ART DEALER FINDS HIS FABERGE IS A FAKE
Nick Britten
Daily Telegraph
27/06/2008
UK
An international art dealer who thought he was the owner of a £10
million Faberge egg received a nasty surprise when a High Court judge
told him it was nothing of the sort.
Michel Kamidian said the silver gilt and nephrite egg was the "crown
of my jewels" and claimed the piece was created by Carl Faberge and
one of only 50 "Imperial" Faberge eggs in existence.
However, a judge has ruled it wasn’t a Faberge and only worth
£100,000.
And he pointed out that Mr Kamidian did not know more than experts
at Sotherby’s and other dealers who had not spotted it as a Faberge.
The judge’s comments came at the end of a long-running trial during
which Mr Kamidian sought millions of pounds in compensation for the
damage done to his treasure while it was being shipped to an exhibition
in America in 2001.
He said the egg, which he claimed was the "Dr Metzger Egg Clock",
was already worth US$2.5 million when he sent it off to America
undamaged in July 2000.
He told the judge that, when he bought the egg at a Sotheby’s auction
for $105,000 (£50,000) in 1991, it was "obvious to him" from the
moment the moment he saw it that it was a genuine Faberge piece and
that the auction house had "made a mistake in failing to attribute
it appropriately".
However, Mr Justice Tomlinson told him there was "compelling" evidence
that the egg was not the master’s work, he said it would have been
"surprising" had Sotheby’s experts and other dealers who attended
the 1991 auction "failed to spot a hitherto unknown masterpiece".
He added: "My conclusion in the light of the evidence deployed at
the trial is that the Dr Metzger Egg Clock is not by Faberge".
The court heard the egg had lain un-repaired in a safe deposit box
ever since March 2001, when it came back to London damaged after the
"World of Faberge" exhibition in Wilmington, Delaware.
He said Armenian-born Mr Kamidian’s "own subjective belief" about the
egg’s provenance was simply "irrelevant" to the issue of whether it
was really a genuine Faberge.
And the judge added: "I think it very unlikely that Mr Kamidian can
really have thought in 1991 that he knew better than the experts at
Sotheby’s, or indeed better than every other dealer who attended the
auction in Geneva."
He ruled that Mr Kamidian, an American, was due only £1,000 from
the exhibition’s organisers to fund repairs to the piece.
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From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress
