Ming-Dynasty Chinese Porcelain Bowl Sold In Hong Kong For HK$229 Million at a Sotheby’s auction

A blue and white porcelain bowl that’s nearly six hundred years old was sold for HK$229 million (US$29.5 million) at a Sotheby’s auction in Hong Kong on Wednesday (April 5).
The price, which included fees charged by the auction house, was the second-highest price paid for a Ming-dynasty Chinese porcelain at auction and about twice the pre-sale estimate.
The blue-and-white porcelain bowl has a diameter of 23 centimeters and is painted with a design of fish swimming in a pond of blossoming lotus.
Made in the Xuande Period (1426-1435), the bowl has been preserved in extraordinary condition and is considered as a great example of early Ming blue-and-white porcelain in private hands.
The tense bidding for the Xuande “fish pond” lobed bowl lasted around 12 minutes and was a tussle between four anonymous bidders on the phone and Mr William Chak Kin-man, a local dealer, in the sales room.
Mr Nicolas Chow, deputy chairman of Sotheby’s Asia and international head of its Chinese works of art department, said bidding was down to just two phone bidders after the HK$130 million mark and that the winner was a client of one of the auction house’s Taiwan specialists.
He said the bowl is among a few surviving examples with a design of fish swimming in a pond — one of Emperor Xuande’s favourite motifs. Dated from his reign between 1425 and 1435, the bowl was previously in a Japanese collection and had never appeared at auction before.
“It is a piece that is very well-known in Japan, having been exhibited in the Tokyo National Museum in 1963, and the Kyoto National Museum in 1966, and published extensively thereafter,” Chow said.
The record for the most expensive Ming porcelain piece ever sold is held by the Meiyintang Chenghua “chicken cup” that Chinese collector Liu Yiqian bought for HK$281.2 million in 2014.

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