Q. How can you tell a genuine work from a fake?

A. Judging whether a work is genuine takes long experience, and it is hard to say in a sentence what the judgement rests on. What we can set out are the rules by which works of art actually change hands in the trade.

■ Modern painting, craft and sculpture

Besides the work itself, there are things a piece needs in order to circulate as genuine. They are these.

Tomobako
the artist’s own box
For a modern nihonga hanging scroll, for craft work and for sculpture, one of the things a piece needs in order to circulate as genuine is a tomobako — a storage box inscribed by the artist. Sometimes the inscription is written not by the artist but by a pupil or a descendant, and in that case it carries somewhat less weight.
Tomoshiiru
the artist’s own label
With framed modern nihonga it is usual to find a tomoshiiru — a label written by the artist — pasted to the back of the frame.
Signature, rakkan and seal
It matters a great deal that the signature (on a yoga painting) or the rakkan signature and seal (on a nihonga painting) within the work are beyond doubt the artist’s own.
Certificate of authentication
For modern painting, both yoga and nihonga, a number of well-known artists have an authority — a person or a body — empowered to issue a certificate of authentication. Be careful, though: a certificate issued by someone who is not recognised as the appointed authenticator will be of no use when the work is bought or sold.

For modern works of art, one or more of these — the tomobako, the tomoshiiru, the signature, the rakkan, the certificate — is enough to secure the piece as genuine for the purposes of trade. Where the box or the signature is in order and the painting itself is convincing, a certificate is not necessarily needed to sell the work; where the judgement is a finer one, the certificate becomes the passport it has to travel on.

Note: where a work we are showing comes with a tomobako, a tomoshiiru or a certificate, we say so in the details of the piece.

■ Older art

For work made before the end of the Edo period there is no body issuing certificates that carry weight in the trade. Here the judgement rests on the look of the work alone. It is a world in which you have only your own eye to go on — and your eye for which dealer in older art is to be trusted.

A tomobako or a certificate can itself be a forgery. However convincing the papers that come with a work, no one can say it is beyond doubt without an eye for the box and the certificate as well. In the end, what matters most in buying and selling is to find a dealer who is worth your trust and who has the eye, and to talk it over with them.

For our part, we work at it day by day, so that you may come to us as a dealer worth trusting.