Thread by @artcrimeprof

For the past year, I've been investigating an auction house that's make millions selling thousands of likely looted or forged undocumented antiquities. They're so shady it's hard to know where to start. The time they faked a shipwreck? The past fraud conviction of the owner?

The way they get authentications from beyond the grave from a scholar famed for saying ridiculous fakes were genuine? The fabricated credentials of their experts? Well, I've got time today. I'll tell you about it all. Presenting: a monster thread on Timeline Auctions.

Let's start with the Wreck of the Fake Chrysanthemum. In 2016, Timeline auctioned off supposedly 17th c. Chinese porcelain found in the 'Blue Chrysanthemum Wreck,' a ship lost in the South China Sea and rediscovered in 2014. Here's their promotional video:

There have indeed been spectacular finds of porcelain in shipwrecks, like the Nanking Cargo: csmonitor.com/1986/0208/ipor…

But Timeline was trying to sell stuff that looked more like... this.

The supposed shipwreck cargo looks like either mass-produced tourist wares or ridiculous attempts at making something look older (like that poor dog).

They claim each purchase would come with "a DVD on the wreck site and the material recovered" and showed some excerpts, presumably from this DVD. Here's some screenshots:

And here's comparison shots of what non-suspect porcelain cargo shipwrecks look like.

Left: actual shipwreck. Right: someone dropped a pile of bowls at their favorite scuba spot and shot some dramatic "discovery" video?

Even more suspiciously, I couldn’t find any search results about this “'Blue Chrysanthemum Wreck” that weren’t from Timeline or from people reselling pieces from the Timeline auction.

They claimed the Blue Chrysanthemum contained shipwrecked porcelain in the finest condition ever. If that was true, wouldn't there be just a little more news attention, or scholarly study, or, I don't know, anyone else acknowledging its very existence?

The expert on the video has a past of high-ranking positions at major auction houses... and a present of scraping together a freelance living. Fallen on a bit of hard times?

My favorite bit of the video is when the auctioneer asks the expert if he can guarantee the provenance and authenticity of this porcelain, and he answers yes but vigorously shakes his head no 😂

Why go to all this trouble? Well, shipwrecked porcelain is freaking cool, and sells for a whole lot of money (e.g., christies.com/en/lot/lot-198…). Why not buy some dishes down in Chinatown and create your own provenance to get in on the action?

Now, you've got to keep this kind of thing up to keep making profits, but Timeline's no slouch. In just one sale, held November 24-28, 2020, they sold 1,920 lots of "antiquities" for £1,299,211.

Fortunately, Timeline's founder, CEO, and head of antiquities has plenty of experience in high-volume illicit exportation, seeing as how he served a year in jail for evading tax on millions of pounds worth of rare birds: library.croneri.co.uk/cch_uk/bvc/200…; independent.co.uk/news/uk/this-b…

Let's look at some of the experts he's recruited to assure buyers they're getting only the finest, authentic objects! timelineauctions.com/our-specialist… Here's one whose bio deserves a line-by-line read...

"Dr. D’Amato is a leading Italian archaeologist and historian." If "leading" means "has published a bunch of illustrated books for military buffs," sure. worldcat.org/search?q=Raffa…

"He holds a PhD in Roman archaeology from the University of Ferrara [which doesn’t seem to offer PhDs in archeology] and a Masters in Byzantine archaeology from the University of Vienna [at least this is theoretically possible]..."

"...as well as a PhD in law from the University of Torino." But in a conference program from 2010, he is described as “Laureato in Giurisprudenza in diritto Romano-Bizantino,” which is an undergrad degree in Italy: edu-care.to/materiali/Vola…)

"He was for some time a curator of Romano-Byzantine artefacts at the Museum of Man based in Orlando, Florida, U.S.A." Now this led down QUITE the rabbit hole. Google shows no indication that anything called the “Museum of Man” has existed in Orlando. But...

On D’Amato’s Academia.edu page, he’s posted a PDF of a journal article
(academia.edu/21469999/STUDI…) which purports to be a study of “the collection of war-maces from the Balkans kept in the World Museum of Man and Prehistory located in Central Florida, U.S.A.”

The paper describes this as "a private Museum of paleontological and archaeological artefacts from private collections not formerly known to the academic community" founded by "Mr. John McNamara."

This is presumably the John McNamara, a “dealer who bought and sold fossils and artifacts, and ran an online museum displaying some of his wares,” who in 2016 was convicted of smuggling artifacts from grave sites in Pakistan (washingtonpost.com/local/public-s… and washingtonpost.com/local/public-s…).

Searching for “World Museum of Man” led me to the defunct website worldmuseumofman.org, partly accessibly through the Wayback Machine: web.archive.org/web/2008021807….

Basically, it’s a collection of pictures and bits of informational text – the type of thing you’d make as a dealer to make buyers believe you knew what you were talking about (and make academics roll their eyes).

Yeah, so, working for a convicted smuggler's defunct private "museum" is not exactly something you should brag about, maybe?

To continue. "He currently works as independent researcher near the Laboratorio Antiche Province Danubiane of the University of Ferrara (exploring the Danubian provinces of the Roman Empire), of which is part of the Scientific Committee..."

"... with particular reference to the military material of Rome and Byzantium; he runs academic conferences for the university and has published many technical papers and catalogues in connection with these studies." Ok, so:

This university has a "Laboratorio di Studi e Ricerche sulle Antiche Province Danubiane," “LABORATORIO DI STUDI E RICERCHE SULLE ANTICHE PROVINCE DANUBIANE,” and he gave a paper at their 2013 conference (archeobologna.beniculturali.it/mostre/fe_cong…), but I could find no other record of a connection.

[sorry for random typing repeat in there)

In his bio for his publisher, he says he “currently works as vice-head of the Laboratory of the Danubian Provinces at the University of Ferrara, under Professor Livio Zerbini”: ospreypublishing.com/raffaele-d-ama…. Any Ferrara friends able to verify this? Because... nope.

I could find no evidence of his association – e.g., searching the university’s website returns no results for his name, and a general Google search of his name plus Ferrara seems to only have results from his own bios.

I couldn't find independent evidence of any of this, aside from someone with his name speaking at a January 2020 Italian Federation of the Maternal Schools conference: bioeticanews.it/la-crisi-del-d…

The closest thing I could find to a CV for D’Amato was this PDF, a conference proposal, which summarizes his career on the 2-4 pages: um.edu.mt/__data/assets/…

On this conference program, he’s listed as “D’Amato, Raffaele (University of Ravenna, Italy),” although there isn’t a University of Ravenna. (levantineheritage.com/pdf/3rd-Medite…).

This highly illustrious expert is the one who authenticated this ridiculous fake which I wrote about here: lrb.co.uk/blog/2020/apri…

Ok, lunch break. I'll be back...

And we're back with their geologist, who is a published expert on... crystal healing. Not on antiquities. But whatever, close enough.

I mean, I would think a geologist would be able to clarify whether an auction listing he's written a "scholarly note" about is made from alabaster or chlorite, which are different?

But let's think about how a geologist is going to help you buy an antiquity. Here he is providing expertise on this head gone missing from my local Thai restaurant, sold by Timeline in September 2020. So he's saying... it's made of marble?

That's like someone writing a recommendation letter that says "this candidate's body is composed roughly of 60% water." It's true but... not very helpful.

"But Erin!" you're shouting. "They gave such detailed information about where this masterwork has been previously displayed!" The same provenance is used for 15 other lots in this auction. But its details are frustratingly unverifiable.

Here's some of the other lots. The Tibet House exhibit did happen, and seems to involved a plan to print a catalog (according to huffpost.com/entry/em-the-b…), but, conveniently, I can’t find this catalogue or figure out which objects were actually displayed there.

I found some of the articles mentioned in the catalog, and their illustrations don’t include this or the other pieces supposedly from the same collection Timeline has auctioned:

liveauctioneers.com/item/80541980_…

liveauctioneers.com/item/80541983_…

They get most specific for lot 338, which says it was published in “Douglas, Nik., Out of Uddiyana. An exhibition at Tibet House New York, From the Buckingham collections, exhibit BG015, p.103; accompanied by copies of the relevant exhibition catalogue pages.”

I can’t find any book with this title (worldcat.org/search?q=%22Ou…), and while Nik Douglas has written some… interesting books (worldcat.org/search?q=au%3A…), this does not seem to be one of them.

You didn't see the phrase "Sexual Secrets: The Alchemy of Ecstasy" coming, did ya? Let me tell you, this research took me places. I saw things I can't unsee.

Anyway, so. Detailed provenance information proving the source of these objects or conveniently unverifiable fake origin story for rubbed-on tchotchkes? Certainly less work that faking a whole shipwreck, IMHO.

With the big caveat that I can't say for certain whether an object is a genuine antiquity or not just from looking at a photo, I have pointed out some extremely unlikely things being flogged by Timeline:

https://twitter.com/artcrimeprof/status/1385981117132689408?s=20

https://twitter.com/artcrimeprof/status/1349769332725788673?s=20

https://twitter.com/artcrimeprof/status/1250496543054090246?s=20

"What the angle here?" you might be thinking. "Is this auction house just really bad at telling genuine from fake antiquities?" Well, I don't know for sure (please help, investigative journos!), but here's what I suspect is going on:

It would be very profitable for an auction house to pretend to sell consigned lots while actually commissioning fakes and composing fraudulent provenance. Then, if they’re caught, they get to blame phantom consignors for the fakes.

Or this whole group of experts could be risking their reputations and livelihoods to make a small percentage of the auction house's commission for selling crap like this? I dunno, take your pick of explanations.

One clue that some of these lots might be commissions connected to someone Timeline responsible for writing catalog descriptions is how often these descriptions give a "comparison" that really seems more like a model. For example...

In the September 2020 sale, two "Sassanian" cups mention the same piece in the Corning Museum of Glass (cmog.org/artwork/bowl-1…) as a comparative.

The Corning Museum's piece is not on display, and its online catalog entry is very basic - it's hard for me to imagine how you would get from one of these auctioned artifacts back to this Museum object to even make the comparison. But click a little further and you'll find...

... that the Museum helpfully provides an illustrated profile cutaway view to help someone make a copy. If they, you know, wanted to. (Also, two objects that look almost exactly the same end up in the same auction, even though they have different claimed provenances? Umm?)

I could go on and on and on (and if you're a customer, happy to hear from you at [e-mail]), but, I'll close with one more story: Ampirish and the Zombie Authenticator.

Timeline has auctioned at least three supposedly ancient Iranian silver vessels inscribed “Ampirish, king of Samati, son of Dabala” in cuneiform script in the in Neo-Elamite language.

So, say you were a forger browsing for potential models to fake, and you saw that someone cleared more than a million pounds selling an ancient cup inscribed “Ampirish, king of Samati, son of Dabala” (bonhams.com/auctions/10187…). You might give it a google and discover...

A nice short scholarly note online (blmj.org/download/files…) describing two excavated silver rhytons inscribed “Ampirish, king of Samatu, son of Dabala” in Neo-Elamite, explaining what the inscriptions mean and even how to say them.

That would come in handy if the nice high-res image of the inscription still available on Bonhams' website wasn't enough.

Fairly easy to copy the inscription even if you're going to treat the body of the vessel like a preschooler more interested in eating the paste than using it to stick on the construction paper cutouts.

There’s another vessel in the Louvre with a different inscription mentioning Ampirish, the two mentioned in the scholarly paper, and the Bonhams example (which might be one of these). His name seems not to otherwise survive. Except on three new examples sold by Timeline.

The Lambert mentioned in this provenance was indeed an Assyriologist (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilfred_G…). Timeline sells a LOT of objects with authentications by him. "Stop right there!" I hear you say. "How can you doubt a professor?"

Well... Lambert was notorious for authenticating fakes. He seems to have written fulsome descriptions of whatever pieces of tat were trotted before him by dealers, as long as they paid. Here's the great Calvin Trillin painting quite the picture of him: newyorker.com/magazine/1987/…

So, Professor Lambert's thumbs up seems great if you're a casual buyer, but is a red flag if you're in the know. People are spending millions on this kind of thing, because they're not in the know. That should change.

Annnnnd that's all for now. I just literally gasped out loud at info someone DMed me, so, there will be more eventually... Remember, [e-mail] with any tips or if you're willing to share pictures of what you've purchased!