This magnificent and very rare large blue and white ‘Dragon’ jar was once used as an umbrella stand.
After a team of Christie's specialists looked at the jar, they realised they were handling an incredibly important piece of Chinese porcelain from the Ming Dynasty.
In this video, Chi Fan Tsang, a specialist in Chinese Ceramics and Works of Art, discusses the details that make this piece so special, including the significance of the five-clawed dragon, and the cross mark on the base of the vessel.
The dragon jar sold in 2016 for HK$158,040,000 / $20,447,642 as part of the '30 Years: The Sale' auction on 30 May in Hong Kong.
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600 years old and not a chip missing??? This is a beautiful piece of creative human hands!!! Stunning and priceless!!!
“The copyists don’t see the base, or what you can’t see in the catalogue”. They do now.
make me a couple, please !
They still didn’t know the insides.
They mean simple copies not forgeries.
I made a copy on my printer. Wonder how much that’s worth. Millions I suppose.
Amazing that it survived thru all these years. Love artifacts…so interesting regardless of what culture
When the umbrella stand is worth more than your house…😂😂
@The Zanzibarbarian sorry, are you slightly insane? It’s worth more than 99.99999 (at least!) percent of people earn in their life time. Assuming they work 50 years, you have to average $400,000 per year for an entire half-century to get $20 million. Far less than 1/1000 of all people do that. It might be 1 in a million.
When you don’t even own a house…
Not my neighborhood. Each of my neighbor’s houses is like $4-11 million each.
It’s worth more than most celebrities mansion
Worth more than their town lol
And the owner never saw her umbrella stand again.
@Fettzvettz Why won’t she? She is the owner
she never got anything in return i bet. they just kept it
@Myra Lawson if sold it becomes worth what someone is willing to pay for it. Maybe not right but a fact
@X I had a well noted museum(DC area) try to take a piece from me after I won it in auction. They sent me a very intrusive letter and demanded it was US property and belonged to their archive. I told them no such pleasantry existed for them. I offered to donate the piece if they would agree to inscribe a plate “donated generously by ….(my name)” but they told me they had no policy for that. I bid them good day. This item there are only 2 of in the entire world. I bought it to preserve it. And so it is being preserved. I also have it very well insured. I have several other pieces that are historical but the museums would not comply to any of my stipulations. So an entire catalogue of history remains in my possession, they remain bitter.
The vase sold for 20 million dollars in Hong Kong in May of 2016 I believe, could be wrong on the date, Christie’s takes 15 to 20% and after taxes the original owner made around 10 million.
A great work of art and artistry indeed.
“This monumental dragon jar comes from a private French family collection. It was passed by descent through the family to the current owner, a distinguished Swiss lady. The jar was in the collection of her grandmother, Mrs. M. Legrand (1883- 1978), who lived most of her life in Paris but was originally from Northern France. Mrs. Legrand had herself inherited the jar in 1926. The jar was passed to Mrs. Legrand’s son (the current owner’s uncle – 1908-1997) and appears in an inventory of 1981. It was inherited by the current owner from her uncle, following the latter’s death in 1997. In the present owner’s home the jar until recently stood in the hall and held walking sticks. For this latter use, the jar was protected by a fitted metal liner, which can clearly be seen in a contemporary photograph.”
@National Socialism There’s nothing true in what you said, at all. Not even close.
@National Socialism Einstein doesn’t matter to everyday mortals like you and me, who don’t begin to understand that kind of physics. but he made the puzzle more interesting without breaking it. obviously, he didn’t do it alone. he was like Dwight Howard slamming it down on a nice feed, yet unable to do much else. in physics, there is no Giannis Antetokounmpo, everyone is a team player.
PS “sexual degeneracy”, in psychoanalytical theory, is but a developmental step or to be more general simply a type of behavior. standard interpersonal laws still apply. if you damage someone else against their will or take advantage of their lack of will in harmful ways, society will be forced to punish you by incarceration or in some places, worse.
@National Socialism how did he ruin physics?
Dying father: I’m going to give my first son my 2 stores, my second son my house, and an umbrella stand for my third son.
This… This is more plausible than it should be
LOL
😂
“Look, Dad, it has “Made in China” on the bottom.
Waoh, it’s absolutely flawless. The “paint” look so fresh and vibrant. Hard to believe that piece has survived in perfect condition for nearly 600 years.
@tramanh do there’s a big difference between a king and an emperor.
@rice Cobalt blue glaze never fades. It stays for centuries as it was in first day. Those ceramic glazes is glass in fact and in blue places is added cobalt oxide.
must have been a flawless umbrella stand for all those years lol
0:53 there’s a flaw
@Bangs Cutter it wasn’t painted by just any pigment that can be destroyed by the sun. This is actually cobalt applied directly to the jar before firing
About 12 years ago, I was visiting with a neighboring Farmer.
Like most farm houses, the farmers tend to put nice looking rocks around their homes, barns etc.
Not necessarily because they like the rocks, but because rocks tear up your equipment and are routinely picked from farm fields.
On that particular day, talking about rocks, as I am a major rockhound, I noticed a strange black “rock” near their front door.
I instantly recognized the regmaglypts upon the surface of this fairly large iron/nickel meteorite that had been sitting out by the front door since their great grandfather built the farm house in 1867.
It came out of the field behind their house.
In searching the headlands as rocks are always put there after removal from the fields, we found several others in the five to fifty pound range.
Over the following years, I have found over four hundred more specimens using my metal detector in that field and others along the northwest running strewn field.
The meteorite by their front door sold in the high six figure range.
They still have the other bigger meteorites that were on the headlands.
Treasure is where you find it!
When do things like this get forgotten about. It could only have gotten stolen. But still handled carefully over the centuries.
“That’s a nice umbrella stand”
“ThAnks it’s 8th century”
18-19 century😊 so many ming..
there is an old New Yorker magazine cartoon where a man spies a copy of the Gutenberg bible on this street cart. He casually walks over and asks. How much for this old decerped old book, he asked the little old man who can see with an arched back from towing his book street cart. The old man , looks up and says.. that will be ten million dollars.
@Dragonworrior she said the owner thought it was 18th century. Not emperor worthy 14th century
@Dragonworrior Yeah, it’s so strange that someone would use something they believe to be 200 years old just to hold umbrellas. Especially when it’s something as delicate and fragile as porcelain, in a well-trafficked area of the house, used to store hard and pointy objects.
That’s some bizarre decision making.
@Cool Cucumber exactly
It would be hilarious if the emporer had used it as an umbrella stand as well. Back to its original purpose.
ha
Emergency pottie for late night poop
hahaha
Lmfao!!
It’s a wine container, some people here are so ignorant!
It must be incredibly well made to withstand so much trauma over the years.
Forget how much it’s worth, let’s appreciate how beautiful the workmanship is
What I find the most amazing is that it didn’t break in the first 100 years already. There must have been no kids around.
Thanks to one-child policy.
@Not a nice name but loves rock and roll thanks god 🤣
For anyone that’s wondering, it was valued at $20 million and sold for $58 million after the children of the couple found it when clearing out the house after their parents passed away.
nobody cares.
@Snarkily At least 296 people did, so you can go and cry in someone else’s corner
@Snarkily if you don’t care then why are you here? Troll
That kind of thing happens to me all the time…
“The dragon jar sold in 2016 for HK$158,040,000 / $20,447,642 as part of the ’30 Years: The Sale’ auction on 30 May in Hong Kong.” – the video’s description.
Not sure where you got the the $58 million from, but that’s false.
(and to the other commenter, read the description before saying that your question wasn’t answer by the video. There’s almost always additional info about an artifact on videos like this)
Incredible artistry for something that old to look brand new.
There’s stuff in landfills right now that is literally worth over a million dollars if you just picked it up, cleaned it off and took it to an expert. That’s crazy to think about.
I would love to know the story of how it ended up as an umbrella stand, was probably in some junk shop for £20 and they had absolutely no idea