Insightful Tips on How to Avoid Misleading Chinese Facsimile
01 mei 2020 
3 min. read

Insightful Tips on How to Avoid Misleading Chinese Facsimile

In the last couple of years we have got countless inquiries regarding some books that display these Chinese erotic paintings. I have noticed that many buyers of these books assume they obtained original works. But I am afraid that these are all fake Chinese facsimile and in the video below you can check out some examples that show up again and again.

One useful tip is to look at the price! Often they are offered by Chinese sellers at ridiculously low prices ($9.99 or best offer). Also, they give little to no information except for their headlines that include misleading terms such as ‘ancient paintings’ or ‘old book’. All paintings are unique and these facsimiles are produced constantly. In their ads it says for instance: 7 available sold/6 available.

Remember that authentic Chinese erotic paintings are rare and the real good ones are even rarer!

Click the full screen button to check out the books of this ‘unlucky buyer’ …

I have included this post to refer future buyers of these types of books when they inquire about authenticity.

You can check out some new authentic 19th century Chinese erotic paintings (available in our gallery) on the following page….!!

Do you also have bad experiences with these kind of Chinese facsimiles or other examples? Leave your feedback in the comment box below…!!

About the author
Marijn is the founder of shungagallery.com. With more than 20 years of experience within the sensual and erotic art of shunga he is an authority in the genre. During this time he served many customers with complementing their art collection.
Dave
By

Dave

on 01 May 2020

Not quite the same Quality is a fair comment I think.....!

Marijn
By

Marijn

on 01 May 2020

Thanks Dave! These are just copied pages from printed books.

JB
By

JB

on 01 May 2020

Marijn, it was about time a post about this showed up. These fake Shunga books are selling for ridiculous prices on almost all auction platforms, from eBay to CATAWIKI, Invaluable, etc., and the quality varies also, but mostly, they are trash. There are some give aways: first, they all have the characters 春宫图 on the cover. Second, they have very thick pages, made of a material/board that's modern. Third, they have the corners filed/rounded and the edges also rounded to look as if worn-out. The Chinese are masters at faking and copying, both with quality and lack of it, and these are poor quality (I have seen one or two I would not mind having,) but mostly all are garbage. They are being produced en masse these days, as are fake Japanese netsukes, etc. This is a fait-divers and does not pertain to Shunga per se, but some "fakes" out there are amazing; a traditional Chinese painting on so called "rice paper" or "xuanzhi" i.e., Xuan paper, can be lifted double and remounted. And voila, you have two "originals" so to speak. I am not sure there are any master mounting artisans alive today capable of this feat though (but back in the 1980s there were some at Rong Bao Zhai in Beijing when I visited their workshop...) These, and woodblock printed reproductions are amazing, but I've never seen any 春花 woodblock prints out of China. Their erotica seems to always be hand painted.

Marijn
By

Marijn

on 01 May 2020

Thanks for your extensive reaction and additional info JB. You're absolutely right. ancient Chinese erotica is always hand painted or carved,

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