Asian Art

UK: ORIENTAL antiques rarely make the strongest contribution to provincial sales – although they have provided a few hugely gratifying if rather embarrassing sleepers before today – but the first day of this Lincolnshire sale featured a private collection of Meiji works of art that attracted strong bidding from the specialist trade.

UK: JAPANESE porcelain does not come much rarer or more expensive than that produced by the private factory of the princes of Nabeshima, which is why auctioneer Nigel Kirk’s pulse quickened when he first glanced at this 8in (20cm) diameter dish, illustrated here, entered for the January sale of Mellors and Kirk.

UK: When a private UK vendor consigned a Chinese celadon jade cup to Christie’s South Kensington (17.5/10% buyer’s premium) at £400-600, he could not have hoped in his wildest dreams to sell it for almost 50 times the low estimate.

IN a week that has seen the NASDAQ plummet and general gloom settle over the dotcom world, the massive Tek Sing cargo sale has shown that the Internet can play an extremely useful role in the international auction scene.

UK: The unexpected crowd puller at Lyon & Turnbull’s 509-lot sale on October 8 was this Wanli period (1573-1619) Chinese blue and white ewer estimated at £400-500

UK: Hawk-eyed Neil Froggatt spotted the true worth of an antique treasure during a routine household evaluation.

US: ONE OF the rarest chairs in the world has met with an unexpected fate at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts. A 17th century Chinese folding armchair, which had accomodated the highest dignitaries of the Imperial court, was unable to bear the weight of a weary museum visitor who had disregarded the ‘do not touch’ sign and sat down to rest his feet.

UK: JAMES Boswell’s question and Dr Samuel Johnson’s answer on the subject of China, c.1778.

HONG KONG: Christie’s and Sotheby’s enjoyed a successful start to their Spring series of sales in Hong Kong last week, despite some local difficulties.

UK: JAPANESE lacquer is a complex form of decoration requiring the painstaking application of layer upon layer and incorporating different materials to build up the finished pictorial surface.

HONG KONG: A WORLD auction price was set for Chinese porcelain when this extremely rare doucai chicken cup, from the Ming Dynasty, with the six-character mark and period of Chenghua, 1465-78, from the collection of Mrs Leopold Dreyfus, sold to Eskenazi Ltd of London for HK$25.4m (£2m) at Sotheby’s Hong Kong on April 27.