The rare small porcelain Chinese bowl found at a yard sale was auctioned off at Sothebys for $721,800.
The following written content by Rachel Treisman
A small porcelain bowl that cost $35 at a yard sale and turned out to be a rare, 15th-century Chinese artifact has sold at a Sotheby’s auction for $721,800 — more than 20,000 times its original asking price.
An unidentified Connecticut man bought the bowl from a yard sale near New Haven last year, and later emailed photos to Sotheby’s seeking an evaluation. Appraisers determined it dates back to the Ming dynasty of the early 1400’s, and estimated its worth at between $300,000 and $500,000.
It fetched a much higher price as part of Sotheby’s Important Chinese Art auction in New York on Wednesday. Sotheby’s said the bowl was “one of the major stars” of the sale, and it set off a four-way bidding battle.
“It’s always quite astounding to think that it kind of still happens, that these treasures can be discovered,” said Angela McAteer, Sotheby’s senior vice president and head of its Chinese Works of Art Department. “It’s always really exciting for us as specialists when something we didn’t even know existed here appears seemingly out of nowhere.”
Of the six other bowls of this kind known to exist, McAteer said, most are in museums and none is in the United States. Two are at the National Palace Museum in Taipei, Taiwan, two are at museums in London and one is in the National Museum of Iran in Tehran, according to Sotheby’s.
The cobalt blue-painted bowl is small — about 6 inches in diameter — and shaped like a lotus bud or chicken heart, according to a writeup on the auction website. It’s adorned with “blossoms of lotus, peony, chrysanthemum, and pomegranate flowers,” with a medallion at the bottom and “bordered by a band of lotus scrolls around the rim.”
McAteer said the bowl has “all the characteristics and hallmarks” of the early Ming period, noting its smoothness, silky glaze and distinctive color and designs. Read more from NPR
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