HARTFORD, Conn. (AP) – Talk about the findings of your yard sales. A small porcelain bowl bought for $ 35 at a sale in the Connecticut courtyard turned out to be a rare 15th-century Chinese artifact worth $ 300,000 to $ 500,000 to be auctioned off. at Sotheby’s.
The white bowl adorned with flower paintings and other patterns in cobalt blue has a diameter of about 16 inches. An antiques enthusiast came across the piece and thought it might be something special when you browse a yard sale in the New Haven area last year, according to Sotheby’s.
The piece, one of seven such bowls known to exist in the world, will be auctioned in New York on March 17 as part of Sotheby’s Auction of Important Chinese Art.
The unnamed buyer paid the asking price of $ 35 and then emailed information and photos to Sotheby’s requesting an evaluation. Chinese ceramics and art auction house experts Angela McAteer and Hang Yin receive many such emails each week, but this was the kind they dreamed of.
“We immediately found out from both of them that we were looking at something really, very special,” said McAteer, Sotheby’s senior vice president and head of his Chinese art department. “The style of painting, the shape of the bowl, even the color of blue are quite characteristic of that period of porcelain at the beginning of the fifteenth century.”
They confirmed that it was from the 1400s when they could look at it in person. There are no scientific tests, only the trained eyes and hands of specialists. The vessel was very smooth to the touch, its glaze was silky, and the color and designs are distinctive of the period.
“There are all the characteristics and hallmarks that identify it as a product of the early Ming period,” McAteer said.
McAteer and Yin established that the bowl dates back to the early 1400s, during the reign of Emperor Yongle, the third ruler of the Ming Dynasty, and was made for the Yongle court. It was known that the Yongle yard introduced a new style to the porcelain kilns in Jingdezhen, and the bowl is a Yongle product par excellence, according to Sotheby’s.
The bowl was made in the shape of a lotus bud or chicken heart. Inside, it is decorated with a medallion at the bottom and a motif partially surrounded by flowers. The exterior includes four lotus flowers, peony, chrysanthemum and pomegranate flower. There are also complex patterns both on the outside and inside.
McAteer said only six such bowls are known to exist, and most are in museums. No one else is in the United States. There are two at the National Palace Museum in Taipei, Taiwan, two at museums in London and one at the National Museum of Iran in Tehran, according to Sotheby’s.
How the bowl went on sale in the Connecticut courtyard remains a mystery. McAteer said it may have been passed down through generations of the same family who did not know how unique it was.
“It’s always pretty amazing to think it’s happening again, that these treasures can be discovered,” McAteer said. “It’s always very interesting for us, as specialists, when something we didn’t even know existed here comes out of nowhere.”