KEY POINTS:
A notorious art forger who lives in a caravan in the bush has been ripped off.
Karl Sim, 84, aka C.F. Goldie, has had a precious carving stolen from his home, which has been parked off the Hibiscus Coast Highway at Hatfields Beach, near Orewa, for 20 years.
He said a friend gave him the carving 40 years ago.
Sim shot to notoriety in 1985 when he was arrested for art forgery after he copied and sold paintings and drawings of artists such as Charles F. Goldie, Frances Hodgkins, Rita Angus and Colin McCahon.
He was convicted and fined $1000 and remains the only New Zealander to have been convicted of such a crime.
After the court case, Sim changed his name by deed poll to Carl Feoder Goldie, so he could legally sign pictures as C.F. Goldie. But he no longer tries to pass them off as originals.
Sim had fooled experts who bought the artworks from his antique and wine store in Foxton. The shop is now the Goldie's bakery, named after him, and its walls are draped with photocopies of his work.
Sim's stolen carving, which he calls a patu (club), is about 45cm long and has about 20 sharks' teeth running down it. It was given to him in 1968 by a master carver in the Manawatu, and it hung in his caravan window with a collection of other carvings.
"It's beautiful," Sim told the Weekend Herald. "I used to look at it every day. It's a masterpiece."
He believes he knows who took it and has told the police.
The carving features in a painting of a Maori chief in a book Sim wrote about Charles Goldie's life, Good as Goldie.
Sim still paints every day and is now working on a version of one of Goldie's most famous paintings, All e Same te Pakeha, also known as A Good Joke, which depicts Waikato kaumatua Te Aho-o-te-Rangi Wharepu of Ngati Mahuta. Sim is giving the portrait to a Rotary club which will auction it off for charity.
"I think I've helped to make old Goldie a bit more popular, it hasn't hurt him at all," Sim said.
He has just completed a copy of one of the world's most famous portraits, Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa.
He sells his work for "a few hundred dollars" to collectors but also paints portraits from photographs people send him of loved ones.
"I don't sell them for enough, eh, but never mind, I'm happy."
Sim ruffled a few feathers in art circles last year when he appeared as a guest at Mangaweka's Fakes and Forgeries exhibition. People were annoyed organisers had asked a convicted forger to attend.
