Collection found in house fetches £40k
A bidding frenzy erupted at an auction house in Staffordshire as buyers flew in from China to snap up rare oriental artefacts.
The collection fetched a total of £40,000 at the sale in Lichfield with hundreds of people also following the action on the internet.
The works of art were discovered amongst the contents of a house in Cheltenham inherited by a Lichfield couple on the death of the owner.
Much of the collection, which included Chinese jade and porcelain, had been bought in Hong Kong in the 1970s. Adrian Rathbone, fine arts manager for Richard Winterton Auctioneers, said the sale had been timed to coincide with Asian Art Week in London. Around a dozen Chinese buyers travelled to Lichfield for the auction.
Among the highlights was a pale jade ornament of a goat and kid which fetched £5,000 and a carved jade model of an infant at £2,700.
The highest single price was paid for a carved jade ornament of two ibex, a kind of wild goat, beneath a tree which went for £6,100. Another lot which aroused interest was a Chinese gourd/ivory mounted cricket cage. A series of Chinese wall pockets dating form the 18th and 19th centuries totalled more than £6,000.
Mr Rathbone said there was a lot of Chinese art works in the UK as the British had always been treasure hunters and brought their finds home.
"At the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century there was a particular craze for anything from Japan or China, reflecting an eternal fascination with the East," he said. "The value of the whole collection signals the continuing strength and importance of the Asian market."
