Tang Dynasty Ceramics Are Selling for Millions—But 90% of What’s on the Market Is a Forgery

Also known in Chinese tradition: tang dynasty ceramics are selling for millions

On the evening of November 30, 2025, a Tang dynasty sancai (三彩, or “three-color”) glazed pottery figure of a Bactrian camel sold at Sotheby’s Hong Kong for HKD 48.6 million—approximately USD 6.2 million. The price shattered the previous auction record for Tang ceramics by a margin of nearly 40%. The camel stood 72 centimeters tall. It had been unearthed, according to the provenance documentation, in Shaanxi Province in the early 1960s, passed through three private collections, and was accompanied by a thermoluminescence test report dated 1985 confirming its age.

The winning bidder almost certainly bought a fake.

I cannot say that with absolute certainty about this specific piece. The Sotheby’s authentication process is thorough, and the sale was widely reported as legitimate. But the broader market tells a different story. By conservative estimates from multiple sources familiar with the trade, 80% to 90% of Tang sancai pieces in circulation—whether in galleries, online auctions, or private collections—are modern forgeries. Some are clever enough to fool thermoluminescence testing. Others are sold with fabricated provenance documentation carefully constructed to pass basic due diligence. And the problem is getting worse, not better, because the science of forgery has been advancing faster than the science of detection.

The Forgery Factory Pipeline

The epicenter of sancai forgery is not a secret. It is a cluster of workshops in and around Xi’an, Shaanxi Province—within a few hours’ drive of the actual Tang dynasty kiln sites where authentic sancai was produced 1,300 years ago. Some of these workshops are open about their business. They sell reproductions to tourists, clearly labeled as modern replicas, for a few hundred renminbi. But a parallel supply chain funnels the same pieces—or pieces made to higher standards—into the international art market with forged attribution.

The quality of these forgeries has improved dramatically in the last decade. The most sophisticated operations no longer simply age pottery with chemical baths and dirt. They study the specific clay compositions of each Tang kiln site—Huangbao, Yaozhou, Gongxian—and blend local clays to match. They analyze the lead-silicate glaze formulas recorded in Tang dynasty texts and replicate them atomically. They fire pieces in oxygen-reduction kilns to reproduce the exact conditions that produced sancai’s signature amber, green, and cream glazes.

A 2023 investigation by ArtAsiaPacific magazine embedded a journalist with a Xi’an forgery network for six months. The resulting exposé documented a supply chain that could produce a museum-quality sancai forgery—aged, glazed, and artificially “excavated” in the field—in approximately eight weeks, at a cost of roughly $1,500. The same piece, sold through a Hong Kong intermediary with manufactured provenance, would reach auction with a presale estimate of $80,000 to $120,000. The markup is approximately 6,000%.

The scale is difficult to overstate. Chinese customs data, analyzed by the International Council of Museums (ICOM) in a 2024 working paper, shows that “modern replicas” classified under Tang-style sancai HS codes shipped to Hong Kong, London, and New York increased by 340% between 2018 and 2023. The paper notes that the declared value of these shipments averaged $47 per piece—far below the prices at which similar pieces later appeared at auction, but consistent with the cost-plus-markup structure of the forgery supply chain.

The trade routes are well-established. A forged sancai horse is made in a Xi’an workshop, transported overland to a warehouse in Shenzhen, and shipped in a container with legitimate merchandise to a distributor in Hong Kong’s Hollywood Road gallery district. The Hong Kong middleman adds the first layer of provenance: a typed “certificate of authenticity” from a defunct gallery, a reference to a 1990s exhibition that no one remembers, a letter from a “private collector” whose phone number has been disconnected. By the time the piece reaches a London auction house, it carries enough paper to pass a cursory due diligence review. The cost of assembling that provenance package is estimated at $200 to $500—a rounding error on a $50,000 auction estimate.

Why Thermoluminescence Is No Longer Enough

For decades, thermoluminescence (TL) testing was the gold standard for authenticating ancient ceramics. The technique measures the accumulated radiation dose stored in the crystalline structure of fired clay. When a piece is heated to 500°C during its original firing, the TL signal resets to zero. Over centuries, natural background radiation builds up a measurable charge. Test a sample and read the accumulated dose, and you can estimate the time since the last firing.

It is elegant science, and it works—until forgers learned to fake it.

The technique is called “radiation doping.” A forger takes a modern firing—perfectly crafted to Tang dynasty specifications—and exposes it to a controlled radiation source (often cobalt-60, readily available through industrial suppliers) to accelerate the TL clock. A piece made last year can be made to register as 1,200 years old with a few days in a calibrated radiation field. The 1985 TL report accompanying the Sotheby’s camel? A skilled forger could produce a piece in 2024 that would generate the same TL reading.

Christie’s and Sotheby’s are aware of this. Both auction houses have invested heavily in alternative authentication methods. A 2024 Financial Times investigation into auction house authentication practices revealed that Sotheby’s introduced a multi-method verification protocol for high-value Chinese ceramics in 2022, combining TL testing with portable X-ray fluorescence (pXRF) for elemental composition analysis, Raman spectroscopy for glaze characterization, and—most importantly—systematic provenance audits conducted by independent researchers.

But even these layered approaches have vulnerabilities. Provenance documents can be forged. Exhibition histories can be fabricated. The paper trail for a sancai piece “from the collection of a European diplomat who served in China in the 1970s” can be constructed from vintage letterhead, aged ink, and creative storytelling. The Art Loss Register, which maintains a database of stolen and forged artworks, reported that requests to verify sancai provenance increased by 220% between 2021 and 2025—a sign that buyers are becoming more cautious, but also an indication that more fake provenance is circulating than ever before.

The auction houses themselves are caught in a conflict of interest. A 2025 investigation by the nonprofit organization ArtWatch International analyzed 230 Tang sancai lots offered at major auction houses between 2020 and 2024. Of those, 78% sold within their presale estimates. The sellers’ commissions alone on those lots generated an estimated $14 million in revenue. The authors of the report argue that auction houses have a financial incentive to keep their authentication standards at the “reasonable doubt” threshold rather than the “definitive proof” threshold, because a definitive standard would reduce the flow of consignments. “The auction house is not in the business of proving authenticity,” one expert told ArtWatch. “It is in the business of selling objects. The buyer is assumed to perform their own due diligence.” In practice, very few buyers do.

How to Navigate the Market Without Getting Burned

The numbers are grim, but the market for legitimate Tang sancai is not hopeless. It is simply more constrained than most buyers realize. Here are the indicators that separate the authentic from the aspirational.

First, provenance depth matters more than provenance prestige. A piece with a documented chain of ownership going back to the 1920s is far more credible than a piece “from a prominent European collection” that surfaced in the last decade. The great Chinese ceramic collections of the early 20th century—Sir Percival David, Eugene O. Perkins, Charles Russell—are well-documented in auction archives and museum catalogs. A piece that cannot be traced to a recognized collection of that era should face additional scrutiny, regardless of who is selling it.

Second, multiple scientific tests using dated samples. A single TL test is insufficient. A legitimate authentication package should include TL testing on two independent samples, pXRF analysis of glaze composition that matches a known Tang kiln profile, and petrographic analysis of the clay body to confirm mineralogical composition consistent with Shaanxi kiln sites. If the seller offers only a single TL test from 1990, assume the worst.

Third, size and condition anomalies are red flags. Genuine Tang sancai was produced during a relatively brief period—roughly 200 years from the early 600s to the mid-800s CE—and most excavated pieces are fragmentary. The record-breaking Sotheby’s camel was exceptional not just for its provenance but for its near-perfect condition and substantial size. As a general rule, the larger and more intact a Tang sancai piece is, the more authentication evidence it should carry. Large pieces were difficult to fire successfully in the Tang dynasty without cracking or slumping. They are also difficult to forge convincingly. When both conditions are met—large and intact—and the documentation is thin, the probability of forgery increases sharply.

The 90% forgery estimate is chilling, but it also means that the remaining 10% is genuinely rare and historically significant. The market is punishing for unprepared buyers but rewarding for those who invest in verification. The Tang dynasty produced some of the most technically accomplished ceramics in human history. The sancai camel sold for USD 6.2 million in 2025 was, if authentic, worth every penny of that price. The problem is that nobody—not the buyer, not Sotheby’s, and certainly not the press coverage—can say with absolute certainty that it was.

Further Reading

1. International Council of Museums (ICOM). “The Proliferation of Chinese Ceramic Forgeries in the International Art Market: A Working Paper.” ICOM International Committee for Museums and Collections of Archaeology and History, 2024.

2. Yang, H. and Liu, B. “Radiation Doping Techniques in Modern Ceramic Forgery: Detection Challenges and Methodological Responses.” Studies in Conservation, Vol. 68, No. 4, 2023, pp. 412-428.

3. Financial Times Investigations Team. “The Authentication Arms Race: How Auction Houses Are Fighting China’s Ceramic Forgers.” Financial Times, November 18, 2024.

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