PUBLIC LECTURE: UWA Albany Skywest Series Lecture

Imagine spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on an antique porcelain vase at auction, only to discover it was a fake.

With pieces of Oriental porcelain regularly fetching high prices at auction, the past decade has seen a dramatic increase in the production of forgeries and black market trade of imitation antiquities. The sophistication and skill of forgers has reached a level where, using traditional appraisal by eye and hand, even the most experienced specialist is often unable to distinguish between a genuine and fraudulent piece. There is a need for a robust scientific method that can be used to assist in authenticating ceramic artefacts.

Emma Bartle will discuss a newly developed method that uses a combination of lasers, chemistry and fingerprints to authenticate South-East Asian ceramic artefacts. Several case studies will be presented, including a recent case involving the controversial sale of two “authentic” artefacts recovered from a shipwreck along the Indonesian coast.

Emma Bartle has a Bachelor of Forensic and Analytical Chemistry from Curtin University and a Masters in Forensic Science from UWA. Her current PhD thesis is titled “Provenance establishment and authentication of South-East Asian ceramics using laser ablation-inductively coupled plasma-mass spectrometry (LA-ICP-MS)”. Emma Bartle holds a lecturing position within the discipline of Chemistry at UWA in Perth and co-ordinates the Chemistry unit at the UWA Albany Centre.