Why This Plain Bowl Sold for $38 Million?

In 2017, a 900-year-old bowl, smaller than your hand, sold for $37.7 million. No dragons, no gold, no painting. So why?

This is the story of Ru ware (汝窑): a sky-blue glaze fired for one Song dynasty court for about twenty years, an emperor who perfected everything except his actual job, a Qing emperor who carved his poems into the porcelain, and the copies now sitting on desks all over China.