Imperial Porcelain Performs
17th November 2022
A rare pair of Chinese porcelain ewers have topped a series of Asian Art auctions in Salisbury after selling for just over a quarter of a million pounds.
The two yellow-ground penba hu (lot 608) were made for the court of the Jiaqing Emperor at the start of the 19th century and are based on a traditional Tibetan shape.
“The shape was originally cast in metal and used as part of a Tibetan religious ritual,” explained John Axford, head of Asian Art at Woolley and Wallis. “The emperor Jiaqing was a fervent Buddhist and an ardent devotee of Tibetan Buddhism. For these reasons his Imperial workshops were commissioned to make objects such as these in the Tibetan tradition.”
The eight-inch high vessels carried a starting price of £80,000 when they came under the hammer on 15th November, but a bank of telephone bids soon saw this exceeded. The hammer finally came down to a Chinese collector in Beijing for £205,000 – making a total of £256,250 with the addition of buyer’s premium.
The sale of the ewers came at the end of a long day for the Salisbury saleroom, with a string of notable lots. An Imperial Dragon vase (made for Jiaqing’s father, the emperor Qianlong) sold for £200,000; a famille rose Immortals vase of the same period reached £40,000 despite having the neck reduced; and an earlier 17th century blue and white flared vase depicting The Romance of the Western Chamber sold for £50,000.
The two day series of auctions concluded on 16th November with a premium-inclusive total of just over £3.31m and a selling rate of 83%.
