The identification of bronze artifacts is still a very important work until now
Since the end of the Qing Dynasty, the bronze artifacts that were spread overseas first involved some work of distinguishing counterfeits, which was once a significant activity in Europe and America. The Flier Museum of Art in the United States has a Zichan Bird Statue, which is the size of a real bird. Its mouth can be opened, and there is a buckle on its neck that can be rotated 90 degrees to remove. Due to the beautifully crafted details, even Americans cannot believe it is true and have always regarded it as a fake.
Starting from the 1930s, scholars began to analyze artifacts from the perspective of metal composition. In the 1950s, it was recognized that Chinese bronze ware was made of a ternary alloy of copper, lead, and tin, while many counterfeit bronze ware in the late Qing Dynasty used brass containing zinc. Between the 1950s and 1960s, the Flier Museum of Art established its first laboratory in the museum, and one of their major tasks was to test the composition of bronze ware. If the composition was copper, lead, and tin, then the thing was real, very simple and effective. After they tested the bird statue of Zichanong, they finally dared to believe that it was a real cultural relic.
In addition, it is to distinguish from the casting method. Previous Western scholars, especially the British, believed that Chinese bronzes were so complicated that they must be made by the Lost-wax casting that Westerners were familiar with. Therefore, this was also the mainstream view of the West before the 1960s. But after many laboratory studies, American scholars discovered that Chinese bronze ware was cast using the block mold method.
The identification of bronze artifacts is still a very important work to this day. There is a Nelson Atkins Museum of Art in Central United States. In the 1940s, it collected a square Gui with patterns much like a face. The operator of the museum sent the photos to Chen Mengjia, an outstanding scholar who studies bronze in China. When Chen Mengjia saw the patterns like human faces, he thought the objects were fake, but said the inscriptions on them were good. Therefore, the museum believes that this artifact belongs to the Song Dynasty. Until around 2010, a Chinese scholar named Lai Guolong investigated the Songgui distributed around the world. When he heard that this museum had Songgui, he went to investigate. He took an X-ray photograph of the object, and also did a Thermoluminescence test on the soil inside the Gui. He also sent the photos to some scholars in China, who felt that such a strange thing must be fake. When I saw it at the museum, I said it was real, but the director of the China department at the time didn't believe me because I was still a young man at that time. I judged it to be true back then because there was a bell at the bottom of the object, and the bell had to be repeatedly cast to become a shape. However, modern people cannot imitate the casting technology well. From the X-ray photos, it can also be seen that there are casting marks on the two ears of the object. Finally, the Thermoluminescence test also determined that the Gui was true, and it was finally placed in the display cabinet.
I personally believe that the identification of bronze ware mainly needs to be understood from a technical perspective, especially for some decorative items. Professor Lai Guolong studied another Song Gui, which was judged to be from the late Western Zhou Dynasty based on its decorative patterns. He also sent me X-ray photos, and I judged it to be true based on the casting process and decorative patterns. However, he told me it was fake. Because the Thermoluminescence test of Fan Tu in the ear only lasted for more than 100 years, which coincided with the end of the Qing Dynasty and the beginning of the Republic of China. But after laboratory composition analysis, the lid and body of this Gui are all made of copper, lead, and tin alloys. Therefore, there is still no definitive judgment on whether this artifact is true or not.
There is a phenomenon in the identification of cultural relics, which is the appearance of some special types of artifacts that have never been seen by the appraiser, and are considered fake, such as the piece of gui that resembles a human face. Once identified as false, it means there is a possibility of causing the loss of a very important and even valuable state-owned property.
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