Ebonised chiffonier – £45,800 at Mander,
The key to its appeal was not the English Aesthetic movement carcase but the series of Chinese porcelain plaques it had been made to house c.1880.
Auctioneer James Mander, who had received the piece for sale as part of a house clearance near Sudbury, believed the panels were of different dates. The six large landscape panels (one broken through the centre) were possibly from the Kangxi period (when the famille verte palette first came to the fore), with the smaller panels of scrolling foliage probably from the later Qing period.
On the day, 13 phone lines bid against two bidders in the room, before it eventually sold online via thesaleroom.com.
The sale took place on April 27.
