A new horse

At dinner last night I causally mentioned that "I bought a new horse today."   It certainly got John's attention.  I enjoyed watching his jaw drop, and then told him the horse was in a box in the living room. My new horse was an impulse purchase at the Dragon Traders Asian Showroom in Georgetown, near the Museum of History and Industry warehouse.  I had a few minutes to kill before going in to work, and hey-- there's always time for a quick shopping spree.

He looks old, but of course he's a fake.  A nice fake, though. If he was a real 8th century Tang Dynasty statue, he would be worth upwards of $100,000, according to Antiques Roadshow.  The ceramic horse was a "tomb figure" in the Tang Dynasty, representing the wealth and prosperity of the dead body.  So keeping horses was expensive back then (some things never change) and you used them to show off after you died. As in: I'm dead now, but once I was rich enough to own a horse.

Here's a picture I found of the original antique on display at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston.  I think the ceramic "artist" did a pretty good job copying and reproducing the glaze. There's probably a huge sweatshop somewhere in China making knock-off horses by the thousands.    

My horse looks older than the antique, but he is obviously new (he still had some pottery crumbs rattling around inside.) Sometimes the auction houses and buyers can't tell the difference, and there have been local art scandals with Asian antiquities selling at an all time high. As we know, the Chinese are very good at copying. Sotheby's says they have every ceramic sold checked by at least five experts first. While decorative fakes abound, they say truly dangerous fakes are rare.  My fake is not the "dangerous" kind, and he's probably worth exactly what I paid.  But I like him.