A short walk on any Kyiv downtown street is evidence enough that antiques are an important commodity these days.
Apart from boutiques and electronic equipment stores, one finds a great many art salons offering all kinds of antiquities. If you are not the shopping type, visit Andriyivsky uzviz any weekend. There the assortment is not as rich but quite diverse.
One of the shortcomings of the antiques market is that you can be talked into buying fake icons, pictures, or jewelry. To avoid counterfeits, prestigious antique stores hire professional experts from Kyiv museums. Yuri Vakulenko, a noted art expert, director of the Restoration and Identification Center at Kyiv Pechersk Lavra, kindly agreed to share with The Day the most characteristic counterfeit antique cases.
“A large number of such fake antiques are imported,” says Mr. Vakulenko. “Thus, bronze sculptures and jewelry are counterfeited mostly in Central Europe, Britain, and the United States. They have already made it to Moscow, and one can expect them to surface in Kyiv soon.”
Moscow smart operators specialize in jewelry and icons, keeping the Ukrainian market well supplied, which poses a real threat to inexperienced buyers. For example, fake Old Rus’ icons from Moscow can be exposed only by top-notch experts and even they are sometimes duped. A large number of sham Faberge pieces were made in 1980 and are currently “traveling” all over CIS. They are so skillfully made that experts are not always to tell them apart from the real thing. There is even a special term for them: false-Faberge.
One such phony masterpiece was detected in Moscow recently. A miniature bouquet of precious stones. Experts maintain that, although modern-made, the thing is so masterfully done that in certain respects even surpasses the original. What helped expose the counterfeit was the material of the dandelions. The counterfeiter used powdered asbestos, while the Faberge jewelers applied real dandelion fuzz.
Ukraine also has expert counterfeiters. There are very productive teams in Kyiv and Dnipropetrovsk. They buy old icons from little old ladies, often in very poor condition, paying token money, then paint them over and antiquate them, selling them at a huge profit.
Of course, coming up with a motto, something like “Careful! Don’t buy antiques privately” would be ridiculous. Instead, my advice is, if you want to buy the real thing, consulting an expert is the only way to guarantee that the addition to your collection will be an original
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Far from all Faberge eggs can be sold at auction, even though some
contemporary “false Faberge” counterfeits are even superior to the original







