French art expert faces trial for allegedly forging 18th-century furniture

Lee Duna@lemmy.nz to World News@lemmy.world – 71 points –
French art expert faces trial for allegedly forging 18th-century furniture
theguardian.com
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  1. If he's that good at building furniture, good on him, keep it up.
  2. Never would have been illegal to sell lies to poor people.
  3. Fuck rich people.

Professor of a state university selling forgeries to public museum (Versailles) should go straight to jail.

I would think a museum would be better at spotting forgeries.

A museum would rely on the expert opinion of a professor of art history from Paris.

This choad abused a position of trust in order to pull off his con.

Not that it's not a shitty thing to do, but it also seems like the last person you would rely on for the value of an object is the person selling it to you.

He had an accomplice make the furniture, presumably acting as a broker/authenticator.

Depending on how much they sold the stuff for, aged repros probably don't net nearly as much as the forgeries did. ancient chairs still in pristine condition, I could see going for a million or so. Reproductions? probably in the tens of thousands. figuring a 20k repo, you'd have to sell 50 of just to break a million, and that's ignoring costs of production, which is 50x more, give or take.

a quick google suggests something between 750k and 1.25 mil...