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AK asks if this glass cage-cup is genuine.

31st July '10

 






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From Geoff.

4th August '10

Looks good and worth the money. dr g.

 

From Al

4th August '10

Looks oddly clean and devoid of surface change. Sort of too good to be true. But how many craftsmen could make one like that  these days? An incredible feat of cutting skill to  carve this from a block of glass.

 

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From Portland.

13th August '10

 

  • Unfortunately this is almost certainly one of the group of four cage cups that were reproduced in Syria and came to the market about 8 years ago.
  • The patina it seems is artificial having been created by some form of acid treatment. It appears they were also deliberately broken to make them look authentic. 
  • When the first example came out (the four emerged over about a 12 month period) it caused great excitement in the academic World and amongst the American museums specializing in ancient glass. The great and the good experts got together in New York to examine the cage cup but eventually came to the conclusion that it was a modern work. 
  • The example featured on your site is remarkably similar to the one examined  by the experts in New York.   It does not have the quality or fineness of the Constable Maxwell cup which it seems to be modelled on. If you look at the Constable Maxwell from underneath you will see that the circles are very symmetrically placed and  getting smaller as they move to the middle and in the exact middle a small circle dead centre. The same with the Corning model. Also look at the Constable Maxwell depth of the fringe on the upper level and note that the flange of the rim extends beyond the width of the cage.
  • The Constable Maxwell and this example look alike from a superficial examination but in the finer points they are quite a World apart and the pictured example is quite crude in comparison. These were items of the utmost luxury in Roman glass and therefore would only have been finished to the  very highest quality by the finest craftsmen. Specimens that did not reach the standard would never have seen the light of day.  They were made for the very highest ranked people. So sorry but I fear we are looking at a fake.
  • There are plenty of top quality reproductions made in modern times (mainly in Germany, Austria and U.K.), not with any intention to deceive but to explore the techniques. Successful high quality reproductions have been achieved using techniques as they were in ancient times. 
  • See the following bibliography for detailed  examples: Journal Glass Studies Corning Vol. 40 1998Journal Glass Studies Corning Vol. 41 1999Reflecting Antiquity -Whitehouse - 2007. 
  • An example very similar to the one shown here on your website sold as a "reproduction" for about $5,000 a few years ago.  

 

Here are some photos comparative photos:

 




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And some direct comparative photos with the Constable Maxwell cup. 

 

 




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Mark asks.

13th August '10

I have 2 stone statues that I would like to have authenticated/aged & translated.I am willing to send them in for testing.Can you identify the script? I believe Assyrian but I am not certain.

 






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Not Assyrian. Nor, alas,  actual genuine ancient artifacts.

The script appears to be Proto-Sinaitic derived South Arabian but I have never seen anything like these from that part of the world.

And the style is distinctly not South Arabian.

I'd be delighted to be proved wrong though.

In fact they look very familiar to me but I cannot find them in my books about fakes.

Anyone else know?

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Someone asked me is this scarab is genuine.

 

 




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No, alas, it is not.

The back is resonably well done though the surface and colour are most odd.

 

 



Even though the signs at top right read Neter Ankh Hes I don't believe this really reads "praise the good life".

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The phonetic compliment, the short horizonal bar, is placed in the wrong position.

Examples of the correct placing of the phonetic compliment.

 




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