Occasionally i find looking at museum & auction sites online helps train my eye when it comes to shopping for old metal work.There's some superb reproductions (and forgeries) out there-but it might make your choices a bit more educated.
As long as there are no forgeries in the museum. Unfortunately many museum do house forgeries. It is better to take a look at the sites posted in this thread: https://www.antiquers.com/threads/fake-antiquities-warning-sites.65021/ Some of those sites also show how museum items were forged. Notorious forgeries are many of the Luristan bronzes, even in museums. Some of those are made up of different ancient components to create a travesty of Luristan symbolism, others are 100% modern fantasy pieces that have been artificially aged. That said, the Bastet from the British Museum which you posted is a stunner.
You're spot on AJ-The Getty & many other museums have forgeries in their collections. The Bastet's one of our faves-although i can say positively,we'll never take one of cats to the 'piercing parlor' ! PS-The 'Collectors Antiquities' site's amazing.I was going to buy a shabti,they're relatively cheap,ancient and fun (& cheaper than a cleaning person). Little did i know the depth of this sites info-amazing resource. I'll click on yr other links too-thanks.
