Paint-stain Chinese vase fetches over 760k pounds at auction!
By ANIFriday, February 12, 2010
LONDON - A Chinese lantern vase, once used as an umbrella stand, was auctioned off for over 760,000pounds.
A husband and wife, who have not been named, were given the cracked and paint-stained antique 50 years ago.
Later an auctioneer saw the 18.5in vase during a valuation at their home and recognised it as almost certainly made for the Emperor Qianlong in about 1740.
“The vendors had had no idea what it was. They had relegated it to a spare bedroom. There is evidence that it had been used as an umbrella stand and it does have a crack in it and has been splashed with paint,” the Daily Express quoted Guy Schwinge, of Duke’s auctioneers of Dorchester, Dorset, as saying.
The new owner bought the vase for 765,000pounds and it could have been sold for double the price without the crack. The sale price is three times the value of the sellers’ home on the Isle of Purbeck.
The vase is thought to be the work of Tang Ying, one of the era’s greatest craftsmen and may have once belonged to Florence Nightingale’s family who lived in nearby Embley Park, Hampshire. (ANI)
