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If they were real, the collection would be worth more than four million pounds (6.5 million dollars, 4.5 million euros), organisers said.
Many of the items come from the workshop of the most diverse art forger ever known.
Shaun Greenhalgh was jailed for four years and eight months in 2007, but not before he produced an astonishing array of fakes in multiple disciplines.
One of his most notorious works is the "Amarna Princess", which was bought by a museum in Bolton, northern England, for 400,000 pounds. It thought it was a rare piece from the era of the Egyptian pharaoh Akhenaten.
The forger also succeeded in imitating paintings by the English painter L.S. Lowry, as well as Roman vessels and medieval jewellery.
"Greenhalgh was probably the most diverse art forger that we have never heard of," said Detective Sergeant Vernon Rapley, head of the Metropolitan Police's Art and Antiques Unit which has put on the exhibition.
"He created objects of so many different styles and from so many periods that he was not really detected," Rapley told AFP, noting that he worked for 17 years without being caught.
The forgers featured in the exhibition often had certificates of authenticity signed by experts to help sell their works, some of which are on display alongside the items themselves.
Others, such as brothers Robert and Brian Thwaites, even went so far as to stick bits of newspaper from the Victorian era behind fake paintings attributed to an artist of that period, John Anster Fitzgerald.
The exhibition, "The Metropolitan Police Service's Investigation of Fakes and Forgeries" is open from January 23 to February 7.
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Many of the items come from the workshop of the most diverse art forger ever known.
Shaun Greenhalgh was jailed for four years and eight months in 2007, but not before he produced an astonishing array of fakes in multiple disciplines.
One of his most notorious works is the "Amarna Princess", which was bought by a museum in Bolton, northern England, for 400,000 pounds. It thought it was a rare piece from the era of the Egyptian pharaoh Akhenaten.
The forger also succeeded in imitating paintings by the English painter L.S. Lowry, as well as Roman vessels and medieval jewellery.
"Greenhalgh was probably the most diverse art forger that we have never heard of," said Detective Sergeant Vernon Rapley, head of the Metropolitan Police's Art and Antiques Unit which has put on the exhibition.
"He created objects of so many different styles and from so many periods that he was not really detected," Rapley told AFP, noting that he worked for 17 years without being caught.
The forgers featured in the exhibition often had certificates of authenticity signed by experts to help sell their works, some of which are on display alongside the items themselves.
Others, such as brothers Robert and Brian Thwaites, even went so far as to stick bits of newspaper from the Victorian era behind fake paintings attributed to an artist of that period, John Anster Fitzgerald.
The exhibition, "The Metropolitan Police Service's Investigation of Fakes and Forgeries" is open from January 23 to February 7.
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