News:
February 10, 2003
Seattle
shop investigation
SEATTLE - The Washington
State attorney general's office is investigating a fashionable downtown
Seattle antique shop after claims that expensive Chinese antiques sold
by the establishment turned out to be fakes.
In a copyright story, the Seattle Times reported
one of its writers had purchased a teapot and a tile from Thesaurus
Fine Arts and, after reviewing results of subsequent independent tests
conducted at the publication's request, concluded the items were worth
only a fraction of their selling prices.
"Our first tip came from Dr. Brian Jacobs, who
returned some fakes (to Thesaurus Arts) last year and filed complaints
with law enforcement authorities, who did nothing," said award-winning
investigative journalist Duff Wilson, who initially blew the lid off
the case with the help of several colleagues at the Times.
Upon being confronted with the evidence the
newspaper had amassed, Steven Ng Sheong Cheung, who initially denied
any financial interest in the shop but has since admitted to co-owning
it, insisted the pieces in question were legitimate antiques. He
suggested the Seattle Times or a mailing service used to send the items
to two leading laboratories must have refired the objects, which could
alter the readings that indicate when they were made. "Somebody did
that to frame Thesaurus," Cheung told the Times. "This is fraud to do
that. This is a crime."
Thesaurus Fine Arts opened in the summer of 1998
in Seattle's Pioneer Square. The gallery sells contemporary paintings
but specializes in antiquities and currently offers a number of items
for sale on e`Bay.
The Times said its reporter (Wilson), who
identified himself by name but did not say he was a journalist, went
into Thesaurus last fall and paid $1,900 for a ceramic teapot
purportedly from the Tang Dynasty and $315 for a pottery tile
supposedly from the Ming Dynasty.
Both pieces came with 'certificates of
authenticity' from scientific testing laboratories in Hong Kong, the
newspaper said.
But three experts enlisted by the Times said they
did not believe the pieces were authentic, and two testing laboratories
said the items were no more than 130 years old and might even be new.
The laboratories - Oxford Authentication in
England, a world leader in its field; and Daybreak Archaeometric
Laboratory in Guilford, Conn., which has done testing for the
Metropolitan Museum of Art and more than 900 other clients - used a
procedure called thermoluminescence, or TL, testing. It is similar to
carbon-dating and determines the age of ceramics and pottery by
measuring the radiation absorbed since the last high-temperature
firing.
"As soon as I saw them, I knew they were fake,"
said Doreen Stoneham of Oxford Authentication. She said her tests
showed they were each less than 100 years old and possibly new. The
newspaper also sought the opinions of three Asian art experts in the
Seattle area, who concurred with the findings.
As this issue was going to press, news had broken
that the Justice Department had charged Thesaurus Fine Arts' co-owner
Steven Cheung - who, as it turns out, is also a prominent Asian
economist and former University of Washington professor - and his wife
Linda Cheung with "conspiracy to defraud the United States by failing
to report millions of dollars in income from Hong Kong parking lots and
other businesses." AntiqueWeek will continue to follow this story as it
unfolds.
Catherine Saunders-Watson
Associated Press contributed
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