The well-heeled collector had been seeking a museum-grade Shino-ware chawan from the Momoyama period (late 16th-century) for years. He pounced when the chawan of his dreams became available through a trusted gallery for about $100,000. The happy collector delighted in drinking tea and even saké several times a day from his new acquisition.
Our collector looked forward eagerly to showing off his chawan to an acquaintance known as an expert judge of pottery. Alas, he was utterly unprepared for the devastating adjudication that ensued. “It’s a copy,” decreed the acquaintance, “from the late Edo period (mid-19th century).”
The collector was, of course, despondent. But let us recognize his disappointment as the unnecessary result of two fundamental errors. One, the collector erred in his obsession with the Momoyama period. He had focused more on the assurance of a slice in time rather than on the physical reality of the chawan. That left him vulnerable to the gallery’s misrepresentation of the work’s history. Two, the collector had allowed the judgment decreed by the acquaintance to affect his perception of his prized possession. He had externalized, in other words, his aesthetic values.
Let us take careful note of what changed and what didn’t change through the foregoing sequence of events. The collector’s feelings toward the chawan changed profoundly and for dubious reasons. That change exposes the fraudulence of his ostensible perceptions and values. The chawan, on the other hand, changed not an iota. It was faithful throughout to its true identity. What is fake in this example, is not the chawan but the collector.
