Hong Kong Auction News From Christie's and Bonhams December 2020, Antique Auctions

[Music] well hello this is peter combs from bidamout.com and p.o combs asian art in gloucester massachusetts and today is december 4th 2020 and in this video we're going to have a look uh back at last uh this past week's auctions over in hong kong we're going to specifically focus in on the christie sale on the bottom sale sotheby's had a sale as well but there wasn't a lot of a lot in there that really showed us much about the market and uh it was some of their stuff was more of a general line sale it was good they were good auctions but i think christie's and bonhams had the more interesting auctions christie's in particular did a really great job and they had i think the the the best of the lots so to speak just in my opinion uh but anyway we're going to take a look we're going to browse through the results from this catalog the springfield museum's collection which did unbelievably well the 12 those were just 12 lots ended up grossing around 6 million dollars but well through their estimates we'll talk about that and then important chinese uh ceramics and works of art at christie's and then the bottoms catalog uh fine chinese ceramics and works of art and is what we saw was that the uh furniture uh interesting in ming furniture especially in fine later furniture ching ching dynasty chin lung furniture uh is is is really strong uh the the price results on the furniture were uh pretty much across the board at the high estimate or way above the high estimates and i think that shows some real changes in the market as as we move along and we're going to start over here on the christie side first and we're going to take a look at the important chinese ceramics and works of art we're going to go through about probably a dozen or so of the lots to give you an idea how it went the first thing was this really really rare fine large ding lotus bowl northern sung to early june jin dynasty that's sort of how they date them these days this bowl was pretty big it was a foot in diameter which is really large for these if you've ever seen them you know that most of these bowls are uh you know in the six to seven inch range at the most uh this was a big one it was beautifully done beautiful lotus pods and sized into the decoration this lovely creamy glaze and a real sense of the free-flowing drawing that they would do on these pieces this was just an absolutely splendid example we talked about it last week i love the shape of it i love the three dimensionality of the uh the way the lotus petals are placed around it and this very lovely copper rim on there that's just patinated to these beautiful tones uh the whole package was just so appealing and uh the piece had a an estimate of six to eight million hong kong or roughly eight hundred thousand to 1 million dollars and it just blew through that 27 million hong kong uh which is a a very big price uh roughly three and i call it three and a half million dollars u.s so it went three and a half times its high estimate which is sort of a surprise these days because ceramics lately have been a little bit uh up and down all over the place some aren't as strong as they were they were previously but when a big piece like this that's unusual comes on the market large large bowls like this just are extremely rare and it did fantastically well and it had a pretty good ownership history through the years the last time it was on the market was back in the 1930s which causes a lot of excitement among collectors we've seen it a million times you get these old collections out there that haven't been on the market since you know maybe 60 years or more uh they just go crazy for them and then on to this this really lovely uh young shen period poppy cup yankai glazed just a very very pretty example here it is this was sort of a small bowl this was only four or five inches in diameter but beautifully enameled and a rare type had had a seven to nine million hong kong estimate it brought eight point six five million hong kong or a little over a million dollars about a million two uh caller a million a million a million fifty thousand somewhere around there and as i said it was small it's three point nine 16 inches in diameter nine centimeters roughly uh so that's uh about three and a half inch wide bowl pretty big price for a three and a half wide pinch bowl uh but that's we've seen it before i mean we all remember the famous chenwa chicken cup that sold for 35 million dollars u.s so it just goes to show you and then there was this this very nice hong woo period a charger or a foliate rim dish this was a beautiful example a very famous type very nice strong drawing on it very well defined the you notice that the clusters are all very neatly placed very defined against this nice white background and lots of heaping and piling effect going on here and then this very nice wave border inside of the barbed rim just just this is a beautifully beautifully potted bowl and beautifully decorated and it was estimated as i said two to three million hong kong and it ended up selling right in the middle of the estimate two and a half million uh hong kong or roughly uh you can call that about 350 000 and it was 18 inches in diameter gorgeous plate though absolutely spectacular and then over to this the kang shi six character mark um they call this a willowly face or sometimes they're referred to as amphoras they're one of the uh uh you know those official scholar forms that were done during the kung period but the shading of the pink on this was lovely and i was a little surprised by they had sort of a low estimate i thought and not to mention it comes in this great looking stand god any rate uh beaut beautiful piece beautifully evenly glazed it was estimated three to five hundred thousand hong kong which seemed low to me at the time when i saw this a couple weeks ago i said boy they usually bring a lot more than that uh and it did it brought 3.1 million hong kong or roughly four hundred thousand dollars which is up more in the range that they typically bring and i think this was a rather splendid example uh better than a lot of them uh very soft very elegant and a very nice tone i like that a lot and then over here to this there's a chin long period may ping face marking period uh very nice uh uh cobalt decoration on it again they use that heaping and piling effect to uh to a wonderful extent lots of use of negative space so the flowers in in in the uh pomegranates really have a sense of floating and then this very very stylized band of um acanthus leaves or bok choy leaves or rot wrapping around the base just a fantastic example and it went well over its estimate it was estimated the high estimate was three and a half million in hong kong and it ended up selling for five million hong kong which is about uh call that about 650 000 u.s and this was a nice pot and it measured 13 inches in height but again this form they can do awfully well there's a strong demand for them and then we're going to take a look at this this was something i thought was really really nice and i thought the estimate was fairly reasonable and apparently so did everybody else because it was estimated at six to eight hundred thousand hong kong or uh roughly you know is 70 to hundred thousand dollars and it ended up doing considerably better than that it brought 1.8 million hong kong which is about uh two and a quarter two and a half two hundred two and a quarter two hundred and fifty thousand dollars but this was the fantastic vase we talked about i'm pretty sure last time was the the iron red decoration um of the dragon against this beautiful beautiful dalcy enamel background that's extremely curved linear all the vines scrolling and flowing around and these beautifully done spiky leaf flowers and so forth just absolutely elegant looking vase beautifully done and then these extremely fine um sort of a lotus petal a border on it it's the same powder we just saw on that uh if you think back the same on that on that 10 12 inch ding ding bear bowl from the sung dynasty there's that pattern again it never went away it's just used in different places on these vases now and as i said it brought about 225 000 this was a big pot it was 32 inches tall quite a presentation very impressive really really handsome thing beautiful and then over here to this auction this was inspiring the mind life of the scholar of a scholar official they had some great things in here and there was a lot of interest in it there was a lot of excitement and things did really really well and we're going to start with this this was that very fine five dynasty guilt bronze sensor that we talked about last time it was estimated at four to six hundred thousand hong kong and it went right up there and it ended up bringing five hundred thousand dollars or rus uh 500 000 hong kong dollars so that's roughly 60 or 70 000 u.s but it was a beautiful piece it was a wonderful example it had those those early lotus pedals where they thickened them up rather than being very thin as they were in the ming dynasty and nicely gilded this beautifully open worked reticulated sort of garlic ball here around a ball separating the beast and in the in the burner holder and so forth just a great example absolutely fabulous and uh it did fine it did just fine and then over here this the hun ming wax wax resist uh or wax uh lost wax technique cast bronze with the buddhist symbols on it we talked about this a little bit last week and we thought it all thought it looked the estimate looked very reasonable on this also uh is a rare type of uh human ming was of course one of the most prominent of all the late ming dynasty bronze casters uh people collect his things he's he's very he was one of the probably the most important bronze caster of the of the age and he did he was known for this kind of work with these stippled grounds and these beautifully done relief worked areas with creatures and animals this time it's buddhist symbols mostly which made it sort of unusual for him and uh the estimate was 100 to 120 000 hong kong which is uh as you know uh somewhere in the uh the ten to fifteen thousand dollar range it went well above that to 175 000 hong kong or uh that works out to about 22 or so thousand dollars which is sort of the price range we'd mentioned before that they tend to the good ones tend to bring 18 to 25 000 so it brought right in right in its sweet spot of its of these of the historic prices for these of course the advantage was that they had a low estimate so the low estimate encouraged a lot of interest and participation and uh the psychology among bidders are is it yeah okay it's got a low estimate i got a shot at it and then they become committed to the piece buyers psychologically become committed to pieces with low estimates and suddenly they're bidding right up to where they might not have bid otherwise had the estimates been higher high estimates discouraged interest and participation every nobody minds paying a good price for something but they always like the feeling that they have a shot at a bargain and and that's the psychology behind putting reasonable very modest estimates on things because estimates can high high high estimates can really kill a piece and this was a case where it really worked out well for this and then over to this this did fantastically well this excellent ming dynasty uh uh double gourd vase with lots of gilding beautifully done uh with the with the the dragons at the top uh opposing over the pearl and so forth down the body had a nice patina on it and these beautifully done food lines clutching you can see them sort of clutching their claws like cats into the side of the vase and you have these uh silk balls above them and this was estimated at 150 to 180 000 hong kong or around uh you know 15 to 20 000 25 000 and it went way above that it went three times its high estimate basically um ended up selling for 475 000 hong kong dollars or about 75 000 u.s a strong price but this is a very lovely example and this type as you if you're looking at it you'll realize they don't come up that often on the market and uh but there's always an interest in them and uh then on to this the table the recessed leg ling she uh table this was a very nice one they had a couple of tables that did very well uh we're getting into the furniture of course and and the furniture is very strong this table was estimated 2.2 to 3.5 million hong kong dollars so the high estimates around 400 000 ended up tr almost tripling that went for 9.2 million hong kong or about a million what's that work out to about a million one a million two somewhere in there but a great looking table absolutely great thick planks nice nice uh composition all the way around the open worked end panels are beautifully done nice thick top very attractive graining throughout it a good piece and as they say and 9 million later a beautiful beautiful table and it was juan wally of course and then here to this one this one we did talk about in the previous video again another really fine recessed leg table with averted flanges the way they kick out on the ends and had these rue heads inside of it ended up selling for over almost 7 million hong kong well above its high estimate again or about 900 000 but beautiful strong structure here very bold very gutsy and this was an early ming table earlier than than most early you know uh most of the planking as we said last time when we previewed this is the woodwork uh on these the wood the panels the planks got a bit thinner as the ming dynasty wore on because the price of the wood had gone up so much and there was also an interest in lightening up the look a little bit but this was a good strong early ming table and it got a very nice price 6.8 million hong kong or about 800 thousand dollars but again well above its high estimate which is a positive sign for the market and this was a table that did very very well we thought the estimate was very strong on it this was a chin long period zit but it's all carved beautifully carbs eat on table we can revisit this for a second here uh just a a lot of so much work went into this typical high chain of furniture design and furniture work top quality carving all the way around um right down the legs beautifully done and then this base panel which is just in another state this base panel could have been a whole table top or something unto itself with this beautiful lotus flower blossom in the center and then this profusion of very strong vines coming out and running around it everywhere an absolutely stupendous piece and then it terminates with these ball feet or semi-ball feet actually they just sort of kicked out feet but they put rue heads on them so they look like balls uh just a fantastic table and as i said it sold it sold for uh at its high estimate of 20 million hong kong dollars or about 202.5 million u.s which is a significant price for qing dynasty furniture this is good to see because for a long time ming furniture was really the furniture that sucked all the oxygen out of the room and now we're seeing 18th century and i think we're going to see 19th century furniture of top quality start to get increasing amounts of attention but this was this was a real test to the market uh the provenance this was quite good though if you remember back it sold at hong kong back in 2014 but it came from the hasakawa clan uh back then but it had originally been handled back in the 30s by yamanaka company and we all know the story about yamanaka which is one of the great asian art dealers in the world based out of japan they had stores in the united states they had stores in tokyo and handled the best of the best during their time in business unfortunately they were shut down shortly after pearl harbor under this uh the story is the they had no involvement of course with anything to do with the war but they were japanese owned and under a 1917 law following the declaration of war after pearl harbor they were mandated to be closed and they they began mailing out these fantastic if you've seen the yamanaka catalogs those yellow catalogs today that are worth six or eight hundred or even a thousand dollars that was the liquidation sale of the american base of yamanaka and they sent out these catalogs for some of the greatest rarities in the world under people where they could get things on approval because they had to liquidate the company and a number of great pieces are still in american collections due to that sale today and a lot of them have turned up an auction over the years so any rate it's an interesting side story yamanaka and then back to this the pocketry round corner cabinet from the qing dynasty chin lung period done in the ming style but they added all of this fabulous bamboo pocketry work to the case this is something you see often in european furniture french and italian flemish furniture and so forth and here it is uh pocketry work done in china um it may have been influenced of course by the jesuits uh uh going back and forth and sharing ideas on woodworking because it's you know it's just a really unusual thing for them but the end panels with the honeycomb pattern that you see on 18th century porcelain and then these almost abstract looking blocks down the front just way ahead of its time that beautiful iron uh iron latch or hinge closure on the front just an excellent excellent thing estimated at 2.6 to 3.2 million hong kong and it went well above the high estimate to 4 million hong kong or 500 000 u.s all right and we sort of we remember we talked about it in the other video we thought it would do that because it this is a really rare type of chest and they're hard to estimate because they're they're not a lot of them that have been on the market so it's difficult to come up with what they call a comp to say well one just like it sold a few years ago so this one is probably worth this or that um i don't remember one of these having been on the market in a while i'm sure they could find a couple and and try to ballpark it so i'm good on them for that because the estimate in the end was pretty good and then over to this the really really lovely pair of juan volley round corner tapered cabinets on stands on their original ming stands which makes these quite unusual and these were very handsome very strong looking beautiful matchbook paneling on the front where they would cut cut the plank and then flip it over to this side for example and create sort of a mirroring effect you see how these these wood grains mirror one each other all the way around they do the same over here very effective use of wood you see the same thing also on western cabinets they often do that they do it with marble even when they do marble installations and buildings and they call it matchbook marble anyway here's the base and they're nice original stands with the step shelf on the bottom and these very nice little returns applied here and here just all over a great looking piece of pair of cabinets absolutely fantastic and they were estimated at um 16 to 20 000 hong kong which is right up there and they ended up selling for 18 000 hong kong or about 2. 2.2 million dollars u.s 2.2 million 150 000 somewhere around there absolutely fantastic really great really great and then over to this this little huanwali uh incense table late ming early qing dynasty but done sort of in the sung style a very rare small table a really rare this is an incense stand this tabletop is very small about 20 inches and but a beautiful beautiful base with this nice high up stretcher and the legs look good all the way down you see the the these uh these shaped feet and then they still have the little blocks under them which haven't worn off or been rotted out often these these little blocks underneath the underneath its tootsies here are uh uh you know are chipped out and things have happened to them this table is remarkably complete uh beautifully done and uh as i said uh the other day the the estimate was two to three million two point three two point eight to three point eight million hong kong which is a pretty strong price it ended up going way over that eight million six hundred and fifty thousand dollars as hong kong or roughly uh one million uh uh eighty thousand u.s somewhere around there very strong price for a little table uh what was the top width on this thing again uh round edges 3180 inches 31 inches 31 inches high and uh what is it 20 yeah 21 inches wide and 14 inches deep so this was a little of a small you know this big by that big table but rare rare type and uh uh did awfully well awfully well and then over here this was the christie's sale of the imperial glories from the springfield museum's collection i'm not going to go through all of them uh the wholesale uh here here it is you can go and check yourself but everything in here seemed to go fantastically well but these are extremely rare jades and extremely rare pieces of poison a and there's a big market for that especially when they come out of museums and they and and they have these haven't been on the market for a hundred years in the in the history of the museum and you had things like this we discussed it before this shallow and deer figure a beautiful piece of nephrite jade absolutely stupendous quality beautifully polished this lovely satin sheen all over the piece the facial expression of the luhan and then the beautiful beautiful deer almost smiling look at the little cheek coming up there i love that thing you got he's cute and just a great looking uh uh jade all the way around nothing nothing wrong with that in any way and it was estimated at five to seven million hong kong or roughly uh uh how does that work out to about uh uh five hundred thousand six six hundred and twenty thousand to you know seven hundred thousand went way above it ended up going for about a million two million million three uh but a beautiful beautiful jade and it was a substantial size too it was 10 inches tall that's pretty good size for a piece of jade that big that's that perfect the stone is so clear there's no iron in it there's no nothing in it it's just pure greenish white jade absolutely fantastic and then on to this the the these are one of those champion bases they call them the pair of vases cylindrical vases with the uh creature the winged creatures standing on the head of the mythical dragon at the bottom and this was a an absolutely stupendous piece of cloisonne absolutely great and the gilding on it was in tip top shape all the way down this thing was collected uh and cared for very very nicely for a long time just a beautiful example nice color that the blue the liquid the the blue background on this is just like like the sky it's absolutely beautiful and uh ended up selling for five and a half million hong kong um or roughly uh uh three times its high estimate or around uh it comes out to about uh seven eight about seven hundred thousand dollars okay uh against an estimate of you know a hundred hundred and twenty thousand uh absolutely great great piece and then on to this this young chandra chin long archaic form who formed you know aerovase and it wasn't marked it wasn't dated this piece did not have a rain mark on it they're estimating the uh the age to be sort of mid to late young chandra early chin lung period but top quality again beautifully done lovely blue background again all this great yielding with this very atypical mask in the center uh just an absolutely stupendous piece of cloisonne and uh this was a nice size too it was uh 25 inches in height a good big one two feet tall ended up selling for eight million six hundred and fifty thousand hong kong or about one point uh one million in change or one point one million seventy thousand something like that uh but what an absolutely great thing and it went uh as you can see the high estimate was five million hong kong so eight million is a pretty big jump over the high estimate and then down to the jade rue scepter that we talked about this was absolutely beautiful it had a million and a half to two and a half million dollar estimate it sold right on the top estimate two and a half million but the i'm not at all surprised this is an absolutely spectacular piece of jade again very few inclusions there's one tiny tiny little color inclusion toward the bottom here a little bit of a little slight irregularities in color but other than that it's a beautiful pure piece of stone and this thing was big it was 17 inches long so you have to always keep in mind when you have a piece of jade that's of this size the size of the block of jade had to be cut out of so carefully this was a real big investment to make this scepter at that time absolutely great and the quality as you can see by the chimera was meticulous and perfectly proportioned all over and uh two and a half million hong kong or uh roughly uh that comes out to about 300 a little over 300 000 uh right at its high estimate and then the last piece of cloisonne we're going to look at from the collection was this one another one estimated at 1.2 to 1.8 million hong kong and it ended up selling for 6.8 million oh what happened to that look at that let's see if we can get a better picture than that doesn't look like it's uh there we go yeah that looks a lot better doesn't it and uh this is a really fine example also again you notice that the the gilding again is absolutely spectacular you can get a real sense of the collector uh the collector's taste in this case mr smith because there was a certain flavor that ran through his toys and eight pieces there was a certain flavor of a style and color that flew through his flew through went through his jades and here we have this really really stupendously fine uh piece of cloisonne and this just elegant gold base stuck on there and it just screams i'm important you know look at the base they put under me and it was i said uh it ended up selling for 6.8 million dollars or roughly around uh 700 000 u.s and this wasn't terribly big this thing was only four inches tall but chin lung marking period and uh top quality probably made it the imperial out of the air at the palace but just just absolutely stupendous and then we're going to hop over here to uh bottoms this was the one disappointment in the sale and i never found out exactly what the reserve or the estimate was on this is this was that great young chen period sensor very very rare type absolutely beautifully done in a collection for a long time and i have a feeling that the estimate was just too high i just have a feeling that whoever owned it there was it was german collection they got a little too excited they got out over their skis and you know they may have said the bottom is fine you can have it this is the only estimate you know the only reserve we're going to accept and maybe it was a little too aggressive and often with these high price things they end up selling even if they don't sell in the sale they often sell through negotiated sale afterwards because the family realizes they may have made a mistake or somebody you know might have gotten a little too excited about the estimates and somebody will come in and make make a serious offer and uh it'll get accepted uh because this va this this bronze is so recognizable and its history is so well known now um if they were to re-offer it in another sale even in a couple of years everyone is going to remember it as the one that didn't sell and it's sort of a tainted thing so they need somebody who's a collector who will come along and buy it post sale and is planning on owning it for a while and if they can get that combination together they're in good shape that bronze will find a new home it's a beautiful beautiful thing it's just the human nature they just got a little too excited perhaps about the value all right and then on to this this other bronze this is a really really nice wine your wine container uh a ritual wine container beautifully done and this is this who was they estimated 80 to 100 and what was the i wrote it down i wanted because they did quite well it was estimated at 80 to 220 000 hong kong which was uh um roughly uh you know 15 to 18 to 20 000 ended up selling for 42 000 really really nice example beautiful and then over to this this was the one that had that spectacular put the box up there it is the one that had the box another who came up and this had a 500 to 800 000 estimate and it did much better than that it it went well over that and it ended up selling for and forty thousand dollars hong kong nine hundred and forty thousand hong kong dollars which is about a hundred and forty thousand over its high estimate and it jumped up to 121 000 u.s but this was a big one this was a warring states period bronze and we talked about it the other day because i just loved all of the inlay work in it um and if you pull it in you can really see it let let bottoms page load here a little bit there we go you notice how come on come on come on let's go there we go um you can see all the gold inlay the gold line inlay and then the turquoise set into it just beautifully cast that nice mask down the side absolutely lovely bronze absolutely lovely there's the rest of it right there just yeah god what a beautiful thing and uh it brought it brought a price it bought a price that it deserves 120 000. again i thought the estimate was reasonable and uh it everybody was willing to go a little bit above it with a not turquoise inlay but it's malachite excuse me and now over to this this was one of the little surprises of the of the cell and i meant to mention this in the preview because it just struck me as being so great absolutely fine this ming dynasty june it's a it's based on a very early archaic uh wine holder why not these were ritualistically used to keep wine warm but this is a ming example and the quality of the work on this was just absolutely stupendous absolutely stupendous guilt work throughout it gilton's gold and silver and these beautifully uh these seated figure beasts at the bottom holding it up and all of this that's going on just an absolutely great example it was in a collection in australia it was going to a famous collector in australia most of his collections gone to a museum but this was something i guess maybe the family held back for some reason other than it's just absolutely great so why not any rate it was estimated at uh this was estimated 150 to 250 000 hong kong and it ended up selling for 1.7 million hong kong or about seven times its high estimate uh but completely understandable it went for 226 thousand dollars u.s absolutely superb workmanship absolutely beautiful and i had i had it on the list and the other one because we had two inlaid silver and gold pieces and i somehow missed this one and i apologize because i wanted to share it with everybody but anyway that was that's sort of a look back see how it went there were some pieces other pieces that didn't sell and there were some pieces of courses always where they did much better but overall the market looks pretty healthy given all that's going on in the world and i think there's a lot of life in the old girl yet as they say all right we'll be back also with the regular weekly video if you enjoyed it give us a thumbs up join subscribe to us here on youtube come over to bidamout.com and check out what we're doing on over there and uh thanks so much for watching and leave a comment tell me what you think of these all right have a great weekend and uh we'll see you all next time next week all right bye bye [Music] so [Music] so [Music] you

Channel: Peter Combs

Views: 4,320

Rating: 4.9069767 out of 5

Keywords: fine art, fine chinese art, auction, chinese art, chinese art auction, japanese art auction, japanese art, art news, auction news, asian art, auction results, chinese porcelain, chinese paintings, chinese bronze, jade, asian art auction news, asian art values, chinese art values, auction houses, online auctions, internet auctions, authenticating chinese porcelain, art

Id: 9vAwXr6jcJ0

Length: 33min 41sec (2021 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 04 2020