Chinese Works of Art

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).

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

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.

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.

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.

The timed sale of Oriental ceramics and works of art to be held by Hotlotz Singapore running until May 3 features a selection of items from the descendants of Sir Oliver Ernest Goonetilleke, GCMG, KCVO, KBE, KStJ, who was governor-general of Ceylon from 1954-62.

It is badly damaged, but this large shallow dish offered by Aldridges of Bath (20% buyer’s premium) is an outstanding example of Kangxi mark and period famille verte porcelain.

A cross-section of Asian art – Qing porcelain, Meiji Satsuma and Euro-Asiatic ivories – provided the prizes at Gorringe’s (21% buyer’s premium) spring sale held in Lewes.

This Yongzheng (1722-35) mark and period Eight Immortals bowl sold for £26,000 at the Hansons (20% buyer’s premium) auction in Teddington last month.

Among the most recognisable of all the famille rose porcelain designs produced in China for export to Europe are the so-called ‘Scotsmen’ or ‘Highlander’ plates.

Long unseen material from the country home of an ancient English family brought some estimate-demolishing five-figure bids at Morphets (17.5% buyer’s premium) including a genuine sleeper.

A pair of doucai ‘dragon’ dishes that was entered for sale by a local vendor sold for over 25-times estimate at East Yorkshire saleroom Hawley’s.