Travelers who purchase art or antiques abroad often discover that complex cultural property laws make bringing treasures home difficult or even impossible. Photo by DEA / G. NIMATALLAH/De Agostini via Getty Images

We all want to bring back some memento from our trips abroad, and why not a piece of fine or decorative art? It’s a tempting idea, but proceed with caution. You might legally buy something that you aren’t permitted legally to take out of the country—which you may only discover once you reach U.S. Customs. To wit: Manhattan lawyer William G. Pearlstein, who represents a number of collectors, was contacted in 2009 by a client returning from a trip to the Middle East who had bought “I don’t know what you’d call it, a sculptural item with hieroglyphics on it,” and said object was seized by customs officials. Looting of cultural property is a significant concern in the Middle East, and in the spring of 2008 the U.S. imposed an emergency import restriction on any “cultural property of Iraq and other items of archaeological, historical, cultural, rare scientific or religious importance.” Customs officials are trained to look for these kinds of objects when travelers from the region arrive in the U.S.

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Another incident involved a client of Miami lawyer Stephen Wagner, who purchased an antique backgammon set in Europe that was confiscated by customs officials because the box included inlays of ivory. Ivory, tortoise shell, animal skins, certain antique woods and even bird feathers are prohibited from import under an international treaty protecting endangered species unless accompanied by a special certificate from, in this case, the European Union.

The outcomes of these two confrontations with U.S. Customs were mixed. In Pearlstein’s case, a curator from the Metropolitan Museum of Art examined the sculpture in the Customs holding area and confirmed that it came from Jordan, which does not have the same sweeping export restrictions on archaeological and ethnographic artifacts as Iraq. The process took months, however, and cost the collector thousands of dollars in legal fees. Wagner’s client had less luck. The backgammon set should have been allowed since it was more than 100 years old,........

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