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Forgery is the process of making or adapting objects or documents (see false document), with the intention to deceive. Copies, studio replicas, and reproductions are not considered forgeries, though they may later become forgeries through knowing and willful mis-attributions. In the 16th century imitators of Albrecht Dürer's style of printmaking improved the market for their own prints by signing them "AD", making them forgeries. In the 20th century the art market made forgeries highly profitable. There are widespread forgeries of especially valued artists, such as drawings meant to be by Picasso, Klee, and Matisse.
This usage of 'forgery' does not derive from metalwork done at a 'forge', but it has a parallel history. A sense of "to counterfeit" is already in the Anglo-French verb forger "falsify."
Forgery is one of the techniques of fraud, including identity theft. Forgery is one of the threats that have to be addressed by security engineering.
A forgery is essentially concerned with a produced or altered object. Where the prime concern of a forgery is less focused on the object itself— what it is worth or what it "proves"— than on a tacit statement of criticism that is revealed by the reactions the object provokes in others, then the larger process is a hoax. In a hoax, a cultural meme, such as a rumor, or a genuine object "planted" in a concocted situation, may substitute for a forged physical object.
1 Topics in forgery
- Archaeological forgeryArchaeological forgery is a manufacture of supposedly ancient items that are sold to the antiquities market and may even end up in the collections of museums. It is related to art forgery. A string of archeological forgeries have usually followed news of
- Discoveries of Shinichi Fujimura
- James OssuaryJames Ossuary is an urn that was found in Israel in 2002 and was claimed to have been the ossuary of James, the brother of Jesus Christ. Its provenance is now in serious doubt and it is considered a modern forgery. It was closely followed by Jehoash Inscr
- Piltdown ManPiltdown Man Eoanthropus dawsoni was a hoax which was perpetrated, possibly by Charles Dawson and/or others, on paleontologists from November 1912 until its exposure in 1953. Dawson claimed to have discovered an ancient hominid skull in Piltdown quarry, n
- Moses ShapiraMoses Shapira ( 1830- 1884) was a Jerusalem antiquities dealer and purveyor of fake biblical artifacts. Moses Wilhelm Shapira was born in 1830 to Polish- Jewish parents in Kamenets-Podolski, which at the time was part of Russian-annexed Poland (in modern-
- Tiara of Saitapharne , Louvre
- Lady of ElcheThe famous but controversial Lady of Elche (the Museo Arqueologico Nacional, Madrid, calls her "enigmatica"), is a polychrome stone bust that was revealed as found by chance at La Alcudia an archaeological site that was on a private estate about 2 km, sou
- See also Kensington runestoneThe Kensington runestone is a roughly rectangular slab of greywacke, 30 by 16 by 6 in and weighing about 200 lb (90 kg) covered in runes found in Kensington, Minnesota in 1898. Supposedly, it proves that Viking explorers were able to penetrate nearly half controversy
- Art forgeryArt forgery means creating and especially selling works of art that are falsely attributed to be work of other, usually more famous artists. History Copying of famous works has happened from the time immemorial. Roman sculptors produced copies of Greek sc
- Literary forgery - these literary forgeries all had some affect on the course of cultural history. Other literary forgeries, such as the Hitler diaries, briefly achieve wide notoriety, without affecting subsequent history; they are brought together as literary hoax es.
- Relic forgery - It is not the efficacy of a relic that is in question, but only its provenance.
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