem is similar though, the academic is not of primary concern in the equation, she does not play a crucial part in establishing market value, in fact she is most certainly unwanted in the equation because a 'wrong' decision might cost the trade its investment.
Interestingly our 'Lord' uses spurious academic credentials to bouy up his own trading, because he is smart enough to know that the addition of his 'honours degree' adds something. It adds just enough of the appearance of rigour to assure his buyers that they are buying something they won't regret. So far as they are concerned it is real enough because our 'Lord' says so. They need no more than that. In the cabinet of curiosities with it.
There are exceptions, but they are few and far between. The recent Coenwulf gold coin is a case in point. Here the academic was central to the equation because it was UNIQUE, as all art must be, and her decision was crucial to all value judgements, including academic ones. However, if ten more come on to the market in the next few years, expect her to slip out to the edge.
I'm afraid that until it is always the case that provenance+expert validation=significant added market value, things will remain just as they are.
AND HE CONTINUES
I offered no solution:
Collectors are the problem here. Fortunately all collectors are subject to a packaging fetish that could, if a packaging solution for antiquities were properly concocted, more or less ensure the 'significant added market value' that I talk about. This might sound radical, even lunatic, but I propose that archaeological objects be laser-etched with tiny officially sanctioned signs or marks equivalent to the long established hallmarks applied to precious metals. This would mean the establishment of institutions to carry out the hallmarking, in every country that has problems with elicit antiquities trading, or, if the technology were cheap enough, even at regional level. An object that has been properly recorded is submitted along with its records, and most importantly photographs of unique identifying detail, the records and the object are tracked back, it gets its mark and goes out into the world as an elevated object, complete with its associated paper record, and even perhaps, officially boxed or packaged. It would take a little time but I'm sure that the collector would begin to appreciate the added significance and added investment value that packaging adds. Model train collectors, as I have recently learned, certainly do!
Museums used to practise a form of this with acquisition numbers painted onto the surface. I often wonder why this practise ceased because no right mined collector would ever scrape these marks off. An artefact once removed from the ground has become a new commodity, losing its status as purely roman and becoming instead Roman-Modern. It lives in another reality, our reality, and there is no problem with adding marks to it. For aesthetic reasons they need to be small, but there are no other considerations that should worry anyone.
Another day another WSI?
This all started from this on Ebay⦠the âfamousâ Lord Murray, Archaeologist.
http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Rare-Excavated-Vik...0004212109
I loved this so much I asked if I could reproduce it here... many thanks and happy reading..
The antiquities trade and the trade in fine art are often parallelled in the search for answers, but this is a futile exercise. The two trades are fundamentally different.
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa...041309.htm
Brodie is partly right when he say's
'I think if you investigate a piece of art, generally you can trace back an ownership history. You know who painted the object in the first place, or you hope that you know the painter. I think it is a lot more open than the antiquities trade. I think that is the crucial point. It is more open to investigation.'
The truth is that a painting must be 'known' for it to have any value in the first place and so fine art collectors are scrupulous about all aspects of provenance, because it is certainly in their interest to be so. A wobbly new 'Rembrandt' is really not a Rembrandt until that motion is stilled by the collective efforts of experts in the Rembrandt field. Origin and expert validation combine to create value. Without undergoing that rigorous and exacting process, it is next to worthless. Pity the poor collector who risks a bootsale fiver on a 'might be' Rembrandt only to spend endless sleepless nights fretting over the upcoming decision of the Rembrandt Research Project...he has already formulated plans to move up to a swanky Manhatten apartment, on the proceeds of its sale.
With antiquities we have no added market value to be made from provenance. A dodgy Attic Black-figure vase is as pretty as one with full provenance and looks just as nice in the Manhatten home of crook or judge. No-one has good reason to care much, its value is lodged in the fact that it is what is says on the very pretty tin. Where it comes from is only of concern to academics of Attic Black-figure Vases. And they are secondary figures in all this.
Our Ebay object is the bargain basement end of the scale and yet the provenance of the 'Viking' combe (sic) advertised for sale is no less important from an academic perspective. The problem is similar though, the academic is not of primary concern in the equation, she does not play a crucial part in establishing market value, in fact she is most certainly unwanted in the equation because a 'wrong' decision might cost the trade its investment.
Interestingly our 'Lord' uses spurious academic credentials to bouy up his own trading, because he is smart enough to know that the addition of his 'honours degree' adds something. It adds just enough of the appearance of rigour to assure his buyers that they are buying something they won't regret. So far as they are concerned it is real enough because our 'Lord' says so. They need no more than that. In the cabinet of curiosities with it.
There are exceptions, but they are few and far between. The recent Coenwulf gold coin is a case in point. Here the academic was central to the equation because it was UNIQUE, as all art must be, and her decision was crucial to all value judgements, including academic ones. However, if ten more come on to the market in the next few years, expect her to slip out to the edge.
I'm afraid that until it is always the case that provenance+expert validation=significant added market value, things will remain just as they are.
AND HE CONTINUES
I offered no solution:
Collectors are the problem here. Fortunately all collectors are subject to a packaging fetish that could, if a packaging solution for antiquities were properly concocted, more or less ensure the 'significant added market value' that I talk about. This might sound radical, even lunatic, but I propose that archaeological objects be laser-etched with tiny officially sanctioned signs or marks equivalent to the long established hallmarks applied to precious metals. This would mean the establishment of institutions to carry out the hallmarking, in every country that has problems with elicit antiquities trading, or, if the technology were cheap enough, even at regional level. An object that has been properly recorded is submitted along with its records, and most importantly photographs of unique identifying detail, the records and the object are tracked back, it gets its mark and goes out into the world as an elevated object, complete with its associated paper record, and even perhaps, officially boxed or packaged. It would take a little time but I'm sure that the collector would begin to appreciate the added significance and added investment value that packaging adds. Model train collectors, as I have recently learned, certainly do!
Museums used to practise a form of this with acquisition numbers painted onto the surface. I often wonder why this practise ceased because no right mined collector would ever scrape these marks off. An artefact once removed from the ground has become a new commodity, losing its status as purely roman and becoming instead Roman-Modern. It lives in another reality, our reality, and there is no problem with adding marks to it. For aesthetic reasons they need to be small, but there are no other considerations that should worry anyone.
Another day another WSI?
For really I think that the poorest he that is in England hath a life to live, as the greatest he
Thomas Rainborough 1647
Thomas Rainborough 1647
