Arthur Houghton III Cannot Recall...

Arthur Houghton III (or a sock puppet imitating him) on Peter Tompa's blog writes as insultingly as ever of the lawyer's "friend in Poland" on Bulgarian fakes:

The Bulgarians are good at fakes. Your friend in Poland couldn't tell the difference of course. But then who cares? Fakes are cultural property too, no? To your undistinguished commentator in Poland it's all the same.

Not all of us can swan our way through life on Daddy's money and family connections. And if, instead of working for a living, I was in such a privileged position, I would certainly hope that my upbringing would prevent me from taunting others less fortunate in that regard. It appears to me that this is a life skill the arrogant Arthur Houghton III did not acquire. He ends totally off-topic:

I'm trying to recall if he's decided the fake griffin is real or not. That wouldn't matter much to him either. Archaeology, like art, is what one says it is.

I first expressed my thoughts on this blog about the gawky and wooden style of the Queens' Rhyton in mid June 2010, and a click on the word "rhyton" in the search box at the top of this page would jog Mr Houghton's faulty memory as to whether I have since changed my mind.  Not that I'd expect Mr Houghton to recall any of that, he seems too busy wrapped up in himself and his own self-aggrandisement to pay much attention to anything anyone else might say. Arthur Brand has a teaser for Mr Houghton: 

I promised name of faker of joke of the year: Chalice that broke #nuclear deal is #FAKE. Maker? Saeedi from London pic.twitter.com/Hkb30c0XHl

That's quite a common surname. So, if that is true, it is a shame that his much-vaunted gubn'mint connections in Washington did not listen to the third Arthur Houghton (Director of the American Cultural Property Research Institute) and sent the vessel "back" to Iran rather than the UK. This object  reportedly sold for $950000 to somebody I am sure Mr-Name-dropper will tell us he was sipping cocktails with the other week. If it left the UK, where is the UK export licence for it? It either needs one as an archaeological object or a category 15 antique worth more than £ 43,484 (which is what it was later imported into the US as). But then the US has no cultural property MOU with fellow Convention state party UK.

Once again we see the consequences of the superficial and introverted US approach to international dodgy dealings in antiquities. To satisfy their ambitions, it was enough to "repatriate" the object, and not to collaborate with other authorities investigate the chain of transactions which led to its attempted illicit import into the US. Had they done that, they might well have found that the chain does not go back to Iran at all. 

Vignette: Glassworks, people working for a living for small-minded one-percent fat cats who apparently think little of the working man.