£340k for vase valued at £500
A DECORATIVE vase which was used for years to display flowers has sold for £340,000.
The blue and white vessel, discovered among a box of antiques, had been valued at just £500 – but it turned out to be a Chinese treasure.
Experts spotted on the base the six-character seal mark of the 19th-century Daoguang Emperor, indicating it was made for display in the imperial palaces of the Qing dynasty leader.
The 11-inch tall vase – painted with an odd assortment of objects including lotuses, bats and blue plants – was bought at Gorringe’s auction at Lewes, East Sussex over the phone by a buyer from mainland China.
Dan Bray, from Gorringe’s said: “There was not much known by way of history as it had been inherited by the vendor.
“It was in fantastic condition and bidders in China saw enough to suggest it was the real deal.”
AMONG all the traditional festive fayre – the pudding, mince pies and turkey with all the trimmings, one dining table could well feature marmalade sandwiches this year. One perhaps even with a candle atop.
For the big day is not just Christmas Day. It’s also a bear’s birthday – and a most unusual one at that.
“December 25 and June 25 are Paddington’s birthdays. Bears have two birthdays, like the Queen. Didn’t you know?” Paddington author Michael Bond’s first wife, Brenda Bond, scolds, treating me to a twinkly, but very hard, stare. I do now. Sadly, this will be the third festive birthday the bear from darkest Peru will celebrate without his maker Michael, who died in June 2017 aged 91. But thankfully, Paddington still has a loyal family to party with.
This includes Brenda – who received the teddy which originally inspired the iconic character as a Christmas gift from her husband – and their daughter, Karen Jankel.
But Michael’s second wife, Sue, will also join the pair house on Christmas Day.
The three women get on brilliantly, and are all the closer since the death of the kind, funny man they each adored.
Today, sitting close in Karen’s Surrey home, they assure me that although their beloved Michael is no longer with them, Paddington certainly is.
And not merely as a character in his books and the hit films that have introduced him to a whole new generation, but as a very real friend, as he indeed he became to his creator, a fact which has comforted them as they continue to grieve.
“Paddington was part of all our lives, wasn’t he?” Brenda, 91, begins. “He was just always part of everything,” nods Sue, 76, a former literary agent who married Michael in 1981. She quietly confides that Paddington is so real a “presence” she even speaks to him – as Michael himself used to.
“One gets so used to automatically consulting him, which one would do with Michael all the time,” she reveals, softly. “It is comforting to have him.You find yourself talking to him.An awful lot of people think I’m completely doolally!”
But not Brenda or Karen. “Paddington hasn’t gone with Michael, he has stayed,” agrees Karen, 61. “He is immortal. He is just part of our lives, day to day.And that helps.”
The three have come together to reminisce about Michael and his creation, as a heartwarming new
HOW IT BEGAN: The first book and silver 50p coin
at
Karen’s
BBC documentary Paddington: The Man Behind The Bear, prepares to air on BBC Two on Boxing Day.
When I interviewed Michael, just two months before he passed away, he too assured me Paddington was “real”, whispering conspiratorially: “He’s here, he’s in the room. He’s looking at you.”
Karen, who was born two months before the first publication, A Bear called Paddington, in 1958, nods. She describes him as “like a sibling”, who was always on holiday with them as a family, or part of the conversation.
She thinks for a second, then tries to explain: “This is the best way of describing how real he is to all of us: when I first saw the image of the bear in the first Paddington film it was as though you had been adopted and you suddenly met a member of your birth family for the first time.
“It brought tears to my eyes. This was the bear who had been part of our lives and there was now a physical representation of him.”
Her father loved the first film, starring Hugh Bonneville, she adds, although sadly, he never got to see the second, dying a day after filming ended.
Aside from his “presence”, a more tangible Paddington is also everywhere in this trio’s lives.
As I walk up Karen’s drive, I spy a furry Paddington waving cheerily from an upstairs window, as if in welcome.
And the three ladies sit with a 1970s Paddington figure, one of the first pieces of bear memorabilia.
They were produced by entrepreneurial Doncaster couple Eddie and Shirley Clarkson, the parents of motoring presenter Jeremy Clarkson.
THERE is also that very first bear, given to Brenda, which Michael, then working as a Blue Peter BBC cameraman, bought on Christmas Eve after missing his bus and dashing into Selfridges in the snow.
The family has never let anyone see him, and never describe him, either. “It is too personal,” explains Brenda, seeing my disappointed face and teasing: “It isn’t like Paddington, much smaller.”
This toy was christened simply, Bear, and Michael needed him by his side when writing Paddington.
He and Brenda “shared custody” of him after they amicably divorced. “And he needed him with him at the end,” she recalls, gently. Bear would often sit at the dining table, Michael relaying what “Bear was saying”.
He even perched on Michael’s