Photo Fake Inside Painted "Portrait" Snuff Bottles

Hi George and Joey,

I was under no illusions when I was actually bidding for 3 of the bottles that they were not genuine bottles by the artists that the signatures on the bottles suggested they were by but as the prices were low and they held some interest to me I bought them as much to be able to study them as anything else. All 6 that I bought will stay in my growing collection, certainly for the time being anyway, because they don't owe me much money wise and have varying appeal even if that appeal may be as examples of fakes.

The portrait bottle is perhaps the most disappointing bottle to me because it is an example of intended deception and yet the work involved in producing it and methods employed take some time and skill. The people who made it hoped to be rewarded with a price paid that was higher than the work and skill justified which is when it matters but as I paid little for it expecting it to be fake then the deception matters less. It does however point to worrying developments in the use of some photographic method of deception as highlighted in the other thread.

The Horse and Buffalo bottles disappoint in a different way, I am disappointed for the artists that painted them because they deserved a better bottle and I intend to keep polishing them until the outside of the glass is clear which it still isn't. You see cheap tourist fodder on offer on ebay in better bottles with very basic painting inside up at prices that are not justified.

The point of my initial post was to give another example of a photo faked bottle and I will zoom in with a macro lens to look closely at it in detail. As suggested by George, there is painting added to eyebrows for example to "add" to the deception and looking inside the bottle with a loupe shows those black lines clearly. In normal IP the detail of black lines is added first and if a flesh tone was painted for the face it would lightly cover the detail line and dull the intensity of the black detail which isn't the case in these bottles.

Regards, Adrian.