Cranfield and Bonhams have inaugurated a joint forensic science research project to bring authentication techniques into the new millennium.
The new Cranfield/Bonhams collaboration combines major advances in the ability to identify ever-smaller proportions of trace elements, with essentially non-invasive sampling, associated with identifying a coherent range of authentic objects to provide the core data.
This will be particularly useful in the field of Chinese art which has become one of the hottest sectors of the global art market in recent years, and nowhere more so than in the demand for fine antique porcelain. While prices for the finest Imperial porcelain have soared, so have the ambitions of highly accomplished fakers, seeking to infiltrate spectacular new fakes into a market feverish for top quality material. Technology exists to distinguish scientifically the genuine treasures from the fakes, but the technology normally used is over forty years old, invasive, and no longer entirely trustworthy.
