Chinese Works of Art

A SPECIALIST conservation event will take place at the Royal Asiatic Society on April 13.

DORCHESTER saleroom Duke's achieved the highest price for a UK regional auctioneer so far this year when this Qianlong mark and period vase sold at £625,000 on February 11.

GUERNSEY’S Martel Maides and Byrne’s of Saltney, Chester have become the latest UK regional auctioneers to benefit from the insatiable demand for Chinese mark and period works of art. Both achieved house records last week.

JUST as Asian Art in London got underway, a surprise regional highlight emerged in Devon. A pair of 18th century Chinese Export pheasants were consigned for sale at Plymouth Auction Rooms by a local vendor, whose family had owned the birds for at least three generations.

GUERNSEY auctioneers Martel Maides look set to become the latest UK regional firm to benefit from the rise and rise of Chinese mark and period porcelain after three Yongzheng period (1723-1735) famille rose bowls were consigned by a Channel Islands family who have owned them for at least 80 years.

SOTHEBY’S latest Hong Kong Asian series saw mainland Chinese buyers come of age in the field of Imperial Chinese art.

THE new auction season kicked off in earnest in New York with one of the strongest market sectors – Asian works of art.

BRINGING bidding from different parts of the world to Mallams latest sale in Oxford, this Chinese jade censer went spectacularly over its £2000-3000 estimate on August 26.

SALISBURY auctioneers Woolley & Wallis have broken their own UK regional record with the sale last week of a Qianlong jade carving of a water buffalo for £3.4m. It establishes a massive new UK landmark for any work of art sold at auction outside London.

The Chinese ceramics and works of art market is undergoing a price readjustment after a decade of unfettered growth, a trend highlighted at the latest Asian sales series staged at Christie's Hong Kong.

THE discerning collection of Chinese jades, rhinoceros horn, furniture, textiles and paintings assembled 200 years ago by John Reeves has now gone under the hammer.

Offered at Lawrences of Crewkerne on October 16, this Ming dynasty blue and white brushwasher has Xuande (1425-1435) character marks and is of the period.

Asked to sell the contents of a holiday home in Sidmouth, Devon auctioneers Potburys were pleased to find this 181/2in (47cm) high cloisonné vase standing in the hearth as a container for fire irons.

Anyone who picked up Sotheby’s latest Chinese catalogue for their November 7 sale in London could not have failed to notice the stunning blue and white Qianlong moonflask on the catalogue cover, the piece that topped the sale when it sold for £2.5m.

Another imperial Chinese sleeper has awoken in West Sussex.

High drama at the Chichester auction rooms of Henry Adams on July 19 when this pair of Chinese famille rose moon flasks shot to £760,000. The price, a house record, is also the fourth highest ever achieved in a UK auction room outside of London.

But move will fail to curtail smuggling of pre-1911 objects via Hong Kong

Imperial Chinese ceramics and works of art are at the centre of a raging bull market. Auction prices have skyrocketed thanks to fierce competition between Western dealers, collectors and a large body of Asian buyers, many Chinese mainlanders amongst them. With the major Spring sales in China staged during a six-week period from mid-May to early July, ATG brings you a timely lowdown on the auction scenes in Beijing and Shanghai.

The Asian art juggernaut thunders on with little sign of any slowdown in the market. If anything, the pace seems to be intensifying.

This Chinese turquoise ground ewer, standing just 73/4in (19.7cm) high, belongs to a group of ritual wares specially commissioned by the Qing Court for placement on Buddhist altars. Their function was for ceremonial use in palaces and temples either within the Forbidden Palace or Bishushanzhuang in Chengde.