While it appears that Joseph
Tang got away with a lot, it
could have been much worse - he
never dealt in really pricy
violins ($250,000 and above),
though perhaps he did want to
get to that top tier. His
downfall came as a result of his
effort to fool everyone all the
time. Tang should have known it
cannot be done. Many people are
attracted to beautiful
masterpieces, be they paintings
or violins or jewels or books or
furniture. Some take that
appreciation for beauty to the
level of an obsession. They
will do almost anything (that
does not involve violence) to
acquire a masterpiece – one or
several. There are many forgers
too, who are gifted at
replicating exact copies of
instruments or paintings or
anything worth the trouble.
They sell the copies in lieu of
the originals or simply
fabricate new works (forgeries)
and masterfully antique them.
Elmyr de Hory, David Stein, and
Han van Meegeren were three such
artists. They fooled the
world’s greatest experts. This
is, of course, the key. If you
can’t fool an expert, then
what’s the point? Imagine
discovering an old manuscript by
Vivaldi or Bach or Mozart. Who
would authenticate it? No one
would call Jean Baptiste
Vuillaume a forger, though he
could replicate a violin so
perfectly even the owner could
not tell the difference. As
early as 1685, none other than
Tomasso Antonio Vitali (the
assumed composer of the famous
Chaconne in g minor – the
authenticity of the piece itself
is very much in question)
claimed to have been fooled by a
violin dealer, Francesco
Capilupi. He purchased what was
supposed to be a Nicolo Amati
violin which turned out to
really be a Francesco Ruggieri.
The dealer had placed a false
label right on top of the real
one and Vitali claimed he paid
four times as much as the violin
was really worth because he
thought it was an Amati.
(Interestingly, today, those
violins are of almost equal
value.) Nonetheless, labels are
not the only things that can be
faked - well-trained violin
makers can
artificially distress the
varnish, simulate wear patterns,
insert neck grafts for purported
proof of conversion from baroque
fingerboards and necks to a more
modern neck length, and create
strategically placed repaired
cracks with interior studs and
patches. In 1997 and 1999, the
estate of Englishman Gerald
Segelman (who died in 1992,
leaving a large collection of
rare violins), alleged that
several violin dealers and
investors defrauded Segelman's
charitable trust by providing
low appraisals of the
instruments (in the collection)
before purchasing them from the
estate, then selling the
instruments to one another at
steep markups. Some of the
transactions involved highly
reputable dealers in London and
Chicago (who need to remain
anonymous.) The estate claimed
that investors made six and
seven-figure profits on
individual Segelman instruments.
In one instance, one dealer
allegedly acquired a Guarnerius
violin from Segelman for
$950,000 and quickly resold it
for $2.3 million. Shortly after
the start of the London trial in
2001, one dealer settled,
agreeing to pay the estate $4.5
million. By 2004, every single
case had been settled
out of court. Nobody pled
guilty and nobody went to jail.
However, not every case of this
sort has a happy ending.
In
November, 2008, a violin teacher
in Rome who was caught selling
fake antique violins to his
students for vast sums, hanged
himself in his apartment.
Sergei Dyachenko, the teacher,
had already confessed that he
had bought violins at a flea
market in Rome and sold them to
his students at hundreds of
times their true value. One of
his students had bought a violin
from him for $830,000. Dyachenko
claimed the instrument had been
made in Italy in 1784. Experts
found that the violin was a much
newer German model, worth only
$3,800. In addition to all this
chicanery,
there are also several
very valuable stolen violins out
there which have never been
recovered. When a valuable
instrument is stolen, the
insurance company will cover the
loss but it will never forget.
Such a thing occurred when the
famous
Gibson Stradivarius (1713)
was located in 1987, after
having been stolen in 1936. The
insurance company initially paid
the owner $30,000 for the loss
but, in 1987, again had to pay a
$263,000 finder’s fee in order
to acquire it. They could have
paid a lot more but they
didn’t. In 1988, after the
instrument had undergone some
minor repairs, the company sold
it for $1.2 million. In 2001,
violinist
Joshua Bell paid $4 million
for it. Had Joseph Tang worked
himself up to this level of
dealing, he may well have made
himself a fortune. Instead, he
decided to cheat a little girl
out of $1,250.