A very fortunate man bought a vase from a charity shop in England for one pound sterling, because he thought it was attractive. He then decided to put the vase on e-bay. It aroused so much interest he decided to take it off and take it to a antique valuer.
At Sworders fine art auctioneers in Essex, expert Yexue Li immediately knew she was looking at a valuable piece. The vase turned out to be an 18th century piece made for the Emperor Qianlong. The colours and inscription confirmed its provenance.
After sitting on a shelf in the family home for years, a five inch tall china teapot with a damaged lid which had been handed down through the generations and whose importance was unknown until antiques expert Lee Young visited the home to assess some family ornaments ‘My heart skipped a beat’ he said when it was handed to him.
The painter Qi Baishi became the first Chinese artist to join the £100 million club in December 2017. The week before Christmas, a set of ink brush panels entitled Twelve Landscape Screens (1925), sold for a staggering 931.5 million yuan (well over £100m.) at the Poly Beijing auction house. It is the highest price ever paid for a work of Chinese art at auction.
Only a dozen or so other works—by artists like Warhol, Picasso and van Gogh—have sold at auction for more than the equivalent of £100 million, although a number of others have reportedly been sold privately in that price area.
There is no doubt that this work was fascinating and probably represented value for money as, effectively, the purchaser (unknown) did get twelve pictures for the price of one.
V.I.P Jiu 8 Baijiu: Amazing China Historical Photographs #4
This is really the classic fancy of a sotheby’s specialist, my colleague in Paris one day gets a phone call from a lady telling him she has this vase that has been sitting in an attic for a couple of decades and she would like to bring it in. She took it on the train in a shoe box and walked over to the office.
There it came out of the box, one of the finest most dazzling pieces of family rose porcelain he had ever seen, And it turns out this is a seal mark of the Qianlong emperor, the most powerful human being who lived on earth in the 18th century. It is a vase that was probably made for his birthday on the 34th year of his reign and decorated with a great wealth of auspicious designs from pine trees that signified longevity to Lou the deer which is happiness to the cranes that are our wish for old age.
What’s exceptional I would say on this vase is the quality of the firing, it must have been positioned just right in the kiln and fired for the right amount of time because the colors have come out pin sharp so you have that gem light dazzling appearance that you do not often see, in its shape and design it’s a unique vase and it’s very closely related to one of the most famous pieces in a public collection in France.
V.I.P Jiu 8 Baijiu: Amazing China Historical Photographs #1
For the better part of a century, collector and dealer Robert Chang has dominated the world of Chinese art. He arrived in Hong Kong during the 40’s with only 24 dollars in his pocket, but quickly established an antique trade empire. In this episode of A Life Less Ordinary, journey to the palatial home of one of Asia’s most flamboyant art dealers as he recounts a lifetime of collecting. The finest imperial porcelains, jade carvings, and cloisonné vases adorn the walls of his Suzhou estate, which has been described as a stylistic mix between Versailles and the Forbidden City. Although initially drawn to ceramics, his collection of Chinese ink paintings includes masterpieces by the greatest painters of the 20th century: Zhang Daqian, Qi Baishi and Fu Baoshi. Even surrounded by his many treasures, Mr. Chang can’t stop. His passion for collecting continues to lead him on an endless hunt that spans the globe.
The Palace Museum is expected to exhibit more than 8 percent of its 1.86 million collections by the end of 2019, a move its curator said would convince more people to protect cultural relics.
In 1903, when Chinese Empress Dowager Cixi, the most powerful woman in China at the time, asked an American artist to paint a portrait for her and sent it to the US as a gift, she probably never dreamed that the work would go on to serve as a symbol of US-China cultural diplomacy for decades to come.
Peter Combs does a great weekly V-log on YouTube covering up and coming eBay Chinese antique lots. He presents very well and is very articulate. He is based in US and sells on eBay now and then. I have subscribed to his YouTube channel and I suggest you do the same. He is good to watch with well put together professional videos. He talks about fakes, online and off auctions, good sellers and bad sellers and many other topic Chinese antique related. He highlights items he feels are worth bidding on and items that he feels should be avoided. Overall well worth subscribing to his channel, I guarantee you will enjoy his weekly uploads. Subscribe Here
Sotheby’s Melbourne Lot Description: Resembling aloeswood, the overall surface with naturalistic swirls and gnarled indentations, with slender branch like handles joining the garlic mouth to the sloping shoulders, supported on a short splayed foot, the base inlaid in silver wire with an apocryphal four-character seal mark Qianlong Yu Jian, fitted wood stand
(2) 36.5 cm high
Compare with a similar wood moon flask illustrated in The Collection of Stands in the Palace Museum, Part V, Catalogue p. 33.
Lot Sold $72,000 (Hammer Price) $87,840 (Hammer Price with Buyer’s Premium)
The moon flask, catalogued as Qing dynasty (1644-1912), is 37cm high and carved from a timber “resembling aloeswood” – regarded as sacred in some Asian cultures. The base is inlaid in silver wire with what the catalogue says is an apocryphal mark for the Qianlong Emperor in the 18th century. With no provenance given, the item was estimated at $7000 to $9000.
