Precision stone vases as modern fakes? Host argues cost, tooling and provenance say no

▶

Key facts

• Making the vases as they are today would take five-axis CNC machines grinding granite, at very high cost
• Plain stone vases were worth little on the 1960s to 1980s antiquities market, so such costly forgery would not pay
• A forger working for profit could have turned out imprecise copies from an ordinary lathe shop, and nobody was doing precision metrology on the vases until recently
• The vases show subtle mathematical design and a radial traversal pattern
• Lug-handled vases have complex geometry that cannot be made on a lathe alone; the host says evidence suggests a machine with five axes of freedom
• Even the least provenanced vases have histories back to the 1980s or the 1960s, before computer-controlled five-axis mills

← All stories

AI-generated text · images from the original sources · always verify with the sources.