Vase Kept In Kitchen Turned Out To Be 250-Year-Old Relic, Auctioned For 1.5 Million Pounds

A vase that was kept in a British kitchen has been sold for a staggering 1.5 million pound. The extremely rare 18th-century Chinese vase was bought by an English surgeon in the 1980s for a few hundred pounds, The Guardian reported.

Measuring two feet in height, the 250-year-old gilded artifact is decorated with cranes and bats, The Guardian report said. It was created for the court of the Qianlong Emperor in the 1700s, it added.

English auction house Dreweatts handled the sale of the vase. It had initially valued the artifact at 150,000 pounds.

But when it went under the hammer, a bidding war began and the vase finally went for 1,449,000 pounds, including a buyers' premium - setting a record at Dreweatts.

The porcelain vase is embellished with a six-character seal mark at its base, a characteristic of the Qianlong era, the auction house said.

It was made for the court of the Qianlong Emperor - the sixth emperor of the Qing dynasty - and would have been crafted using innovative heating techniques to achieve its blue, gold and silver coloring, it added.

The vase was sold to an international buyer via telephone, The Guardian reported.

Mark Newstead, a specialist consultant for Asian ceramics and artworks at Dreweatts, said in a statement that bidding interest came from China, Hong Kong, the US and the UK.

He spoke to CNN and told the outlet, “A fabulous result and we are privileged to have sold this at Dreweatts.”

This is not the first time that old artifacts have been sold at such a high price at auction. In March last year, a 15th-century blue-and-white Chinese bowl was auctioned for $721,800. It was bought at a yard sale for $35.

Then, in October 2021, a 16th-century Italian dish discovered in a drawer fetched more than $1.7 million at auction.