12 June 23rd 2012 london selection
chinese works of art sales continued from page 9
Two other unexpectedly strong
ceramics results cropped up towards the end of the sale when a Qing blue and white bell and a earlier Southern Song bowl and helped to balance the books after a lackustre response to a run of Qing blue and white, monochromes and enamelled wares. Bell shapes don’t surface as often
in porcelain as in metalwares. This 5½in (14cm) high example, which was of Qianlong mark and period, was decorated with bands of cranes and cloud symbols as well as leafy lotus divided by two of lacna characters. It had been guided at £30,000-50,000 but saw enough bidding on the day to fetch £400,000, the hammer falling to the dealers Littleton and Hennessy Asian Art. The 3in (8cm) wide Southern Song
bowl was a characteristically simple lobed piece of Ge-type covered in a crackled glaze of pale grey. The property of an anonymous European lady, it had been acquired on the French Riveria in the 1970s and was guided at £20,000- 30,000 but ended up selling to an Asian private buyer for £700,000. Song ceramics have traditionally
had a strong following in the West and in earlier decades tended to be the preserve of the London rooms, although as Chinese interest grows they now increasingly feature in Hong Kong auctions too. Sotheby’s sale turned up an equally
dramatic Song ceramic result in their sale the following day when a 7in (19cm) diameter Song/Yuan dish covered in a purple splashed lavender blue glaze which had been estimated at just £5000- 7000 was taken to £420,000, selling to London dealer Eskenazi. A well-provenanced, 3¾in (9cm)
diameter, Kangxi mark-and-period bowl painted in cobalt with eight immortals against a red wave ground was also in demand, selling for £300,000 against a £30,000-50,000 estimate. It had come from the collection of the
ophthalmologist Walter Jennings (1854- 1914) who served as surgeon major in the Shanghai Volunteer Corps during a 26-year tenure in Shanghai. Sotheby’s highest-priced ceramic entry came from a 10-lot consignment
Left: a Longquan celadon Guanyin shrine sold for £120,000 at Christie’s South Kensington.
of Qing monochromes from a private European collection, all bar one of which sold. The 8¼in (21cm) high, celadon glazed beaker vase based on an archaic ritual bronze gu shape was of Yongzheng mark and period and raised £490,000 from an Asian dealer. The ceramic best seller at Bonhams
proved to be not the early Ming blue and white Xuande bowl with typical floral scroll decoration or the Yongzheng mark-and-period moon-flask with Song-inspired Guanyao lavender glaze. Both these potential stars, guided at £300,000-500,000 apiece, failed to get away. Instead bidders homed in on a finely potted piece of blanc-de-chine, a serenely modelled 14¾in (37cm) figure of the Goddess Guanyin shown seated on a lotus pedstal with her hands clasped in her lap. The figure dated to c.1640 and bore the impressed mark of He Chaozong, one of the most highly regarded potters of Dehua porcelain. Competition from at least two Asian bidders in the room plus phone bidders took it to a multiple of the £30,000- 50,000 estimate, with the hammer falling to a phone buyer at £440,000. The very last lot of the sale also
produced a strong price, demonstrating how demand for particularly well- painted pieces made as recently as the last century are now very much on the Chinese collection list. The lot in question was a pair of 17in (43cm) high, 20th century, baluster-shaped vases with iron-red Jingzedzhen tayoansuo seal marks painted with a tiger seated on rockwork to one and two monkeys to the other within pink ground cartouches, which had been guided at £6000-10,000 but ended up selling for £170,000. Christie’s South Kensington’s large
Above: a doucai dragon bowl that fetched £150,000 at Christie’s South Kensington.
Right: a pair of 20th century hexagonal vases sold for £170,000 at Bonhams.
Far right: a pair of Jiajing Imperial famille rose vases sold for £1.1m at Christie’s.
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