£1m for teapot left on the shelf

IT is only five inches tall, had been sitting on a living room shelf for years and has a damaged lid.

But this teapot still sparked an international bidding war that saw it fetch £1million.

The light green pear-shaped pot had been kept as an ornament at the semi-detached Dorset home of an unnamed middle-aged businessman and his wife, and had been in the family for generations.

They did not know it was from the 18th century and had direct connections to the Chinese imperial Qing dynasty. Expert Lee Young, of Duke’s Auctioneers in

Dorchester, who had been invited to the modest property to value some ornaments, said his heart ‘skipped a beat’ when he handled the rare object. He identified the stamp on its base as being that of the Chinese emperor Qianlong – the sixth emperor of the Qing dynasty who reigned between 1735 and 1796 – while the lid has a finial of a peach, which was a symbol of immortality at the time. ‘I realised immediately I was handling a piece made for the emperor himself,’ he said. ‘The quality of the potting marks this piece out as an imperial masterpiece.’ But even he estimated the teapot would probably fetch between £1,000 and £2,000. However, when it went under the hammer in Dorchester on Monday, ten bidders battled to buy it, with the winner bidding £800,000. Auction house fees took the overall price to £1,040,000.

Mr Young said the newly rich vendor was still in a state of ‘sheer disbelief’. He added: ‘The battle between ten telephone bidders took ten minutes, with the price jumping in £20,000 increments.

‘At one stage the price jumped by £100,000 as a buyer tried to frighten off others.

‘The saleroom was packed and the crowd broke into spontaneous applause when the auctioneer’s gavel fell.’

In the same sale, a Chinese boxwood carving sold for £185,000 and a Jade meerkat figure, expected to sell for £300, fetched £50,000.