From the BBC, June 6:
In the early 2010s, two ornate chairs said to have once belonged on the grounds of the Palace of Versailles appeared on the French antiques market.
Thought to be the most expensive chairs made for Marie Antoinette, the last queen of France's Ancien Régime, they were stamped with the seal of Nicolas-Quinibert Foliot, a celebrated cabinet maker who worked in Paris in the 1700s.
A significant find, the pair were declared "national treasures" by the French government in 2013, at the request of Versailles.
The palace, which displays such items in its vast museum collection, expressed an interest in buying the chairs but the price was deemed too dear.
They were instead sold to Qatari Prince Mohammed bin Hamad Al Thani for an eye-watering €2m (£1.67m).
A remarkable number of items of 18th Century royal furniture have appeared on the antiques market in the past few years.
Other items included another set of chairs purported to have sat in one of Marie Antoinette's chambers in Versailles; a separate pair said to have belonged to Madame du Barry, King Louis XV's mistress; the armchair of King Louis XVI's sister, Princess Élisabeth; and a pair of ployants – or stools – that belonged to the daughter of King Louis XV, Princess Louise Élisabeth.
Most of these were bought by Versailles to display in its museum collection, while one chair was sold to the wealthy Guerrand-Hermès family.
But in 2016, this assortment of royal chairs would become embroiled in a national scandal that would rock the French antiques world, bringing the trade into disrepute.
The reason? The chairs were in fact all fakes.
The scandal saw one of France's leading antiques experts, Georges "Bill" Pallot, and award-winning cabinetmaker, Bruno Desnoues, put on trial on charges of fraud and money laundering following a nine-year investigation.
Galerie Kraemer and its director, Laurent Kraemer, were also accused of deception by gross negligence for selling on some of the chairs – something they both deny.
All three defendants are set to appear at a court in Pontoise, near Paris, on Wednesday, following a trial in March. Mr Pallot and Mr Desnoues have admitted to their crimes, while Mr Kraemer and his gallery dispute the charge of deception by gross negligence.
It started as a 'joke'
Considered the top scholar on French 18th-Century chairs, having written the authoritative book on the subject, Mr Pallot was often called upon by Versailles, among others, to give his expert opinion on whether historical items were the real deal. He was even called as an expert witness in French courts when there were doubts about an item's authenticity.
His accomplice, Mr Desnoues, was a decorated cabinetmaker and sculptor who had won a number of prestigious awards, including best sculptor in France in 1984, and had been employed as the main restorer of furniture at Versailles.
Speaking in court in March, Mr Pallot said the scheme started as a "joke" with Mr Desnoues in 2007 to see if they could replicate an armchair they were already working on restoring, that once belonged to Madame du Barry.
Masters of their crafts, they managed the feat, convincing other experts that it was a chair from the period.
And buoyed by their success, they started making more.
Describing how they went about constructing the chairs, the two told the court how Mr Pallot sourced wood frames at various auctions for low prices, while Mr Desnoues aged wood at his workshop to make others.
They were then sent for gilding and upholstery, before Mr Desnoues added designs and a wood finish. He attached stamps from some of the great furniture-workers of the 18th Century, which were either faked or taken from real furniture of the period.
Once they were finished, Mr Pallot sold them through middlemen to galleries like Kraemer and one he himself worked at, Didier Aaron. They would then get sold onto auction houses such as Sotheby's of London and Drouot of Paris.
"I was the head and Desnoues was the hands," Mr Pallot told the court smilingly.
"It went like a breeze," he added. "Everything was fake but the money."
Prosecutors allege the two men made an estimated profit of more than €3m off the forged chairs – though Mr Pallot and Mr Desnoues estimated their profits to be around €700,000. The income was deposited in foreign bank accounts, prosecutors said.
Lawyers representing Versailles told the BBC that Mr Pallot, a lecturer at the Sorbonne, managed to deceive the institution because of his "privileged access to the documentation and archives of Versailles and the Louvre Museum as part of his academic research".
A statement from lawyer Corinne Hershkovitch's team said that, thanks to Mr Pallot's "thorough knowledge" of the inventories of royal furniture recorded as having existed at Versailles in the 18th Century, he was able to determine which items were missing from collections and to then make them with the help of Mr Desnoues....
....MUCH MORE
The two were facing a uniquely French risk: comparison with the inventory of the Strategic Furniture Reserve. From May Day 2020 (very covidian):
"France to sell off state furniture to help support its hard-pushed hospitals"
Oh man, there's a desk in the Élysée I've had my eye on for a while.
Just as China has their Strategic Pork Reserve, France has their Strategic Furniture Reserve. It is rumored to contain millions of pieces beyond the official count but no one has actually seen the inventory sheets, kept under lock and key in the Bastille....****
I suppose we can let the Rothschild banker keep the desk if he really, really wants it.
I like the office though.
I don't know if this idea will fly with the French people.
I mean, the government is already going to dip into the Strategic Furniture Reserve and sell off a few things—although probably not the desk I've been looking at.
Maybe better to pledge the pretty picture as collateral for a 500 billion euro loan from the ECB.
If France can get a negative interest rate the loan should be self-liquidating sometime later in the millennium.