Charity shop Buddha makes thousands
A gilt bronze Buddha consigned from a local charity shop has sold for £15,500 in a Gloucestershire saleroom.
Mallams auction house had one of its busiest two-day Chinese and Japanese sales recently, with total hammer sales of just over £445,000.
The Tibetan gilt bronze model of Gantama Buddha, dating from the 18th century and described as ‘a fine and well-modelled figure’ was gifted to the charity shop by a generous donor. The shop then brought it to the auction house to try and maximise the value of the donation. After a bidding battle between the internet and phone bidders, it eventually reached its impressive hammer price.
Elsewhere, the sale yielded a number of other lots that rose above their pre-sale estimates. Some of the sale’s highlights included:
- A bronze ting marked with a case six character mark Ta Ming Xuande Niew 18th/19th century, it sold for £9000
- A small 19th century Hu shaped porcelain vase bearing a six character Zhuanshu seal mark of Qianlong realised £10,000
- Two famille rose bowls, with evenly spaced Daoist symbols and six character Zhuanshu seal marks of Qianlong and Daoguang, sold for £10,500
Also featured in the sale was a small number of items originally from an imposing neoclassical building, called Hazelwood, which stood in the heart of Shanghai in the 1930s. One of these, a set of six scrolls with case, after Lu Zhi, each depicting mountain and allegorical scenes, sold for £8200 against an estimate of £3000-£5000.
