Antiques Trade Gazette 19


Above: a Hongwu period copper red bowl, £850,000 at Bainbridge’s.


A MODERN SLEEPER This 2ft 8in x 2ft 2in (82 x 66cm) silk painting of a landscape with houses, along with a 20 x 19in (50 x 47cm) watercolour river scene, sold for £7100 at High Road Auctions of Chiswick on June 5. Both were consigned by a local vendor


who knew little about them and the auctioneers had initially suggested £40- 60 would buy them. However, interest at the weekend view prompted a second opinion and a consultant confirmed the two works were by Lin Fengmian (1900- 91) and typical of a pioneering style fusing traditional Chinese and Western styles. Many of his works were destroyed


the need to honour the auction contract. In the run-up to the sale in Kent, Mr


Gibson had taken the catalogue and two major pieces for private viewings in Hong Kong, while the collection as a whole (77 lots) was on view at his Bury Street gallery. This certainly bore fruit. The two top lots sold to a private Asian collector who had viewed them in Hong Kong. Made towards the end of the reign of


the Emperor Kangxi (1662-1722) was a 6in (15cm) diameter bowl decorated with pheasants incorporating underglaze blue and copper-red within the wucai palette. The colours are unusual for a Kangxi piece, although a similar vessel from the Qing court is in the Palace Museum Collection in Beijing. Pitched at £8000-12,000 (estimates


as a whole were set low to send the right message and encourage competition), bidding reached £195,000 – a house record for the auctioneers, and more than the estimate for the whole Evans collection. The same buyer, a private Asian


collector who bid via one of 36 telephones in use during the sale, secured a Yongzheng period ‘chicken cup’ decorated with a cockerel, hen and chicks among flowering plants.


first by Japanese soldiers during the Sino-Japanese War and later during the Cultural Revolution, so supply is limited. The condition was not great (both


suffering from foxing and the silk was torn) but not enough to deter an internet bidder and the successful buyer who was in the room.


Above: a Ming style white-glazed ewer, £180,000 at Woolley & Wallis. Right: Yongle blue and white pedestal vase and cover, £450,000 at Duke’s. Below: late Ming guan, £145,000 at Strides.


PERSIAN INFLUENCES The seven voyages of exploration undertaken during the reign of the Emperor Yongle (1360-1424), which saw the eunuch admiral Zheng reach the coasts of Africa, had a remarkable impact on the decorative arts of the period. Trade with Persia was the source not


just of cobalt itself, the sapphire-coloured pigment worth twice its weight in gold, but ideas to enrich the pool of patterns for the ‘golden age’ Chinese porcelain seen at Bainbridges and the possibilities of new forms. Betraying many of these foreign


“This allowed for what Mr Gibson euphemistically called ‘the right buyers’ – those who appreciate the need to honour the auction contract”


These cups were popularised by the


Emperor Chenghua (1464-87), but this example with an apocryphal six-character mark was a Qing dynasty copy of a revered Ming dynasty prototype. It had been acquired by dealers Phillips & Harris from the famous N.C. Harrison Collection, which was dispersed at Sotheby’s in 1967, and the original receipt survived to show it had been purchased by Mr Evans in 1970 for £225. Estimated here conservatively at £20,000-30,000, it sold at £155,000. The contingent of Chinese dealers in


the room competed with buyers from mainland China, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Thailand, Japan, the USA and Canada, Italy and Portugal. In contrast to the London sales where many UK traders are more likely to be selling than buying, the London trade were also strong bidders.


continued on page 22


influences was a large, 16in (40cm) blue and white pedestal vase and cover seen at Duke’s of Dorchester on May 10. Catalogued by consultant Anthony de Boulay as “probably Yongle or later”, it was painted with heaped and piled decoration of scrolling lotus flowers, leafy arabesques and lappets and a band of crashing waves to a globular form clearly inspired by an Islamic metalwork prototype. Firing the domed cover, including a gourd finial and reticulated decoration, would doubtless have represented a great challenge.


The whole had been converted to a


lamp and both the top and the base had been broken and glued but – unlike a yellow-glazed bowl with a Yongzheng mark that carried an estimate on request but failed to sell – this very rare vase did not disappoint, selling to a buyer from mainland China against competition from Europe, London and Hong Kong at £450,000. A major surprise in the Part II sale


at Woolley & Wallis was provided by a 12in (30cm) white glazed and anhua decorated ewer in the Islamic style, lightly incised in the clay with scrolling flowers and foliage. Several parties were prepared to back their judgment that this vessel, from a European private collection, was not simply a 19th century copy of an early Ming original as cautiously catalogued. With only minor damages, it left a £300-500 estimate way behind to bring £180,000 – a price more akin with a Yongzeng or Qianlong dating. Strides’ inaugural Oriental ceramics


and works of art sale in Chichester included, among 257 lots, a late Ming (15th or 16th century) blue and white ‘windswept’ guan jar, 11½in (29cm) high, consigned by a local vendor in whose family it had been since the inter-War years.


Painted with a continuous


band of figures in a landscape within stiff leaf borders, it had a sizeable chip to the rim but otherwise was in honest condition. Auctioneer Peter Parker had estimated the lot at £20,000-30,000, but quiet hopes it might fetch £50,000


appeared optimistic after a relative lack of pre-sale interest. Sale day saw a turnaround when it sold for


£145,000 to a Hong Kong bidder after a protracted telephone battle.


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