The sale of the Mary and George Bloch collection of Chinese Snuff Bottles held at Bonham’s in Hong Kong today confirmed the growing momentum in the market for Chinese works of art. All 155 lots in the sale found buyers, many at prices two to four times the estimate. The whole sale brought in twice the estimate at HK$54,832,000 (£4, 437,930) or approximately $7.067m.
Here’s Bonhams’s own press release:
A new world record for a porcelain snuff bottle was reached when Lot 121 sold for a staggering HK$8,384,000 (£678,815), four times its pre-sale estimate of HK$2,000,000. Commissioned by the Qianlong emperor and enamelled in the palace workshops of the Imperial Palace between 1736 and 1760, this extraordinary snuff bottle, decorated with ‘double-gourds’, symbolic of long life, is identical to another rare example still preserved in the Forbidden City Palace Museum.
The highest price of the sale, and a new world record for a glass snuff bottle was achieved by Lot 152, a ‘famille-rose’ enamelled gold-ground glass ‘lotus’ snuff bottle, which sold for HK$9,056,000 (£732,921), almost four times its presale estimate of HK$2,500,000. This exquisite snuff bottle was commissioned by the Qianlong emperor (1736-95), and decorated with lotus flowers against a rich golden ground, and incised on the base with the Imperial mark.
