Two large bowls in China were sold at the Recent Spring Festival auction at Carmarthen in the Uk for £23,000 (nearly 200,000 yuan). At the beginning of the period, the valuation was less than 100 pounds (about 1,000 yuan)
Auctioneer Nigel Hodson was startled the moment he dropped his hammer. He didn't expect such an outcome at all. Mr. Hodson, who has 40 years of auction experience, said the two bowls were taken from a showcase filled with collectibles. Most of the items in the cabinets were delivered to our antique auction house after November 27 last year. At that time, I didn't pay much attention to these two bowls, so I put them in the general auction items.
The highest bidder among the five bidders at auction was a London dealer representative from Leeds, the second largest financial and second largest legal centre in the UK, a cosmopolitan metropolis, an important economic, commercial, industrial and cultural centre in the Middle of England and one of the eight core cities in England).
The auction house later discovered that the bowls were early filigree enamel bowls from China in the 19th century (Qing Dynasty, during the Opium Wars).
Filigree enamel is a special production process in which a metal wire is inlaid into the surface and then fired with color. Filigree enamel is usually bronze, and the copper tires are also mixed with a small proportion of gold.
Many of the previous collections of filigree enamel sold by the auction house were much more beautiful than these two bowls. At the same time, most of the filigree enamel seen at the auction house is a modern handicraft, and the price is only a few tens of pounds.
