Chinese export silver golfing trophy – £5500 at Bourne End Auction Rooms.
Offered in Buckinghamshire on May 4, it was marked for the Shanghai retailer Luen Wo. However, equally important is the inscription reading April 1901 Consolation Cup won by GF Lanning. At the time the ancient game of golf had only been in China for a handful of years.
The Shanghai club, the first on the mainland, had opened in 1896 for rich Europeans and enjoyed a brief flowering before it was banned by the Communist Party as being too bourgeois.
The auction house sold a similar trophy dated 1903 for £14,000 in September 2021.
