A CHINESE vase with an asking price of just €150 sold at a Co Laois auction yesterday for €110,000.
The 12-inch-high blue-and-white porcelain vase attracted an opening bid of €50 – before a bidding war erupted between two international antique collectors.
Both had recognised it online as an authentic Imperial vase, and flew in for the one-day sale of furniture and collectibles at Sheppards Irish Auction House in Durrow.
Afterwards, the purchaser, London antique dealer Richard Peters (48), said: “I got a bargain.”
Underbidder Rong Chen (48), who had travelled from Beijing especially for the auction, said she was “very sad and disappointed”.
Her husband, an accountant and antique collector, had spotted the vase on the internet and believed “This is the one – we think it was in the Imperial household.”
The item was part of a collection of Chinese porcelain inherited by an unnamed Co Carlow family and consigned for sale. They were last night “chuffed and delighted” by the sale, the auctioneers said.
Mr Peters, who runs an antiques business in Kensington, said the vase was “made for the personal collection of the Emperor Qianlong in the 18th century”. He explained that the vase, in a shape known in Chinese as hu-yu-chun-ping, was decorated simply with “images of banana and bamboo trees”.
It had “probably been looted from the Imperial Palace in Peking by French or British or American soldiers sometime during the 19th century”, he added, describing the field of Chinese ceramics as “difficult because the market is filled with fakes and forgeries”.
When auctioneer Michael Sheppard called for an opening bid for the vase shortly after noon, he received an offer of just €50. But, within seconds, intense and frenzied bidding was under way and bids jumped, first in multiples of hundreds, and then thousands of euro. Mr Peters, who was seated, bid by nodding discreetly, while Ms Chen stood as she took instructions on a mobile phone from her husband. Later, she told The Irish Times that he had told her “to drop out at €100,000”.
When Mr Sheppard brought down the gavel at €110,000, there were gasps and then applause in the tightly packed saleroom.
Mr Sheppard said “that was the highest figure ever achieved for any item” in the 60-year history of the family-run firm of auctioneers and valuers. He said “something like this happens once in a lifetime”.
Mr Peters bought a second lot – a pair of Chinese polychrome vases – for €41,000. Like the Imperial vase, the items had carried a guide price of €100-€150.
Mr Peters returned to London last night with the items, which he is likely to sell to a Chinese client.
As the salesroom emptied, attendees spoke of their astonishment. David Stapleton, from the nearby town of Ballyragget, said “It was one of those moments. You had to be there – like the GPO in 1916.”