The article deals with the history, technology and ways of recognizing forgeries. Similarly to all domains of art, high prices for porcelain led to imitations and forgeries. Counterfeit porcelain appeared rather early in China, the country of its origin, and by the beginning of the twentieth century, forgery assumed the features of an almost industrial production. The article discusses the history of the phenomenon and a number of ways to produce counterfeit objects such as the addition or supplementation of decoration, the replacement of less valuable ornaments by more valuable ones, the decoration of unembellished objects. The copying and altering of trademarks or artificial ageing. The author examines the qualitative and quantitative determination of porcelain, paint, glazes, styles, quality of artistic and technical execution and trademarks. Forgery can at times play a positive role such as the promotion of items regarded as worthy of purchasing and collecting.