Seattle shop investigation

SEATTLE - The Washington State attorney general's office is investigating a fashionable downtown Seattle antique shop after claims that expensive Chinese antiques sold by the establishment turned out to be fakes.

In a copyright story, the Seattle Times reported one of its writers had purchased a teapot and a tile from Thesaurus Fine Arts and, after reviewing results of subsequent independent tests conducted at the publication's request, concluded the items were worth only a fraction of their selling prices.

"Our first tip came from Dr. Brian Jacobs, who returned some fakes (to Thesaurus Arts) last year and filed complaints with law enforcement authorities, who did nothing," said award-winning investigative journalist Duff Wilson, who initially blew the lid off the case with the help of several colleagues at the Times.

Upon being confronted with the evidence the newspaper had amassed, Steven Ng Sheong Cheung, who initially denied any financial interest in the shop but has since admitted to co-owning it, insisted the pieces in question were legitimate antiques. He suggested the Seattle Times or a mailing service used to send the items to two leading laboratories must have refired the objects, which could alter the readings that indicate when they were made. "Somebody did that to frame Thesaurus," Cheung told the Times. "This is fraud to do that. This is a crime."

Thesaurus Fine Arts opened in the summer of 1998 in Seattle's Pioneer Square. The gallery sells contemporary paintings but specializes in antiquities and currently offers a number of items for sale on e`Bay.

The Times said its reporter (Wilson), who identified himself by name but did not say he was a journalist, went into Thesaurus last fall and paid $1,900 for a ceramic teapot purportedly from the Tang Dynasty and $315 for a pottery tile supposedly from the Ming Dynasty.

Both pieces came with 'certificates of authenticity' from scientific testing laboratories in Hong Kong, the newspaper said.

But three experts enlisted by the Times said they did not believe the pieces were authentic, and two testing laboratories said the items were no more than 130 years old and might even be new.

The laboratories - Oxford Authentication in England, a world leader in its field; and Daybreak Archaeometric Laboratory in Guilford, Conn., which has done testing for the Metropolitan Museum of Art and more than 900 other clients - used a procedure called thermoluminescence, or TL, testing. It is similar to carbon-dating and determines the age of ceramics and pottery by measuring the radiation absorbed since the last high-temperature firing.

"As soon as I saw them, I knew they were fake," said Doreen Stoneham of Oxford Authentication. She said her tests showed they were each less than 100 years old and possibly new. The newspaper also sought the opinions of three Asian art experts in the Seattle area, who concurred with the findings.

As this issue was going to press, news had broken that the Justice Department had charged Thesaurus Fine Arts' co-owner Steven Cheung - who, as it turns out, is also a prominent Asian economist and former University of Washington professor - and his wife Linda Cheung with "conspiracy to defraud the United States by failing to report millions of dollars in income from Hong Kong parking lots and other businesses." AntiqueWeek will continue to follow this story as it unfolds.

Catherine Saunders-Watson

Associated Press contributed