A small yellow vase bought for just £1 at a charity shop in Hertfordshire turned out to be an imperial Chinese piece made for the Qianlong Emperor, eventually selling for £484,000 at auction.The unnamed shopper had no idea of the vase’s importance when he spotted it in the charity shop. According to Sworders Fine Art Auctioneers, he simply bought it because he liked the look of it. Thinking it might be worth something, he later listed the vase on eBay with a low starting price.The response quickly suggested that his £1 purchase was far from ordinary. Messages and bids began pouring in, prompting the owner to remove the vase from eBay and seek professional advice. He took it to specialists at Sworders in Stansted Mountfitchet, Essex, who examined the piece and identified it as Chinese imperial porcelain.The discovery eventually led to a remarkable auction result. In November 2019, a Chinese buyer secured the vase with a hammer bid of £380,000. After additional fees were included, the total price paid reached £484,000-484,000 times what the shopper had originally paid for it.
Made for the Qianlong Emperor
The vase was identified as an imperial Qianlong famille rose piece made for the Qianlong Emperor, the sixth emperor of China’s Qing dynasty. Sworders said the emperor reigned from 1735 to 1796.Several features helped specialists establish the vase’s significance. It carries markings indicating that it was not intended for export from China, but was instead made for one of the emperor’s palaces.The vase also carries an imperial poem that “praises incense” as well as two iron-red seal marks reading “Qianlong chen han”, meaning “the Qianlong Emperor’s own mark”. Another inscription reads “Weijing weiyi”, which translates as “be precise, be undivided”.Yexue Li, head of the Asian art department at Sworders, said the imperial inscription was one of the features that made the object particularly important.“The vase is special because it comes with the inscription by the Qianlong Emperor, and he must have commissioned this vase,” Li said.
The vase carries an imperial poem and two seal marks reading “Qianlong chen han”.
Importance of the yellow colour
The vase stands about eight inches tall and has a pear-shaped design. Unlike a conventional vase meant to be viewed from every direction, it has a flat back because it was designed to be attached to a wall. Its front is decorated with floral patterns.Its yellow background also provided an important clue to its origins. According to Li, the colour had a particular connection to the emperor. “The enamel on the vase is special because it uses yangcai or foreign enamels on a yellow ground – a special colour traditionally reserved for the emperor,” Li said.The quality of its production further supported the conclusion that it was an imperial object rather than an ordinary decorative vase. “It’s a high quality vase because it was court commissioned, so it would have been of a high value when it was made,” Li said.For the man who had paid only £1 for it, the findings came as a shock. Sworders said he had initially been completely unaware of what he had found.“The gentleman vendor was in the charity shop and picked out the vase because he liked the look of it. He was unaware of his significance so he put it on eBay with a very low starting price to begin with and there was a lot of interest,” Li said.“He decided to take the vase off eBay and bought it in to us to take a look. He was shocked and very excited when we explained its importance,” he added.
£1 purchase becomes £484,000 sale
The vase was initially expected to fetch far less than its eventual selling price. According to Fox News, it had been expected to sell for about $100,000. Instead, bidding pushed its hammer price to £380,000. Once the auction fees were added, the successful Chinese buyer paid £484,000 in total.“This has been the perfect auction story, a bargain find, a culturally important and beautiful work of art and a life changing sum of money for the vendor,” Li said. “He is understandably ecstatic.”The emperor for whom the vase was made was one of the Qing dynasty’s longest-ruling monarchs. The Qianlong Emperor eventually abdicated in favour of his son, the Jiaqing Emperor. He died three years later in 1799 at the age of 87.
