Their Cat's Bed Was Imperial Ming Porcelain | They Thought It Was Junk

In the hallway of a house in Essex, a chipped bowl held together with iron staples sat on a chest of drawers. The family cat slept in it. The owners thought it was damaged junk: the best pieces of the family collection had long since gone to museums, and only the broken ones stayed home. The collection was brought back from China in 1900 by Major-General J. W. Tulloch and passed down the family for 114 years. When the elderly couple decided to move house, the last nine Chinese pieces went to their local auction house, Reeman Dansie of Colchester. The bowl carried an estimate of £200–300 and a cautious catalogue description: "Ming-style." On 6 August 2014, fifteen bidders in the room, online bidding and the telephone lines pushed it to £90,000 hammer — £108,000 with fees, around $178,000. It was a house record for a firm founded in 1881. This documentary investigation covers why the staples and chips argued for authenticity, why provenance beats a seal mark, why genuine imperial Ming is rare by design, and how the story ended for the family, the bowl and the cat.