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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;komokwa, post: 219780, member: 301&quot;]They are both Indonesian carvings in the style of the Northwest Coast 1st Nations art.</p><p><br /></p><p>It&#039;s easiest to just say &#039; it&#039;s my business to know &#039; but I&#039;ll give you a little more to go on.</p><p>From 1990 to 2002 I owned the finest contemporary Northwest Coast Indian art gallery on the eastern seaboard. I&#039;ve been selling on eBay since 1998 but since then I&#039;ve also been tracking the flood of Indonesian carvings in the NWC style that have shown up on eBay and in several fine auction house sales.</p><p><br /></p><p>In your case the 2 designs were taken from known masks published in NWC art books. </p><p>The second , front cover of In The Spirit Of Mother Earth.....1994....and the copies started to come out soon after !!!</p><p>The 1st....I&#039;ve seen this one so often....it no longer matters where it came from originally !!</p><p>That makes it easy to spot a fake, when the masks are variations of known works.</p><p>The other best way to spot a fake is the rear of the mask.</p><p>NWC carvers do not finish their masks in the smooth flat curve that Indonesians do. ( this takes a while to learn...) </p><p>The main type of off shore wood used is Albesia which has that tell tale open cell grain.</p><p>It shows up as either dots ( little spots where the grain ends) or straight broken lines which a light paint job can&#039;t hide.</p><p><br /></p><p>Sure they&#039;re great carves of the front .....but in most cases they don&#039;t properly finish the reverse.....because they never saw photo&#039;s of it &amp; don&#039;t understand or care how the back should be done !!!</p><p>( &amp; fricken YAY for that...because over the past several years certain Indonesian artists are indeed getting the design painting down to an art form....no not their art form...but the formline is getting so accurate that ( like yours...) at a glance...they do indeed look authentic..! <img src="styles/default/xenforo/smilies/mad.png" class="mceSmilie" alt=":mad:" unselectable="on" /><img src="styles/default/xenforo/smilies/eek.png" class="mceSmilie" alt=":eek:" unselectable="on" /><img src="styles/default/xenforo/smilies/frown.png" class="mceSmilie" alt=":(" unselectable="on" /><img src="styles/default/xenforo/smilies/frown.png" class="mceSmilie" alt=":(" unselectable="on" /></p><p><br /></p><p>[ATTACH=full]65078[/ATTACH] [ATTACH=full]65086[/ATTACH] </p><p><br /></p><p>These masks and carvings from Bali are everywhere.....and will continue to be a problem for honest sellers and buyers for years to come.</p><p>I have well over 1500 photo&#039;s of the fakes and new ones that I haven&#039;t seen before pop up on eBay monthly....even now I&#039;m tracking a half dozen .[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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