A blue and white meiping vase, Yuan dynasty, €500,000 (£430,000) at Subastas Darley.
A blue and white meiping, a classic of Yuan (1271-1368) dynasty porcelain, hammered for a cool €500,000 (£430,000) at the Spanish auction house Subastas Darley (22% buyer’s premium) on April 10.
The 17in (43cm) vase made in the kilns of Jingdezhen during the earliest years of porcelain production came for sale in Valencia from a member of the Karabeyoglu family.
The Yuan dynasty was characterised by the development of new styles and techniques that were used and refined in later periods.
Among the most iconic of the large blue and white forms of the period is the tall meiping, used at the time as a wine container. The intricate designs were painted in sapphire-blue tones, using cobalt imported via the Silk Road from Persia.
The decoration here is characteristically divided into sections with the Eight Treasures to the shoulders, panels of ruyi to the base and a central band of four peonies in full bloom and lotus in various stages of blossom.
According to the auction house sections with the Eight Treasures to the shoulders, panels of ruyi to the base and a central band of four peonies in full bloom and lotus in various stages of blossom.
Karabeyoglu family collection
According to the auction house it had been in the collection of the Karabeyoglu family for generations. The vendor was Meltem Karabeyoglu, chairman of the oil and mining conglomerate Karabeyoglu Enterprises, and custodian of an impressive collection of ceramics dating from the family’s heyday during the Ottoman Empire.
The vase had been subject to a thermoluminescence test with results indicating it was made sometime in the 13th or 14th centuries.
The price was many times the top estimate of €80,000 but the auction house did reference three other exceptional examples in its catalogue. They included the meiping - retaining the original cover that is lost in almost all surviving examples - that was offered by Christie’s Hong Kong in November 2023 as part of a selection from the celebrated Tianminlou collection.
That piece, last sold by Sotheby’s in London in 1985 for what was then a massive £286,000, took a mighty HK$67,775,000.
