Chinese Antique Auction Price Results Dr. Kiuan Collection Sothebys

foreign [Music] well here we are it is November 10 2022 and I wanted to do a video I was waiting for an auction that was taking place in Paris to finish up and I was going to combine these two sales because they're both interesting uh this is the the third part of the Dr mukwon uh q1 collection uh a very interesting sale Dr wukyan um was a Hong Kong gentleman he came from a very prominent uh Hong Kong family they were well off his father was instrumental in the forming of the Republic period uh when the when the uh the Qing Dynasty ended uh and and he was became a diplomat and so forth he ended up moving to London uh and uh in the 1950s I guess and uh began collecting Chinese art uh he had collected a lot of things over his lifetime he collected stamps and coins as a kid and all that and then when he was growing up he got interested in Chinese art and he began collecting in Earnest and during the 1950s and 60s as many of you know was a real great time to be buying Chinese antiques in in London because the London markets uh to get us an idea of it Christies and Sotheby's would have one or two auctions a week of Chinese art that's how much was was coming out of the market at that time post World War II um during the 1950s and a lot of fabulous material came on and um he bought it he also had things from the font Hill Collection uh in his in his his collection and other things some a lot of the stuff had been a lot of the things he they'd sold previously in part one and two uh some of the things had come from probably from the one menu on and turned it up in London and he bought them and he formed a museum in his own house which was interesting and uh it was it was I'm going to get the name right it was the Woodland pie Museum and it was on the first floor of his house so if you wanted to see it and you were a scholar you're seriously interested in it you could contact him and apparently he was very open to having people come to his house he was very happy to talk about his things there were over a thousand objects in the first is first first floor his little Museum that he kept and it was really for Scholars and students and and academics and people looking for specific things and studying examples and he was always there to help out all right and then one of the paintings uh that was in the sale was this the Majin painted by a 20th century artist who very much painted in the manner of Giuseppe Castiglione also known as Lan chining who was the the one of the Court favorites he was a Jesuit and a court favorite in particular the chin long Emperor and he was famous for painting courses and here's majin's a version of it very delicately painted very skilled Artist A really lovely example he died in 1970 he lived he lived you know he lived during the 20th century but his his art is very collectible today and this particular painting about six seventeen thousand six hundred and forty pounds which is around 19 or 20 thousand dollars U.S beautiful example and then over here to this was the Juan Lee Market period uh fish tank a dragon fish bowl they call it uh and what was interesting about this was that uh if those of you are familiar with one Lee work sometimes the one Lee blue can be a little bit um uh uh loose a little bit bleedy in places not especially tight and not often in this deeper color this is a very nice tone of cobalt very very beautiful and you'll notice that above here this area that's decorated with the yellow enamels has a very fine outline in in blue and then they filled it in with the enamels over over it once once the blue is set and here it is uh very tight very neat throughout all of it and this superb decoration for one Leap period because a lot of the workmanship of the one Lee period wasn't that great they did a lot of export stuff a lot of one League plates that were shipped to the to Europe and so forth they were interesting because they were are trade goods and they were of a particular type but not of the quality of the earlier Ming pieces certainly but this was stupendously well done and and it was Mark and period as you can see here in the upper left and uh it did it did absolutely terrific it was estimated that 60 to 80 000 pounds which is sort of the price at the um more typical uh tanks of this this type turn up on the market they bring 50 to 80 60 to 90 somewhere in there and this one did much better because the work was so good on it and the quality of the potting was so good very even very pleasing colors uh sold for 151 200 pounds not not a not a bad price considering the quality there and then on to this this is interesting um there were a few pieces in his collection that that weren't perfect uh and even though there was you know during the during the 90s into the 2000s there was this 2010 up to 2012 1314 in there there was this sort of fanatic isn't for only perfect Pieces by among the Chinese collectors and now what we're seeing is is that all the perfect pieces a lot of them have been absorbed into museums and into and into private collections they're not going to come back out of the market anytime soon so um uh this piece this piece had some restoration to it um the bottom of it you'll see this black area across the bottom right here all right something happened there the bottom of this may have been knocked off and it got reattached a long time ago that's an old grungy repair that's not something anybody did in the 20th century to fix something this was something that was done you know several hundred years ago and the top of the vase had been cut down you'll notice that the the Dragon for example that's coming down here he disappears up into nothing because originally this vase would have come up another inch or two and uh so the decoration could have completed and in this case it didn't it probably got damaged it got knocked over something happened to this face because the bottom is repaired and the top is cut and ground all right and and it wasn't that long go pieces like this nobody really wanted and I'm going to bet that if if Dr kiwan bought this back in the 50s or 60s he probably bought it for 30 or 40 dollars at the most uh because it was it would have been basically sold as a lamp part that time um to be made into a table lamp perhaps but it was beautifully decorated that's what sold this uh if you forget the forget the damage look at the quality of the work the quality of the work the quality of the enamels the quality of the Cobalt um just a wonderful device uh these wonderful devices on these flanges coming off the body very you know very early the kind of flanges you see on early bronzes Shang bronzes that kind of thing and here they've applied the sim a similar style onto a piece of porcelain but beautifully done and I love the lion masks on it uh and I think this is something you're going to see more of you're going to see more and more acceptance among collectors um from from mainland China from that aren't necessarily Perfect all right the Lord knows if you go to and if you go to the major museums the met or the guinea or the MFA in Boston or other museums around the world you'll see lots of huge rare spectacular pieces that have been damaged and repaired it was very common and this one was estimated modestly at five to seven thousand Pounds due to the condition and uh the the audience wasn't having that and they paid 50 400 pounds for it all right which which which in which is a signal it's a signal that things are starting to change in fact I think they should I think they should I I've said it before many times that I I would rather own a damaged great Beast than a mediocre perfect piece all right and then over to this the chin lung uh period uh peach form uh cloisonne this is this was a really interesting thing and uh a very unusual form and here it is it's an upside down Peach inscribed and it's got some interesting coloring it's got this very nice soft pink That You Don't See very often in this beautiful turquoisey green rest and then the whole thing is supported by a double gourd vase with gilded handles and then down here to a disc and then a flared sort of a flange step base but wonderful quality all the way up and it was given a very very modest uh estimate I thought of 10 to 15 000 pounds and it didn't even get there it ended up selling here's the back of it there you go there's a flat panel back on it um there's a detail of it sold for 7 560 pounds um British pounds which I think was an excellent buy so it went for you know 30 below its low estimate and it also is a signal to the audience that um uh the the there are if there are reserves on the sale they're very modest very very modest all right but a wonderful piece of cloisonne and then over to this the iron red 18th and 19th century uh bottle base it was around 16 inches tall uh with his uh kieran's uh decorated onto it here but very delicately painted very very delicately painted in underglazed red which is a difficult color as you all know to work with because the temperature has to be absolutely perfect and the atmosphere in the Kiln has to be absolutely perfect or all this iron all this copper red will do what copper does when it gets exposed it'll oxidize and turn green and uh then technically that's a misfire uh this this did not turn green anywhere that I can see um just an absolutely great piece of porcelain and they dated it uh to 18 to 19th century because there was very little difference between the Potter's working at the end of the chin lung period and into the early early 19th century during his son's Reign the Jai Jing Emperor um uh the The Potters that were working in in the 18 1780s and 90s were most likely still working making plots and things you know 20 years later during the next rain so so they they often the auction houses you'll see this 18th or 19th century they're not saying that it was made sometime between 1700 and 1890. they're saying it's the the message here is it was made sometime between probably 1780 and 1920s or 1820 rather and there's a wonderful photograph of the base that's what it should look like and that that foot room could be chin lung it could be jijing there's not much difference but again you get a sense of the decoration on this was really really great uh and uh what did it bring I brought twelve thousand six hundred dollars abroad right in the middle of its estimate an absolutely great piece of porcelain though and and good size nice presentation size 6 16 and a half inches that's what I thought something like that and uh he doesn't say where he got it a lot of his things in the provenance is is is his name and then the Woolen pie Museum which is where he put it when the museum was started in 1968. so um the ownership of for some reason probably maybe they set up a corporation for it or some sort of organization for it um a tax-free organization so they they technically it changed ownership as soon as it ended the museum and then over to this a seal marking period chin lung base this was an interesting base it was estimated at just a five to eight thousand pounds because I think there were some issues with the with the Cobalt with the Cobalt enameling down here you can see it seems to have a few little blisters on it all right but lots of gilding these beautiful Lotus devices and these Buddhist beads around the top and it's a very unusual color palette really unusual very very unusual and it was signed on the bottom as a chin lung seal mark on the bottom and it was done in gold and you don't see gold seal marks very often there is a similar example to this in the um uh Palace Museum uh in their collection uh might even be the meat to it I'm not sure but this was a terrific example uh the gilding on the on the on the rain markers a little bit worn off in places as you can see but it's there and that's really all that counts and uh it ended up uh doing a heck of a lot better than the five to eight thousand dollar estimate it went for a hundred and fifty one thousand two hundred dollars and I think it was even despite the despite the firing issues to do with the uh the enamels which which seems to be fairly evident here on the on the blue on the Lotus here this it's it's outlined in gold and so forth but the enamels look like they've blistered and puckered up a little bit but it's a very very rare bird and I think that if you look around you're not going to find uh other copies of it anywhere um outside of Institutions all right and then on to this the great things come in small packages this is a fabulous little dish chid lung seal Mark period and all that the dragonfly is sending into the into the into the into the chrysanthemums uh but the shading of the chrysanthemums were just absolutely beautiful beautiful pink tipped uh petals and then Fading Into white enamels and these nice green uh uh leaves floating around it and several and that turquoisey blue and the slightly light almost like a like a like a celery green uh and and of course the dragonfly coming in uh very auspicious stuff uh very very nice nice snow white porcelain and it was estimated at 60 to 80 000 pounds these these this particular these particular plates are very rare they were made early in the chin lung period all right and uh it was estimated 60 to 80 000 pounds went way over that and it went for about uh what's that up works out to OH Close of three times a high estimate uh 239 400 pounds and like I said it was small this was five and three eighths inches in diameter about the size of a t of a teacup saucer very very little but great quality and then speaking of great quality you had this this fabulous um ghee glazed or geek crackle ghee type Moon flask young Shen uh period and with the mark on the bottom uh there it is and this was a an excellent vase and what really stands out on this well a couple of things stand out on this one is the potting of it is beautiful the way it's potted it's just great form all the way up top to bottom nearly perfect is perfect and the crackle glaze was very very evenly uh laid out beautiful and that is they don't control how the glaze the crackles come out necessarily they can have some influence on the on on the density of the crackles and so forth and they've learned that at certain temperatures the crackle will will be at a certain width and the size of crackle and that kind of thing but it's it's it's it's it's it's never that well they're that very predictable and um what they'll do is they'll wipe the piece down um uh with but with with black ink on a rag and so forth while the piece is still warm and the cracks are open and they'll let them absorb in and then wipe off the excess and that way you get to see the crackle patterns and this thing had very attractive patterning and what also was interesting about it it wasn't perfect either um if you flip it around it's got a a fairly significant chunk of glaze loss knocked off the bottom which is interesting because you get a chance to see how thick the glaze was uh but this this got knocked off this this it either got pulled off when they took it out of the Kiln because there's an area here like that there's an area over here like that or it got bumped I don't know which uh but the the bottom of it looks exactly as it should there's the foot rim to it you know it's been neatly trimmed flat and his is slightly Gray grayish tone to it when the copyists when the people are making fakes of these today this is the color they're trying to achieve and what happens is they they put something on there to create this these slightly grade feet if that's what their intent is because some of these ghee wears have it and um um they they get it wrong and they this they're too black they're too dark they're too coarse looking this foot this foot when you when you blow it up if you take a good look at it you can recognize how smooth that would be if you put your finger around it and just gave it a touch uh because that that's what it should be and then there's this little bit of iron oxide running around the inside of the foot and there's none of it on the outside of the foot because the glaze went right to the bottom absolutely to the bottom and this was estimated at 100 100 to 150 000 pounds ended up selling for more than twice as high estimate 327 thousand very nice piece and then over to this the aubergine dogwon period uh in green green enamel ground uh Bowl this was a nice example we've seen these before they make a lot of copies of these um you know they go through phases making the copies and I've noticed lately there's a lot of dogwon stuff turning up on the market they have lots of transitional wears copies starting up at the market they've been making copies of of sun pieces now for the last 20 years in Earnest and they're making lots of Guangzhou pieces what we've talked about many times because they're so hard to differentiate from from the um the originals from the from the ones I'm making today some of the some of the ones they're making today are very very difficult the big thing you have to remember about the Guangzhou pieces is they never made that many uh the Imperial Kilns were not turning out boatloads of porcelain and when I first went into business you know 40 years ago you you occasionally saw Grand Market period piece Guangzhou back in Period piece of it not often and you occasionally saw a dog one piece but not often and suddenly there seems to be more of them around than there were 40 years ago on the market which which isn't possible all right but this was a nice example a very very nice example nicely finished again beautifully done bottom you'll notice that the aubergine around the foot the wave pattern the thickness of the enamel is nice very pleasing it's not too thick it's not bubbling off um and that very nice even white foot Rim very very attractive all right and it was estimated at five to seven thousand uh pounds it sold to 26 460 dollars I think the estimate was was a little silly on that because they always bring 10 or 15 000 I'm not quite sure why they estimated it's so low I'm not sure about that and then over to this this fangu Market period chin lung uh Celadon uh Celadon uh Jade beautiful thing uh and and what was interesting about these these these particular Jades in this form these archaic forms these early forms ancient forms were of great interest to the Qin long Emperor he was a real fan of antiquity he had a you know he had a huge Shang and Zhao Eastern Zhao and a bronze collection at the palace he'd love to go down and study them he inventoried his own collection which was quite unusual for an emperor but he was a fan of the Arts and the Jade Carvers were always trying to think of things that would really please him um and but because you want to make the emperor happy so you have you know terrific job security and they carved this and this was a highly unusual form very very unusual chimera's on the left side bats on the right both suspicious and this this this this faceted uh body with the uh little little Roux head feed on it very nicely done and the ring the Jade Rings difficult to carve and it was estimated at 150 to 200 000 and pounds and I think it's because they thought so much of it because it was something that chin long wrote about things that he liked and that's important and it was only eight and three quarter inches tall he bought it at the dro in Paris where they run all the auctions if you've never been to the hotel Drew in Paris and you go to Paris sometime go to the Drew oh it's fascinating there's about six rooms in there it's like a rabbit war and full of little rooms and their auctions going on all the time the last time I was there I think there were five auctions going on almost simultaneously from everything from from from rare couturier uh decorative uh you know clothing women's clothing exhaust you know fashion and all that and then um another auction another auction was going on with Chinese stuff which I went to see and it was a very interesting uh place to to hang around and uh the interesting thing about the druro is is that over here in America if you're not regular auction goer you have the you know the certain cast of characters that always turn turn up at auctions all the dealers and collectors and you can you know everybody knows everybody and it's like it's sort of it's sort of a bit of a club I guess and um yeah it's it's the same people in Paris it's the same type of vibe except they're all speaking French instead of speaking English obviously they do speak English and we my I was with my wife she speaks French fluently so it made life easy for me and it was very interesting it was very interesting to see how they do it they were all very nice and uh they were very nice to me when they found out I was an Auctioneer from America they thought that was amazing because I guess that many auctioneers show up over there I don't know but uh being an Auctioneer in Paris is a big deal because and it's a very difficult license to get to keep um the the Fairly strict rules about that so they were impressed that I was at Auctioneer even though it's nowhere near as difficult here as it is there to get an auctioneer's license anyway that was that was fun and uh and it was a heck of a nice piece of Jade uh 138 000 and pounds it went under its low estimate but I still think that was a good price I think they they put the estimate on there a little bit strong just because um uh the form this particular form was was so much liked by the emperor uh maybe today some collectors don't like them quite as much as Sotheby's does I don't know but it was a beautiful thing no matter maybe somebody got a fabulous buy and then over to this this very large chrysanthemum butterfly dish chin lung a young Chen rather a marking period uh beautifully done now this is another example of a non-perfect piece and this piece was far from perfect and from the front of it you can see it if you know what you're looking for you look over here there's sort of a yellowing in here it's a different color and there's a there's a chip there all right and then when you flip the thing over and you see the back of it um there it is you see the line right through the middle and you see these staple marks that used to be in the old staple repairs uh he apparently bought it had Staples in it he had the Staples taken out and and had it professionally restored and interestingly the if you look up here you see the porcelain here is very very white but then they have this outer area that's yellowed all right and this is indications of an old repair probably done at the time the Staples were put in it and more of it over here all right and that that that may be covering up all all kinds of sins you don't know what it's covering up it could just be covering up cracks or something but it was um there's some something that went on here um but regardless in spite of all that this plate did unbelievably well now it was 20 inches in diameter it was a beast this was a that's a beast of a piece of porcelain Yong Chen pieces aren't known for being this big most young Chun pieces are fairly small deck you know very very beautifully decorated and so forth but you don't see a lot of massive young Chen dishes floating around and this one was estimated 100 to 150 000 pounds which is a pretty good estimate for a broken dish that's been restored maybe badly uh it sold for 264 600 pounds all right and just as an aside on these on these repairs if you ever get in the Westies turn up all the time and one time I got one I got a vase that had a lot of this sort of yellowed enameling on it here and here and um I I was wondering how how much restoration was underneath it and um so I got some acetone and I cleaned it off I wanted to see what it looked like and what I found was they applied a huge area of this paint sort of to even it out to cover up one hairline on well in this case it was on a vase one hairline on the inside of the neck of the vase of the spot the mouth of the vase the whole top of the thing had been painted over so it looked like the whole top of it had been replaced and repaired and when I bought it the the I think I got it at an auction because I think the auctioneer said you know it's the whole top of it's been restored okay and uh when I got it back to the uh to the shop um cleaned off all the rest all that Gunk and it was just a hairline literally just a hairline but the whoever had it they wanted that gone and probably when it when it was first done um it was even the colors batched but over time the repair faded the colors changed and it turned yellow all right just a tip just a tip all right now and like I said 264 000. and then on to this is beautiful February Ming Dynasty seeded uh a Taoist figure uh this was a big figure most of these and many of you have seen them they are you know uh nine to 13 or so inches 14 inches in height um sort of the height of roof tiles that kind of thing uh this thing was much bigger it was 29 inches tall it was very very big two and a half feet tall and beautiful two and a half yeah two and a half feet and it was beautifully enameled the glazing on this was beautiful the aubergine this beautiful aubergine this turquoise the brown um nicely done in this cream glaze they used on his face in that very expressive face with his beard coming down just beautifully done and then the crown on his head uh that reminds me a bit of the the famous one that's in the British museum uh that's been been shown so many times the big Ming in the Ming exhibit they did years ago that beautiful um Fairway glazed figure uh which is sort of like one of the icons of the uh Chinese Department of the British museum now that one is much bigger that that piece I think is four or five six feet tall or something it's a real big one but this is very similar in feel and you don't see them this big very often and it was estimated at a very modest fifteen to twenty thousand pounds and ended up selling for 163 800 pounds because it was nice it was terrific and then these the zeton screens these were enormous they were 93 inches tall eight and a half feet roughly and um but these were embellished and overlaid with um these wonderful I'm gonna see if they have a single shot of it so no not really well this one might be a little better I'm going to show you this this is terrific this was it's zetan wood but it's laid out like Annette targere like a display stand and you see this like how they they implied the shelves running across it here and you you've seen that they're actually freestanding furniture they display things on they have these different levels that go down and uh here it is done on a flat screen to simulate that effect and then it was decorated with with probably bits of Jade hard Stone Carnelian uh Coral all kinds of uh all kinds of um uh different Stone inlays and then some this looks like some enamel work over here this is a Chim lung period screen double gourd vases bamboo uh Jade vases uh another vase over here a little teapot uh archaic Jade forms over here all of them so sort of like all the periods very very nicely done they provided lots of pictures of this this is these are really nice and we'll get back to them over here and they had a very modest estimate that I don't really understand 80 to 120 000 pounds and these are chin lung period these are not you know from the late 19th century these are old and they were they both were an outstanding condition just superb condition and superbly decorated and on zetan wood which is of course the most desirable of all the Chinese Woods pretty much and certainly the rarest um very very nice and they ended up selling for 942 000 pounds or basically a million dollars is what they sold for but eight feet tall so eight and a half feet tall they're big all right so overall that was a just a great sale and I urge you to go over there if you're interested in um you know keeping keeping up and studying pieces um the the post sales that uh Sotheby's has uh up now a lot of the images and the porcelains in particular have images of the bottoms of the foot rims and so forth and what you can do is when when you get when you get to one um like like this and you you you want to uh you wanna you wanna capture you know that kind of detail for example do a screen save on your computer you know do a screen grab and save it and and identify it and build up a file of these because they are there it's gold if you can do that really is makes a giant difference all right and then over here to this Asian Arts five thousand years Paris and this was on on the eighth this this just closed a couple days ago uh it was an interesting sale this was sort of an everybody's sale this was a sale that had things in it for you know 600 to a thousand dollars and things that went for six figures so it was an interesting mix and an opportunity for people in every price range to try to find something they love and take it home all right and that's what it's all about and we're going to go through some of them um and they're not necessarily the maybe the well some of them are more expensive than others but there's some great little Buys in here this was a lovely pair of Rose Mandarin first half of the 19th century jars probably done around oh you know 1830s to 1840s and they had these iron mounts put on them um for tea so you lock it up so that nobody steals your teeth they used to they used to lock locking tea caddies became a big thing because tea initially was was was a very expensive product especially in the 18th century and people used to lock their tea caddies because they were so afraid the staff or somebody would be in the house and they'd snitch their tea and even though the tea caddies were fairly small that was considered to be a very valuable possession for a long time so they worried about people snitching snitching their teeth and in this case if you were it's sort of a status thing if you own two jars like this as tea caddies um with these giant metal you know hinges on them and there would have been a lock on on the other side I assume are some arrangement to lock it there's always some sort of locking thing uh there it is there's the hole that's where you put the pin through to lock it and that would keep somebody from snitching your teeth um these were big these are jars were 24 inches 24 and almost 25 inches tall um and they look to be in pretty good shape I noticed there was a maybe a couple little repairs around the rim of the lid but that was it it may have happened when they applied the metal mounts uh they were estimated at eight to twelve thousand years and the pair brought ten thousand and eighty Euros which I think is a pretty reasonable I think it's fine um we've seen a number of this this form of Jar turn up on the market in the last few months uh there was that one that was heavily restored that brought six or eight hundred dollars but there were several others uh that have been on and they've brought uh three thousand four thousand five thousand in in the last month uh there was one on eBay that brought a little over five thousand and it wasn't a pair so here was a pair that you could pick up for ten thousand eight hundred and if you go by the old rule that a pair is worth three times the price of a single this was a great Buy all right and then on to this the sanctu booth um Qing Dynasty uh bottle vase this was a dated again 18th and 19th century because they really you really can't distinguish between between the two reins the Qin lung and the early Jai Jing period but this was a very very pretty vase and the glaze was very reminiscent of um uh uh the uh peach Bloom glazes that you see in many in many many ways or the early or the kungshi color the kangshi Reds and they have these variations in color coming down and then it turns this very soft pink that's very much like the pink you see sometimes on the uh seven uh uh peach Bloom pieces the seven styles of the peach bloomwares that were meant for the scholars table and uh here it is that that soft color but this very rich rich Ruby Ruby colored red uh over over much of the body and the bottom of it looks just like this now the bottom of this thing looks very dirty uh they apparently didn't want to clean it that's just dirt it almost looks like these vases were found in somebody's basement sitting in in in filth and they just forgotten about them that's usually what I when I was doing auctions we used to see things like this and think you know you go let's hit the let's check the basement and you'd find things like this sometimes in a basement up against a wall it got put down there they had them out with flowers in them they took the flowers tossed the flowers and somebody said oh just put them in the cellar for now and uh because anything we don't have anything to put in them and uh here it is but the foot Rim the foot Rim looks really 18th century to me so I I I I I I I I I if I had seen this out somewhere I'd say it was 18th century not 19th century under any any situation but they examined them and that's what they came up with so we'll go with that but you'll notice the bottom has this nice blue bluish toned crackle to it and on the bottoms of these lanyao and Peach Bloom pieces and red decorated wears you often see either this bluish tone or a bluish tone leaning towards green very typical especially on kangshi pieces it's it's something that you see often um you know very very nice anyway it was estimated three to four thousand Euros and it sold for 13 860 Euros good value on that a good thing but monochromes still remaining very very very popular and then on to this this really nice um a hookai phoenix ball utsai Phoenix uh ball uh uh dragon in Phoenix dish from the Jai Jing period and you have the dragon on on one side there's another one an iron dragon let's see here um we call this a dragon in Phoenixville where's the Phoenix oh there it is it's in between it's very small on this one sometimes they have the whole Phoenix going around on one side and then the dragon on the other side but they do show them ascending sometimes like this um in between the two dragons so we have this beautiful iron red dragon this reddish dragon and this beautiful green enamel dragon and uh this was a fabulous example and I'm I was kind of surprised by the estimate didn't make a lot of sense to me because it was four to six thousand Euros and when you examine the um the quality of the iron red decoration here it's very very crisp very very precise and interestingly you have this this sort of dark red or iron red body and then the head is uh done in another tone of red that's more towards salmon and then and then transitioned by the blue the soft blue under glazed blue here I think it's very nicely done very delicately done and then you have the band around the upper upper part here of the Buddhist symbols and Rue had sort of like in a chain like a belt running around top but very nicely done and the one thing I loved about it too was the dragon in the middle he's such a happy looking dragon sometimes sometimes Ching dragons aren't very happy looking they're sort of ferocious especially chin lung dragons but this one looks like he's like he's gleeful he's he's going after the Pearl and he's beautifully painted and there's no wear and this was a nice example that's all there is to it beautiful example and uh ended up selling for 47 880 eight times its high estimate blew it away but I thought the estimate was artificially low I I I would have been less well less surprised if they'd estimated that you know twenty to thirty thousand dollars or Twenty to thirty thousand Euros or something which is sort of the standard price range for these but I think what it was was they would this was again the auction I was saying this is not a reserved piece so the reserve is so minimal who cares um because the low estimate was just four thousand dollars all right and then over to these these swirl swirl uh vases from the uh Qing Dynasty chin lung period probably uh many of you that have been collecting for any length of time will remember seeing these around they've turned up and um usually you find them in collections of people who buy 18th century China trade Wares um a very nice looking pair of bottles I think Marchant or chase one of the big one of the major uh galleries have had these over the years and maybe they both have but one of them had them on the cover of a catalog I remember I can't remember who had it virtually identical but beautifully done Nice condition they're about nine inches tall they're not enormous these are never big but very delicate beautifully finished bases on them if you look at the bottoms there's a sight curve to it these are really nice and uh estimated the estimate again here is crazy low a thousand fifteen hundred to two thousand Euros um I think that's that's a price they would have brought back in the 70s or something I didn't understand I didn't understand the estimate at all in this I almost thought it was a typo it should have said 15 to 20 000 Euros they sold to 16 380 which is fine it's a very reasonable buy because that's a rare type they're very attractive and then on to this sort of my favorite things I remember looking at it prior to the sale and I was dumbfounded Again by the estimate of ten to fifteen thousand Euros because this is a really really superb um a landscape brush pot in Wood uh and it's it's done like a chin lung period brush pots when they did these the mountain scenes on the side and you have you know Immortals and people with goats and animals and sheeps climbing up it and here you can see some figures over in here there's another figure delicately painted in here you have to look a little bit but it's fun to find them lots of people sort of hiding and you'll find animals and so forth you might find some birds perched and whatnot and often these are signed but this style of carving was so attractive uh and I was just I couldn't understand the estimate I just I really couldn't but I I thought this this was really really nice uh and obviously old and has been in a collection um you know kicking around for a while but the pieces the the the carving relief work looked to be in great condition still so um that's good all right and uh let's see here it was estimated ten to fifteen thousand Euros and sold for 126 000 Euros now you don't see many you know wooden bamboo or carved with brush pots bring that much money that's pretty unusual but this was a very unusual um Scholars object and uh I think that when some of the scholars collectors out there saw this they just their heart started pounding pretty hard because they they've never seen one of this quality anywhere for 10 or 15 000 Euros unless it's like a new copy all right and then over to this this was just one of the more modest pieces it didn't sell and um they had it they had it marked uh they just what did they call it's sort of interesting has a Guangzhou mark on the back and they dated his late 19th early 20th century well if it's late 19th century it's marking period but they didn't say Market period they said early 20th century now the the Guangzhou era ended in 1908. so what they're what they they're saying is is that it's not Market period which means it's has to be just 20th century I don't I don't understand how they did it um because I think it's a my opinion is it's a republic dish I don't think this is um a market period dish I think this was not not Guangzhou I think it's Republic the way the mark looks the way the foot looks and then when you look at the plate on the front um the workmanship is good they made lots of these plates this was a little one of the most well-known patterns of the Republic period when it came to dinnerware and dish sets they made tea services in this pattern they made lots of lots of covered bowls uncovered bowls platters charges you name it it was a very very common pattern and this one had a considerable amount of wear to it it looked like it was used in a house you see a lot of wear around the show character and you'll notice that the enamels are chipped there's a lot of chipping to the enamels down in here and so forth and it didn't sell all right but it was just one of those curious catalog entries that I couldn't make make the heads to tails of because if it was 19th century if it was 19th to early 20th century it would have to be then be potentially Guangzhou period otherwise if it's not Guangzhou it has to be 20th century period it can't be before Guangzhou so that's that all right and that was it that was the sale and um you'll notice lately too um uh they're putting in no Reserve this is a good sign very very good sign no reserve and uh they they they seem to be sticking to it all right this was from the part one of the other of the uh of the of the sale uh that they did back up when was the sale this was back in what was it in March Yeah March 22nd um my daughter's birthday and uh uh and a lot of the stuff was unreserved which is absolutely great look at that all unreserved and the stuff did great this just proves uh why how reserves don't necessarily mean much you know here is a plate you may remember um this June invitation Robin's eggplate that sold it was just some estimated at 50 to 70 000 but no reserve it sold for 214 000. all right and that's that's let the market tell you what your stuff is worth though don't do it any other way uh the market will tell you all right thanks for watching if you haven't subscribed yet to us here on YouTube please do we we do these videos uh every week we do a couple a week and we've been doing some shorts lately I hope you've seen them they're kind of fun to do we do them here in the morning we sort of lay them out and get them going we're going to do one later we got one sort of ready to go up the today uh and so forth and subscribe leave a comment um give us a thumbs up if you like them and uh take part all right thanks so much for watching um see y'all um I'll be back tomorrow with the regular weekly video too okay bye-bye [Music] [Applause] [Music] thank you [Music] [Applause] foreign [Music] foreign [Music]

Channel: Peter Combs

Views: 7,158

Keywords: antiques, antique auctions, chinese art, japanese art, auction news, chinese porcelain, imperial porcelain, sotheby's auction, sotheby's london, sotheby's Kiuan collection, chinese art paris, auction results

Id: eaOBGyGavMU

Length: 44min 25sec (2665 seconds)

Published: Thu Nov 10 2022