Mystery buyer pays $1.2M for rare plate
Pre-sale estimate only $700 to $900
Jeffrey Walker knew the blue plate was special.
Just how special, however, the auctioneer didn’t realize until a mystery figure this week paid $1.2 million including a buyer’s premium for the Chinese glazed pottery after outbidding other potential buyers from around the world.
The initial estimate of value by Walker’s Fine Art and Estate Auctions? A mere $700 to $900, which the auctioneer says was intentionally conservative for the plate from the Yuan or early Ming dynasty, about 40 centimetres in diameter and decorated with a three-clawed dragon.
And which, as interest built in the weeks before Wednesday’s sale of Canadian and international art, Walker realized was well below what collectors might spend for the plate, estimated to be about 600 years old. Still, “We were hoping then for $10,000, maybe $15,000.”
The buyer, who didn’t want his name or even his nationality revealed, travelled to Ottawa and competed with Internet and telephone bidders for the plate. He didn’t enter the fray until bidding reached $250,000.
“From a quarter million, it started to get quiet,” Walker relates. “It was really oohs and ahs up to about a quarter. Really quiet from a quarter to a half million, and you could hear a pin drop above a half million, until the hammer came down at a million-and applause.”
The plate came from the estate of Waltraud (Wally) Ellis, a Belleville, Ont., woman who died in June. She was the widow of John Ellis, former Progressive Conservative MP for Hastings and Prince EdwardHastings. The pottery is believed to have been passed down by her Austrian grandparents.
Now, it’s likely heading to China, where collectors are intent on reacquiring art items from that country’s long history.
“It’s just a classic example of the stars lining up,” Walker says. “You’ve got a great object that’s being sold into a really strong market for the Chinese arts.”
The sale will also benefit the Canadian art scene. Ellis had originally willed the piece to Toronto’s Gardiner Museum, but the museum asked that it be sold so it could invest the proceeds in Canadian pottery. Because of that, Walker waived his firm’s usual auction fee, though he still collected the buyer’s premium of $175,000.