Old is only one attribute
Historic workshops produced masterpieces, competent ritual figures and ordinary work. A weak carving does not become strong merely by surviving.
Age deserves respect, but it does not guarantee quality, rarity or importance.
Use several measures
Assess artistic conception, cultural evidence, rarity, condition, provenance and research potential separately. Different objects will be valuable for different reasons.
Resist the single adjective
When ‘old’ becomes the entire sales argument, look harder. The most rewarding figures unite time with a compelling hand and a legible history.
A wider reading
The broader lesson is methodological rather than categorical. Historic workshops produced masterpieces, competent ritual figures and ordinary work. No isolated rule can replace accumulated looking, and accumulated looking is useful only when examples are compared critically. The collector must keep visual judgment, documentary evidence and market enthusiasm separate long enough to compare them honestly. The aim is not to remove intuition, but to make intuition answerable to evidence. With time, this produces judgments that are both firmer and easier to revise.
From observation to judgment
One final distinction deserves emphasis. Description answers what is present; interpretation asks what it may mean; evaluation considers how well the sculpture succeeds. When ‘old’ becomes the entire sales argument, look harder. These operations often occur at once, yet separating them for a moment reveals hidden assumptions. It becomes possible to admire a figure without exaggerating its age, to value its history without overstating its rarity, and to discuss an attribution without pretending that it is proven.
Seen within the complete life of the object, resist the single adjective is therefore neither a minor detail nor a self-sufficient answer. Assess artistic conception, cultural evidence, rarity, condition, provenance and research potential separately. Its importance depends on relationships: to the remaining anatomy, to patterns of handling, to workshop practice and to the evidence preserved in records. Reading those relationships patiently is what turns recognition into research and possession into informed stewardship.