(The White House)

BARGAIN BAROQUE

Shop this look: Buy cheap, faux gold dupes of Oval Office decor

Some of the gold decorations in the Oval Office look... very similar to items we found for sale on a Chinese marketplace.

Jon Keegan

4/15/25 4:05PM

Since President Donald Trump moved back into the White House in January, it has undergone some major decorative changes. The Swedish ivy that perched upon the mantle has been replaced with golden vases from the White House collection. And the room, overall, has just gotten noticeably more shiny and gold.

Looking at photos taken in the Oval Office this week with El Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele, we noticed several decorative medallions applied to the marble fireplace, and the same ones stuck on the wall under portraits in gilded frames.

President Trump with President Nayib Bukele of El Salvador — (Photo: The White House)

Sometime after March, ornate gold decorative medallions were added to the cornice around the ceiling. The fact that several copies of the same decoration were showing up in different spots (made of different material) made us wonder where these were sourced and what they were made of.

President Trump meets Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the Oval Office — (Photo: The Washington Post/Getty Images)

A quick photo search on Alibaba showed many such “decorative appliqués” available in white and gold. We came across one item that looks very much like the ones all over the Oval Office.

This “High-density Home Decoration Polyurethane Appliques Ornament PU Foam Veneer Accessories” from Guangzhou Homemax Decorative Material Limited on Alibaba is a dead ringer. The decorations are available in many colors: “matte white most, or gold, silver, antique gold or bronze, mixed color, customized color.”

Screenshot of Alibaba — (Screenshot: Sherwood News)

The price? Between $1 and $5 apiece (but the minimum order is 50 items). And that isn’t accounting for the steep 145% tariffs that Trump recently slapped on Chinese imports.

As you can see from this comparison, this looks very close, but it may not be a perfect match. To be fair, it is certainly possible that Chinese manufacturers are copying a high-quality design from higher-end architectural suppliers, which provided the new decor to the White House.

I messaged the owners of Guangzhou Homemax Decorative Material Limited, and a customer service agent named Ruth Fu quickly responded to my question about the item’s availability.

“Hello Sir. Yes we have this model. Do you need gold color, please?”

I followed up to ask if that was indeed their product hanging in the Oval Office, but I did not hear back.

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

For reference, here is what the Oval Office looked like in November 2024, when President Biden met with the president of Indonesia:

US President Joe Biden meets with President of Indonesia Prabowo Subianto in the Oval Office (Alex Wong/Getty Images)

Hyunsoo Rim12/11/25

TIME names the “Architects of AI” as its Person of the Year for 2025

TIME just announced its Person of the Year… and it’s not a single person.

The magazine selected the “Architects of AI” as its 2025 honoree, spotlighting the executives and engineers behind the year’s AI boom. One of the two covers features eight tech leaders perched on a steel beam — recreating the iconic “Lunch Atop a Skyscraper” photo from 1932 — including Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg, AMD’s Lisa Su, xAI’s Elon Musk, OpenAI’s Sam Altman, and Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang at the center, whose chips power many of today’s AI models.

Why the Architects of AI Are TIME’s 2025 Person of the Year

Western Auctioneer with Two Fingers up and Gavel in Hand

As investors pick sides in Netflix vs. Paramount, analysts say a renewed Warner Bros. bidding war looks inevitable

Analysts at Bloomberg on Wednesday said Paramount’s WBD hostile takeover offer could go as high as $35 per share.

Max Knoblauch12/10/25

The Netflix-Warner Bros. deal now faces a wall of opposition

Netflix will owe Warner Bros. $5.8 billion in cash if the deal is terminated on antitrust grounds.

Max Knoblauch12/5/25

Jon Keegan12/5/25

The New York Times, Chicago Tribune sue Perplexity

The New York Times is suing the AI search engine startup Perplexity, alleging repeated copyright violations.

In the complaint, the Times accuses Perplexity of scraping the company’s content and generating outputs that are “identical or substantially similar” to Times content:

“Upon information and belief, Perplexity has unlawfully copied, distributed, and displayed millions of copyrighted Times stories, videos, podcasts, images and other works to power its products and tools.”

The Times also alleges that Perplexity’s AI tool generates “hallucinations” and falsely attribute them to the Times, creating confusion that harms the company’s brand.

In a separate suit filed Thursday, the Chicago Tribune accused Perplexity of similar copyright violations.

Perplexity’s “answer engine” made early inroads in an attempt to replace traditional web searches with AI-powered responses, but its larger competitors such as OpenAI, Google, and Anthropic have been adding similar features. OpenAI recently released its own AI-powered web browser, ChatGPT Atlas, which challenges Perplexity’s Comet browser.

Jesse Dwyer, Head of Communication for Perplexity told Sherwood News in a statement:

“Publishers have been suing new tech companies for a hundred years, starting with radio, TV, the internet, social media and now AI. Fortunately it’s never worked, or we’d all be talking about this by telegraph.”

New York Times Sues A.I. Start-Up Perplexity Over Use of Copyrighted Work

“Upon information and belief, Perplexity has unlawfully copied, distributed, and displayed millions of copyrighted Times stories, videos, podcasts, images and other works to power its products and tools.”

The Times also alleges that Perplexity’s AI tool generates “hallucinations” and falsely attribute them to the Times, creating confusion that harms the company’s brand.

In a separate suit filed Thursday, the Chicago Tribune accused Perplexity of similar copyright violations.

Jesse Dwyer, Head of Communication for Perplexity told Sherwood News in a statement:

“Publishers have been suing new tech companies for a hundred years, starting with radio, TV, the internet, social media and now AI. Fortunately it’s never worked, or we’d all be talking about this by telegraph.”

Jon Keegan11/28/25

European regulators will examine if Apple’s maps and ads businesses require stricter oversight

Apple has notified European regulators that its Apple Maps and Apple Ads platforms meet the threshold to be called “gatekeepers” under the European Commission’s Digital Markets Act, the European Commission said.

European antitrust regulators will now examine if the tech giant’s Maps and Ads units should be subject to stricter regulation. According to the DMA, when a platform reaches 45 million monthly active users and a market cap of €75 billion ($79 billion), it triggers the “gatekeeper” designation and additional rules apply.

While Apple notified regulators that the threshold has been met, it is pushing back on the designation, saying in a rebuttal to rule makers that the platforms are actually relatively small compared to the competition in Europe and should be excluded. The EC has 45 working days to make a final determination about the designation, and Apple would have six months to comply, Reuters reported.