A Chinese vase - found by a mother and son while cleaning out an attic - has fetched £53 million at auction.
It's the dream that many enthusiasts on the Antiques Roadshow hope will some day come true for them.
Finding out an old household item is actually worth a fortune is one of the things homeowners think will never happen to them - surely that kind of good luck doesn't happen to any old regular Joe. Or does it?
People up and down Britain should be racing up their lofts and scrambling around to see if they can find any antiques that could fetch a pretty penny following the news a mother and son discovered a Chinese vase while cleaning out an attic, which sold for a massive £53 million at auction.
In what has been described as the antiques story of the century, the duo have been catapulted into the millionaires club thanks to the 16-inch tall Qianlong vase, which was sold for the whopping figure in West Ruislip last week.
The item dates back to the 1740s and has become the most expensive piece of Chinese porcelain ever to come on to the market.
It was found as the pair cleaned out the home of a recently-deceased relative, who kept the ornament on top of a wobbly bookcase.
The Daily Mail claimed it belonged to an elderly man who inherited the piece from his uncle - an explorer who often ventured to the Far East on his travels.
Bidding for the pot leapt from £500,000 to tens of millions in a matter of minutes as people clamoured to get their hands on the vase, which is a colourful object decorated with flowers and goldfish.
Luan Grocholski, an expert in ceramics who worked for Sotheby's, saw the item when it was kept in a stockroom.
The specialist told the newspaper: "I saw and just thought it couldn't be true. I realised the quality was fantastic, and assumed it was a very high quality copy."
He and the auction house estimated the vase would sell at between £800,000 to £1.2 million and did not anticipate just how in-demand the model was.
John Axford, an expert in this field from the Antiques Roadshow, told the information outlet: "Experts have known that the market in Chinese antiques is in a dynamic state, but the £53million price tag for this exquisite 18th century vase is far beyond the bounds of all reasonable expectation."
He claimed the piece is a virtuoso work of the most delicate craftsmanship and predicted it would have been commissioned by the Qianlong Emperor for one of his summer palaces in the mid-18th century.
"The astounding nature of the craftsmanship just shows how advanced the ruling Qianlong dynasty was at this time," Mr Axford added.
Such was the excitement during the sale that auctioneer Peter Bainbridge broke his gavel because he was slamming it so hard on the rostrum.
And that feeling could soon be experienced again if people throughout Britain check in their lofts to see if there's a masterpiece collecting dust that could earn them a small fortune.
So get out those ladders, get in the loft and route around for the objects that can turn your life around. The dream has already come true once, so it could do again.
You'll never know if you don't look!
No comments:
Post a Comment