This ang moh very crazy about Chinese inventions leh.
Antiques collector who sold prized Chinese bowl may have lost out on £150,000 after forgetting he had another that would have made lucrative pair
- Tony Evans sold first bowl for £235,000 and later remembered second one
- Matching pair of bowls could have fetched £600,000 if he had sold together
- Bowls were made for Chinese Emperor Kangxi in the 18th century
By
EMILY DAVIES
PUBLISHED: 12:49 GMT, 19 March 2013 | UPDATED: 12:51 GMT, 19 March 2013
16View comments
An antiques collector who sold a Chinese bowl may have lost out on £150,000 after forgetting he had another that would have made a lucrative pair.
Tony Evans and his family were thrilled when his antique 'rice' bowl from the 18th century fetched a staggering £235,000 at auction.
But it wasn't until after the sale that the family remembered a matching piece Mr Evans had given to son Simon 30 years ago.
Tony Evans sold an antique rice bowl for £235,000 but had it been offered as a pair with another bowl he owned (pictured) experts believe the value would have increased by a third to nearer £650,000
The second bowl is now set to command a similar price when it sells as a single lot, making a total of nearly £470,000 for the pair.
But experts believe that had the items been offered together they could have fetched over £600,000.
Mr Evans, from Kent, had inherited the two Imperial porcelain bowls from his father Fred who had brought them back from working in China in the 1920s.
The extremely rare bowls are six inches in diameter, are decorated with pheasants and were made for the Chinese Emperor Kangxi in the 1720s.
Simon Evans, a 55-year-old chartered surveyor, had no idea what his bowl was when given it and has stored it in a box in the back of a cupboard for three decades.
Mr Evans, from East Anglia, said: ‘My jaw hit the floor when I found out my father's bowl sold for a six-figure sum.
‘A few days after the sale he suddenly announced that he thought there might have been a pair of them.
‘He had completely forgotten about giving it to me and I had also forgotten about receiving it.
The second bowl is set to fetch a similar price when it sells as a single lot, making a total of nearly £470,000
‘It was my wife, Clare, who said 'oh yes, we do have a Chinese bowl in a box' that prompted us to get it out and low and behold there was the twin of the first bowl.
‘I had just put it in a cupboard for safekeeping and simply forgot about it.
‘I've decided to sell it not because I need the money but because I'm anxious about having something so valuable in the house.
‘It is easy to wonder with the benefit of hindsight just how much a pair would have been worth had we sold them together. A pair being sold together must be extremely rare.
‘But it seems rather pointless to think like that now because it has been and gone.’
The first pheasant bowl was sold last year by the Canterbury Auction Galleries in Kent that had put a pre-sale estimate of £8,000 to £12,000 on it.
But because the market for Oriental antiques is booming at the moment due to the newly-rich Chinese buying back their heritage, bidding on it took off.
It eventually went to an anonymous Chinese buyer, who saw off 11 other rival bidders to net it for £195,000. With the fees added on he would have paid £235,000.
Auctioneer Cliona Kilroy with the second Kangxi bowl which is due to be sold later next month
The same auction house is now selling the second bowl. Although the estimate is £150,000 there is no reason why it will not sell for a similar price.
Tony Evans' father started collecting Oriental porcelain in 1925 during the time he worked for an Anglo/Chinese mining company in the port of Tientsin near Beijing.
His son, now aged in his 80s, began his own collection in the 1960s and 1970s from top London dealers.
Alastair Gibson, an expert of Chinese porcelain and consultant to the Canterbury Auction Galleries, said: ‘We obviously didn't know about the existence of the second bowl.
‘After the first sold for the significantly high price the vendor popped up and said he might have had a twin to that bowl.
‘Had we known it would have been nice to have the two bowls together in a single sale. Sadly, we didn't know.’
The auction for the second bowl takes place on April 16-17.
BOOM IN ORIENTAL ANTIQUES AS JADE BOWL SELLS FOR £260,000
A traditional chinese 'Phoenix' marriage bowl has sold for a whopping £260,000 at auction.
The Chinese masterpiece would have been brought by the bride as part of her dowry to marriage.
It fetched £10,000 above the estimated price at auction at Chorley's in Cheltenham, Gloscestershire, and sold to a mystery Chinese collector.
The rare jade marriage bowl, which dates back to the 19th century, is from a collection of the late Commander Paul Bridgeman of Dowdeswell Manor, near Cheltenham, Gloucestershire.
A rare jade marriage bowl is to be sold at auction and is estimated to fetch an incredible £250,000
The bowl's ring handles, suspended from auspicious phoenix masks are typical of the form and the jade is of a pale celadon colour prized by the carvers of that era
Family members have passed it down over the years and the item was eventually handed to Chorley's auctioneers.
The jade bowl, thought to be around 270 years old, is a type which was popular at the Imperial Qing court, the last imperial dynasty of China.
It would have been brought with a quantity of gifts including gold and porcelain, with jade being one of the most important of these gifts.
Its ring handles, suspended from auspicious phoenix masks are typical of the form and the jade is of a pale celadon colour prized by the carvers of that era.
The phoenix birds on the handles of this bowl are emblematic of new beginnings or rebirth which is why it would have been given as a gift from the bride's family to her new husband.
John Harvey, director of Chorley's, said: ‘We were delighted to be able to offer this magnificent bowl for sale today and were very pleased with the huge amount of international interest the bowl generated.
‘It will now be returning to China.’
Read more:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...-forgetting-lucrative-pair.html#ixzz37jRvatCv
Follow us:
@MailOnline on Twitter |
DailyMail on Facebook
