Asian Art

Sotheby’s July Hong Kong series will include ‘a lost masterpiece’ of Qianlong yangcai porcelain recently found in a Dutch country house.

The highlight of Bonhams’ rescheduled sale of Indian and Islamic art held on June 11 was a group of a nine Company School watercolours with an unbroken provenance back to 1812.

Hindman will holding Asian art sales in Chicago over two days on June 25-26.

Estimated at just £50-70, this Chinese porcelain saucer dish sold online for £7850 at Edinburgh saleroom Franklin Browns (15% buyer’s premium).

While the Japanese woodblock print artist Okumura Masanobu (1686-1764) is credited with the first use of one-point perspective in the depiction of interior spaces, a technique previously known only in Western art, his colleague Utagawa Toyoharu (1735-1814) achieved even greater fame when he mastered the creation of perspective prints of outdoor scenes, known as Uki-e.

The first sale held by Bonhams Australia (22% buyer’s premium) behind closed doors in Sydney was devoted to Asian art,

Scotland’s key role in the 18th and 19th century China trade has a legacy. Some of the nation’s country houses remain the repository of important Far Eastern works of art.

It was not just the great and good of 18th century Europe and North America who commissioned the Thirteen Factories at Canton to embellish Chinese porcelain blanks with family armorials or subjects copied from prints.

Covid-19 crisis has launched the art and antiques world into technological exploration

A Beijing enamel vase from a Scottish country house topped the Asian art sale held ‘behind closed doors’ by Lyon & Turnbull (25% buyer’s premium).

A Chinese blue and white vase achieved a hammer price of over £3m at an online auction that closed in Singapore last week.

For centuries, China was a rewarding market for European clock and watchmakers who created extravagant timepieces for their Oriental clientele.

As a rule, musical boxes, which were the favoured mode of reproducing music by mechanical means in the salons of Europe and the US during the 19th century, were more or less portable mechanisms.

At Keys (20% buyer’s premium) in Aylsham a lot catalogued as ‘a patinated bronze group of a lion attacking a horse’ drew – and to an extent commanded – much attention.

This late 19th century surcoat or longgua, finely embroidered in silk and gold thread with eight dragon roundels, was originally worn by a high-ranking woman at the Chinese Imperial court.

Among 83 lots of film and entertainment memorabilia offered at Lacy Scott & Knight (20% buyer’s premium) in Bury in St Edmunds was a British quad-size poster for 'Dr No', the first James Bond film starring Sean Connery released in 1962.