Shaun Greenhalgh

They bought an 1892 catalogue which listed the contents of an auction in Silverton Park, Devon, the home of the 4th Earl of Egremont.

Among the items listed were "eight Egyptian figures."

Using the leeway this vague description allowed, Greenhalgh manufactured what became known as the Amarna Princess, a 20-inch statue, apparently made of a translucent alabaster.

It later emerged within a Panorama documentary that he had bought the tools to produce the work from hardware store B&Q.

Done in the Egyptian "Amarna period" style of 1350 BC, the statue represents one of the daughters of the Pharaoh Akhenaten and Queen Nefertiti.

At the time, as Greenhalgh had researched, only two other similar statuettes were known to exist in the world.

He "knocked up" his copy in his shed in three weeks out of calcite, "using basic DIY tools and making it look old by coating it in a mixture of tea and clay".

Olive may have been a peripheral figure, but Shaun's father, George (1923–2014), was more involved.

He was the frontman, who met face-to-face with potential buyers.

"He looks honest, he's elderly and he shows up in a wheelchair."

For example, George Sr. told the Bolton Museum that he was "thinking about using [the Amarna Princess statue] as a garden ornament".

Greenhalgh's parents helped establish a logical explanation for why the Greenhalghs had possession of such items in the first place, namely as family heirlooms.

It allowed them to offload items when they were discovered as fakes, such as the "Eadred Reliquary", and an L.S. Lowry painting, The Meeting House.

At the trial it was said by the lawyer, Brian McKenna, that Greenhalgh's mother, Olive (1925–2016), made the telephone calls "because he was shy and did not like to use the telephone."

Shaun Greenhalgh (born 1961) is a British artist and former art forger.

Over a seventeen-year period, between 1989 and 2006, he produced a large number of forgeries.

With the assistance of his brother and elderly parents, who fronted the sales side of the operation, he successfully sold his fakes internationally to museums, auction houses, and private buyers, accruing nearly £1 million.

The family have been described by Scotland Yard as "possibly the most diverse forgery team in the world, ever".

However, when they attempted to sell three Assyrian reliefs using the same provenance as they had previously, suspicions were finally raised.

Detective Constable Ian Lawson of Scotland Yard, who searched the house, gave an indication of Greenhalgh's activities:"There were blocks of stone, a furnace for melting silver on top of the fridge, half-finished and rejected sculptures, a watercolour under the bed, a cheque for £20,000 dated 1993, and a bust of an American president in the loft. I’d never seen anything like it."

A next-door neighbour recalled: "I was finding bits of pottery and coins around the edges of the garden over 20 years back – [things like] bits of metal with old kings on."

While this sounds as though materials were openly displayed, it was perhaps not quite that obvious.

Angela Thomas, a curator from the Bolton Museum, actually visited the family at home prior to the purchase of the Amarna Princess and reported nothing untoward.

Yet for all his daring – he once boasted that he could create a Thomas Moran watercolour in half an hour and claimed to have completed an "Amarna" statue in three weeks – Shaun Greenhalgh needed the help of his parents.

In 1999, the Greenhalghs began their most ambitious project.

The Victoria and Albert Museum in London held an exhibition of Greenhalgh's works from 23 January to 7 February 2010.

The Metropolitan Police's Art and Antiques Unit built a replica model of the shed where the works were created.

Many of Greenhalgh's fakes, including the Amarna Princess, a version of the Roman Risley Park Lanx, and works supposedly by Barbara Hepworth and Thomas Moran, were displayed.

Greenhalgh's family was involved in "the garden shed gang".

They established an elaborate cottage industry at his parents' house in The Crescent, Bromley Cross, South Turton, which is about 3.5 mi north of Bolton town centre.

His parents, George and Olive, approached clients, while his older brother, George Jr., managed the money.

Other members of the family were invoked to help establish the legitimacy of the fake items.

These included Olive's father who owned an art gallery, a great-grandfather who it seemed had had the foresight to buy well at auctions, and an ancestor who had apparently worked for the Mayor of Bolton as a cleaner and was given a Thomas Moran paintng.

Shaun Greenhalgh left school at 16 with no qualifications.

A self-taught artist, undoubtedly influenced by his job as an antiques dealer, he worked up his forgeries from sketches, photographs, art books and catalogues.

He attempted a wide range of crafts, from painting in pastels and watercolours, to sketches, and sculpture, both modern and ancient, busts and statues, to bas-relief and metalwork.

He invested in a large range of different materials – silver, stone, marble, rare stone, replica metal, and glass.

He also did meticulous research to authenticate his items with histories and provenance (for instance, faking letters from the supposed artists) in order to demonstrate his ownership.

Completed items were then stored about the house and garden shed.

The latter probably served as a workshop as well.