Chinese vase found in shoebox in attic sells for US$19.1 million
The staggering price paid by a Chinese collector is the highest ever recorded by Sotheby’s auction house in Paris
An 18th-century Chinese vase forgotten for decades in a shoebox in a French attic sold for €16.2 million (US$19.1 million) at Sotheby’s in Paris on Tuesday – more than 30 times the estimate.
Experts at the auction house said the exquisite porcelain vessel was made for the Qing dynasty Emperor Qianlong and had set a guide price of a much more modest €500,000 (US$590,000).
“This is a major work of art, it is as if we had just discovered a Caravaggio,” Olivier Valmier, the Asian arts expert at the auction house, told reporters before the sale.
The vase, which was in perfect condition, “is the only known example in the world bearing such detail”, he said.
Rare porcelain from the Qianlong period has been going for astronomical prices recently, with a bowl sold last April by Sotheby’s in Hong Kong for US$30.4 million.