RED CHINA: Selling the Heirlooms

Although Red China law strictly forbids the export of antiques, the Communist government itself conducts a thriving, surreptitious trade in ancient objets d’art. It does so through an organization called the Peking Arts and Crafts Co., which commands high prices for bronzes and porcelain slipped out to selected dealers in Hong Kong and Europe. Included last week in the latest selection of mainland art wares showing up in Hong Kong shops was a sizable portion of loot from Tibet. For $50 and up, customers could choose from dozens of gilded bronze temple statues of Buddha, silver Tibetan chalices and ornately carved coral bracelets. Many were the kind of things Tibetans use in daily life and worship, and obviously had not been willingly surrendered.

In Stockholm a much more impressive haul from China sat in a customs shed. It was a treasure hoard picked up in Peking by Nils Nessim, 43, a Swedish carpet dealer and importer. On a previous trip to Red China last year he had bought only modern carpets, ivory and porcelain. This time, taken down winding Peking streets to out-of-the-way antique shops, Nessim said he had stumbled onto a marvelous bronze figure of a six-armed, three-faced god crowned with a headdress of flames, excitedly asked if he might buy it. Told that he might, Nessim realized he was getting an official green light, started off on a buying spree.

Within the next two weeks he spent several hundred thousand dollars for 2,127 items, including 250 pieces from the Ming dynasty (A.D. 1368-1644), 30 rare objects from the Sung period (A.D. 960-1279), more than 1,800 fine 18th and 19th century hand-woven silk carpets, many ivory, jade, bronze and wood figures, porcelain bowls. Some, but not all, were museum pieces.

Nessim insists that he got his collection out through some bureaucratic error, but his Chinese export permit looked official enough. Presumably the Chinese Reds agreed to sell some of the family heirlooms simply because they needed the money for foreign exchange.