Chinese porcelain is Qing in the great Scots treasure hunt

THE search is on. A leading Scottish auctioneer is urging householders to hunt for Chinese art treasures tucked away in their homes as prices for porcelain vases, furniture, carvings, bronzes and other artefacts from Asia have skyrocketed.

• The 53m Qianlong vase.Photograph: Jon Savage

Lyon & Turnbull said it has already had more than 100 people coming forward with objects after it sent a letter and e-mails to potential clients urging them to check whether they owned any good quality Chinese anitques. It came after sales of a string of Chinese items from Scotland for many times their estimated prices.

The latest to come to auction is a Chinese onion-shaped blue underglaze vase, made in the 19th century but in the style of an earlier period. Found in a Borders home, by a couple who kept it tucked away on a stair to their basement, it is estimated at 4,000-6,000, but should sell for considerably more.

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The art world was staggered by Thursday night's sale of an 18th-century Qianlong dynasty porcelain vase for 53 million. It came under the hammer not at Sotheby's or Christie's but at a local auctioneer operating from a warehouse in Ruislip, and with an estimate of a mere 1.2m.

The history of extensive travel by Scottish seafarers, soldiers, colonial administrators and merchant bankers has made the country a potentially rich source of Asian treasures.

Banks like Jardine, Matheson & Co founded in Canton in 1832 by Scots William Jardine and James Matheson created extensive and early Asian connections for the Jardines of Dumfriesshire and other Scottish dynasties. Glaswegian sailors and officers filled the Empire's ships.

In September, Lyon & Turnbull sold a small antique Chinese brush pot owned by an Aberdeen antique collector, Gordon Murray, in which he used to keep his toothbrush. Murray had thought the pot, which had a large crack, might fetch a few hundred pounds; it sold for 30,000.

A rare 19th century Imperial Chinese screen, with four silk panels depicting birds such as peacocks and golden pheasants, found in a Scottish home, sold for 64,850, to a London agent acting for a Chinese buyer.

Items have typically sold for many times estimates. Earlier this year, a Chinese blue painted bowl valued at 700 went for 16,000; a Chinese porcelain horse also valued at 700 made 17,000.

The boom in the Chinese market has been driven by its surging economy and the new wealthy, urged by the Beijing government to do their "patriotic duty" and bring Chinese artefacts home.

"It's the strong economy and they seem to produce new multi-millionaries ever week," said Lyon & Turnbull director Campbell Armour."We had a lot of phone bidders from Beijing in the last sale, and the advantage of the new technology is that we can take bids from the otherside of the world. A lot of the Chinese are just coming straight to the auctions by phone."

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Known prices for Chinese artefacts from Scotland have yet to rival the multi-million price tags in the big international sales. It may only be a matter of time.

On Wednesday Sotheby's London sold a rare Yuan dynasty blue and white Peony Jar for 2.6 million, more than six times the pre-sale estimate.

"There are still Chinese pots lurking in people's houses," said Armour.

The major outflow of Chinese art, beyond what was brought back by seafarers or given to travelling diplomats, was during the Opium Wars of the mid-19th century, when Europeans ransacked Chinese homes and stole or sold off the contents.

A huge quantity of art reached Europe in the infamous sacking of the Summer Palace in 1860 and the looting of the Forbidden City 40 years later. Britain thus used gunboat diplomacy to force the Chinese to trade.

Chinese buyers are currently focusing on later objects, rather than the very earliest pottery. Sales are typically from the Qing dynasty, which ran from 1644 to 1912, as well as early 20th-century works of the "Republic" era.

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