A Chinese porcelain bowl, about 11 centimeters in diameter, was sold for more than $25 million at an auction organized by Sotheby’s in Hong Kong.
The auction house described the vessel as “extremely important,” noting that most of the other remaining specimens are now preserved in the Palace Museum in Taiwan.
It is noteworthy that the artifact is among a rare group of porcelain pieces that were made in Beijing during the 18th century during the reign of the Yongzheng Emperor, who ruled China from 1722 to 1735.
The bowl, valued at $25.3 million at auction, depicts two swallows, a flowering apricot tree and a willow tree, and contains extracts from a poem.
The bowl was one of two bowls collected by a dealer in Shanghai in the late nineteenth century, and then sold each in 1929 for 150 pounds sterling (about $ 9,400).
