18 23rd June 2012 auction reports The party ain’t over yet
■ Chinese bidders still clamour for well-provenanced lots sourced in the English regions
Roland Arkell reports
THE economy of the People’s Republic has slowed. The nervousness regarding payments has not gone away. Rules and regulations have become tougher. And the genuine buyers are increasingly selective.
However, five years into the Chinese
boom, British regional salerooms mine this seam more furiously than ever – and continue to confound suggestions that supply may be running dry. With two new London satellite
salerooms to add to the mix, close to a dozen of the UK’s smaller auctioneers contributed to May’s Asian art series, but never with this pile of catalogues was there a shortage of interest. Sworders’ managing director Guy
Schooling says his firm received more than 2500 condition report requests for their £403,000 sale. John Axford’s team at Woolley & Wallis completed much the same on their way to £2.87m. And on those occasions when the merchandise was so good and the provenance so impeccable that Chinese mainland collectors found the confidence to bid freely, the market appeared in rude health. Both the 77-lot collection formed by
retired businessman Tony Evans, sold for just short of £900,000 at Canterbury Auction Galleries on May 22, and the
Highlights from the Evans collection sold by Canterbury Auction Galleries on May 22.
Top: two views of a Kangxi pheasant bowl, £195,000. Above: a Yongzheng period chicken cup, £155,000. Right: a Yongzheng doucai stem bowl, £140,000.
31-lot, £3m sale of the Gertrude Harriman collection at Bainbridge’s of West Ruislip on May 17, were ample proof. The party ain’t over yet.
EDUCATED at King’s School in Canterbury, Tony Evans developed his love of Chinese porcelain from his father, who worked as an accountant for the Kailan Mining Administration, an Anglo-Chinese organisation based in the port of Tientsin
near Beijing. However, the financial means to build
his own collection, shopping with top London dealers in the 1960s and ‘70s, came from the chain of hardware stores Evans established in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea shortly after he completed National Service. He watched the Canterbury Auction
Galleries sale with his wife from a third row seat in the auction room. The
Richard Peters Antiques
Specialists in Chinese antiques from the Ming and Ching dynasties
Vicarage House, 58-60 Kensington Church Street, London W8 4DB Email:
info@richardpetersantiques.com Gallery Tel: 020 7938 3824 Mobile: 07949 081 657
www.richardpetersantiques.com
event was conducted in association with consultant Alistair Gibson, the ex-Sotheby’s specialist turned St James’s dealer whose wife Cliona Kilroy is a director at CAG. This allowed for some expert
cataloguing, a marketing reach well beyond the traditional environs of the regional saleroom, and useful advice on what Mr Gibson euphemistically called “the right buyers” – those who appreciate
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