Making a song and dance about a Chinese tea caddy
MISS Rosie Boote was a Gaiety Girl with a life straight out of romantic fiction. She was born in Tipperary in 1878 and made her way to London to join the chorus at the old Gaiety Theatre. From here, she sang and danced her way to stardom. Geoffrey, Fourth Marquess of Headfort, fell in love with Miss Rosie Boote and proposed marriage. There was a glorious scandal — even King Edward VI of England tried to discourage the match — but the Marquess resigned his army commission, converted to Catholicism, and married her. They lived at Headfort House, near Kells in Co Meath, and had three children together, and Rosie, Fourth Marchioness of Headfort, was so charming that she won the hearts of the grumpy aristocracy.
Now, her tea caddy is coming up for auction. “I was doing a valuation and this guy brings in a little wooden box,” says Philip Sheppard, auctioneer. He turned it over in his hands. It was a Chinese tea caddy, made in the first quarter of the 19th century, and came with a hefty lock. Tea was a precious substance.
The box was carved, on the top and on the sides, with traditional Chinese symbols. Then he opened the lid and could hardly believe his eyes. The inside of the lid was carved with the crest and motto of the Marquess of Headfort. The motto is in Latin: Consequitur quodcunque petit (He obtains whatever he seeks). Sheppard was gobsmacked.
“I’ve never seen anything like it. Someone living in Co Meath commissioned that box, and sent away for it, and had it shipped back to Headfort House from China. In those days it was like having something sent from the moon!” The tea caddy (est. €300 to €500) will be sold as part of Sheppard’s Masterworks auction.
In terms of a meeting of Irish and Chinese culture, the tea caddy is a one-off but there is another — far more valuable — example of hybrid heritage in the auction. It’s a 18k gold and enamel pocket watch (est. €20,000 to €30,000) by the London watchmaker, William Ilbery around 1815. The back shows the enamelled portrait of a courtier at the Imperial Court. “He would have commissioned the watch and sent a portrait of himself, painted on glass, so that the enamellist could copy it,” Sheppard
says,
explaining that the watch was actually made and enamelled in Switzerland. “It’s a Swiss watch but it was packaged as being English because the East India Company had access to the market in Canton.”
The trade relationship between Britain and China ended with the Opium Wars of the mid-19th century. The East India Company and other British merchants smuggled Indian opium into China, sold it, and used the money to buy tea. By 1840, 10 million Chinese opium addicts were sustained by illegal British imports. The Chinese, understandably, wanted to end the trade and Britain went to war on behalf of the drug dealers. The sale also includes a Qing period ivory opium pipe
(€200 to €300).
The most spectacular — and potentially the most valuable — piece of Chinese culture in the sale is a Qing Dynasty Imperial seal, square in form, and surmounted by a double-headed jade dragon (est. €30,000 to €50,000). It’s a large piece, 10cm high by 13cm square, with a very strong presence.
“It would have been used as an official stamp in the Imperial Court,” Sheppard says. “My instinct tells me that it may have been a very important Imperial Chinese seal, but we just don’t know.” Chinese pieces can be difficult to interpret. “If I’d seen this 20 years ago I wouldn’t have given it a second glance,” Sheppard admits. He recalls a blue and white Chinese vase that went into a Sheppard’s auction around
12 years ago with an estimate of €80 to €120. “It made €120,000,” he says. “Nobody expected it. The under bidder had flown in from Beijing, but it went to a dealer in London. He put it in his bag, went back on his Ryanair flight that evening, and a year later it sold for half a million in Hong Kong. That was the start of it.”
Ever since, Chinese pieces have been famously unpredictable at auction.
So much material culture was lost in the Cultural Revolution that historic pieces, dispersed around the world through colonialism, have become very precious. Sheppard turns to a blue and white Chinese brush pot (est.
€800 to €12,000), dating from around
1660. “That could do anything,” he says. Then he points to a white ceramic “blanc de chene” sculpture of a woman (est. €500 to €1,200). “So could that.” Sheppard’s Masterworks auction takes place in Durrow, Co Laois, on Thursday (November 8) at 10.30am. Viewing is from tomorrow to Wednesday from
10am to 5pm on each day.
See sheppards.ie.