Rare Chinese Ming vase smashes world record by selling for £14m

Published on Thursday 6 October 2011 00:24

NICOLAS Chow, the head of Sotheby’s Chinese Ceramics Department, displays a Ming Dynasty blue and white vase with fruit sprays which set a world auction record for Ming Dynasty porcelain when it sold for nearly £14 million at the sale in Hong Kong.

An anonymous telephone bidder paid more than double the lower pre-sale estimate of HK $80 million (£6,646,400) for the 15th century imperial vase.

Thirty-two pieces in the sale went for a total of HK $560 million (£46,522400), again far above pre-auction estimates.

Hong Kong has emerged as the world’s third-largest auction centre after New York and London, thanks in large part to China’s rapidly growing number of millionaires.

The vase which was owned by Swiss tycoons, is estimated to be at least 500 years old.

The Sotheby’s Hong Kong sales are seen as key indicators of the strength of the Asian art market.

The vase achieved a record price despite continuing global economic uncertainty, but some other major lots failed to sell.

The Ming vase is part of the Meinyintang collection, Chinese porcelain which has been brought together over nearly half a century by the Swiss Zuellig brothers.

Porcelain from China’s Ming Dynasty (1368-1644) is older but often less decorative and ornate than Qing (1644-1911) ware.

In recent years Ming porcelain has been less in demand from mainland Chinese buyers, meaning that its prices have not reached anywhere near those of late Qing pieces.

“I think many people were worried what would happen before the sales,” said Asian art dealer Nader Rasti. “But I think they did well considering what’s going on – 15th century porcelain has been so cheap for so long, there’s a lot of good Ming porcelain that’s undervalued.”