Valued by the BBC’s Antiques Roadshow two decades ago at £20,000, it is now being offered with hopes of £40,000-60,000. The 13in (33cm) dish, decorated to both sides with white flowering blossoms borne on leafy branches, is similar to another in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.
According to family history, it was acquired in the early 20th century by Alexander Robertson (1861-1922). Born in Thornhill, Scotland, he emigrated first to Canada and then America where, by 1906, he was vice president of the Continental and Commercial Bank of Chicago.
Though he married, he had no children and, on his death, all his possessions were shipped back to Edinburgh where they were divided between relations.”
This dish, with a design after a Ming prototype of the 15th century, has come down in the family to a vendor in South Derbyshire. When the dish was taken to the Antiques Roadshow in the 1990s ait was valued at around £20,000.
