Thursday, 3 November 2016

From the Times


Ummm, mainly the dodgy bit. Here the onus is on the "reason to suspect", but in fact ANY artefact on the tainted and shady antiquities market without any verifiable collecting history in itself should be treated as suspect. If a responsible dealer (ie one who takes responsibility for his or her stock) cannot document that it is kosher, then that artefact quite obviously should not be in his/her stock. It is as simple as that, Mr Garnier.

Actually, in that last bit, he is utterly wrong; a conviction for handling dodgy goods seems (as we have seen) to do NO damage in the collecting world to a dealer's reputation. It confirms that the artefacts handled by this guy are indeed genuine, authentic. That is what run-of-the-mill collectors want confirmed, not that they are of licit origins; most of them - unfortunately - do not give a tinkers about that. So let us not worry about such a 'market' being damaged by new legislation, let us see about cleaning up that market and changing the attitudes of its denizens by removing social approval for the dodgy activities.

UPDATE
and already a lobbyist for the no-questions-asked market promotes the non-argument:
1 godz.1 godzinę temu
Peter Tompa podał/a dalej Ivan Macquisten
Concerns raised about new UK legislation.
and as alwways, HE is welcome HERE to get HIS point across (he blocks me from his own scandal-mongering and snipey blogette).
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2 comments:

  1. David Gill9 November 2016 at 15:29

    Sir Edward Garnier misses the point. The Bill passing through Parliament expects an enhanced due diligence process from those involved in the trade. There are continuing concerns about the way that so-called illicit antiquities continue to surface on the market. The archaeological contribution to the APPG in advance of the Bill made this very clear.

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  2. Paul Barford9 November 2016 at 19:27

    and the US lobbyist prefers sniping to a exchange of views and viewpoints thus chickened out of discussing the issue here. Nevertheless this is Britain and US lobbyists really have no say in what other countries 'should' be doing - no matter how much they think they are 'entitled' to stand judge over us all. The convention and agreements on the import, export and transfer of ownership of cultural property arenthere to promote collaboration between nations, not to support a US-based division and dominance.

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