Small Chinese vase which was passed down as family heirloom for 100 years and valued at just £10,000 sells at auction for £1MILLION

  • The 18th Century vase was bought by an unnamed bidder from China
  • The blue and white bottle vase was made for the Qianlong Emperor in 1730
  • Its previous owner was Lady Ethel Stronge, wife of Jame Stronge who worked in China in the late 1800s

By Jaymi Mccann

PUBLISHED: 14:47 EST, 15 March 2013 | UPDATED: 14:48 EST, 15 March 2013

The vase sold for 100 times its estimated value after a telephone bidder in China took an interest in it

The vase sold for 100 times its estimated value after a telephone bidder in China took an interest in it

A small Chinese vase that was valued at £10,000 to £15,000 has today sold at auction - for almost £1 million.

The extremely rare 18th Century ornament, made for a Chinese emperor, was brought to Britain by the seller’s family more than a century ago.

Despite it standing just 20cm (eight inches) high, an anonymous telephone buyer from China paid around 100 times its estimated value when it went under the hammer at Tennants’ auction rooms in Leyburn, North Yorkshire today.

Tennants’ associate director, Nigel Smith said the blue and white bottle vase, made for the Qianlong Emperor around 1730, was put up for sale by an academic who lives in Oxford.

He said its auction room success was down to its rarity and exclusivity as very few were ever produced.

Mr Smith added: 'It really is a museum-quality piece and these things very rarely come on the market.

'It’s come down through the family - one of their relatives was a diplomat in China in the 1880s and was given it as a gift.'

He said the unnamed owner had contacted auctioneers after learning that a similar item had sold for £2.6 million last year.

 

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Mr Smith said he was shocked at the £950,000 it made during today’s Spring Fine Art Sale, adding: 'Despite the low valuation, we expected it to fetch in excess of half a million but we were very pleased with the result. I haven’t spoken to the vendor but I expect he’s rather happy too.'

The seller’s grandmother, Lady Ethel Margaret Stronge, left the vase to his mother Mrs Rose Ethel Richardson of Tynan Abbey, County Armagh, Northern Ireland, who gave it to her son.

Tennants were inundated with requests from people with Chinese vases after they sold one for £3million in November last year

Tennants were inundated with requests from people with Chinese vases after they sold one for £3million in November last year

Lady Ethel Margaret married Sir James Henry Stronge who joined the diplomatic service in London in 1879 and served in Peking in the same year.

He went on to serve in the Supreme Court in Shanghai in 1885 before working in Central America from 1897 to 1907.

The seller was one of many people who sent Tennants pictures of heirlooms after a slightly older Chinese vase made £2.6m in a Tennants sale in November, the auction house said.

A vase valued at just £20,000 was sold for almost £3million at the same auction house

A vase valued at just £20,000 was sold for almost £3million at the same auction house

The blue and white bottle vase had been kept in a house in North Yorkshire for 45 years and the owner had no idea it was valuable.

But the antique was discovered by Rodney Tennant, from Tennants Auctioneers, during a routine house call to value the contents and it sold to a bidder in Hong Kong.

In November a 300-year-old blue and white vase was bought by an unnamed Chinese telephone bidder based in Hong Kong from the same auction house.

The 40cm high bottle-shaped vase, bearing the mark of 18th century Emperor Yongzheng, was conservatively estimated at £20,000-£30,000.

But word quickly spread around the antiques world and collectors and dealers from China were prominent in the crowded saleroom as the bidding quickly soared.

It was knocked down for £2.6 million, which with buyer’s premium pushed the final price to just over £3 million.

In 2010 a Chinese vase found in the UK was sold for £53 million.

Tony Johnson, 54, from the Isle of Wight, sold the artifact from the 1740 Qing dynasty to billionaire Chinese property developer Wang Jianlin.

It was said to have been brought back from China by an ‘adventurous uncle’ after being stolen from an imperial palace by British troops during the 19th Century Opium Wars.

The vase was then at the centre of a legal row between the auction house and Wang Jianlin, and 18 months after the sale Johnson has still not received a penny from the sale.

 
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Bit like the UK's constitution. Little valued by those who think the truth is what they make it.

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Ha wow Bet it was a Chinese purchaser - Les, Perth, Australia, 15/3/2013 23:43 =================== another one who just looks at the pictures.

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Well hope the buyer pays up. The Chinese buyers have got a reputation among the big auction houses of over bidding and refusing to pay. This means the item can't be resold, returned to the seller and in effect I. No mans land. Smaller auction houses get caught up in the commission profit and don't smell a rat. We will soon read how this item is part of a legal case. - Alex , Singapore_London, 16/3/2013 05:59

Can you blame them?

Just imagine how you Brits would react if the Crown Jewels were stolen and then 100 years from now started appearing in Chinese auction houses with Chinese people calling them family heirlooms. Would you just sit back and congratulate them on a job well done?

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Why every time I saw the auction of Chinese artifacts, always reminds me of the Opium War and the burning of the Summer Palace.If the ancestor is not legally obtained. I hope that you can apply it back to the museum.If traded legally obtained, and I hope you can get your money.This is a Qing Dynasty porcelain.Emperor Kangxi, Emperor Yongzheng and Qianlong emperor the three emperor during the porcelain kiln is the best.So, if this vase is really, it is worth collecting.

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If it was made for the Emperor, it would not have been legally sold out of his possession. No one else was deemed worthy so it simply wouldn't have happened. Like it or not, it was almost certainly looted from the destruction of the Old Summer Palace and subsequently sold on. Imagine if Buckingham Palace was looted in the London riots last year and people helping themselves to everything within... well, the Old Summer Palace was like Buckingham Palace, Versailles and the Louvre rolled into one... you get the picture.

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Pathetic really.

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I would imagine that the IHT man will be looking at this sale and want his slice.

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If Chinese buyers are getting a reputation for not paying up it's probably because many of these higher value items were half-inched from China in the first place. These are not plates from an exported china dinner service.

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Waste of time

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Wow my wife has one of these that she was left by an old lady when she was 8.

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