An 18th-century Chinese vase forgotten for decades in a shoe box in a French attic sold for 16.2 million euros ($19 million) at Sotheby’s in Paris on Tuesday — more than 30 times the estimate. Experts at the auction house said the exquisite porcelain vessel was made for the Qing dynasty Emperor Qianlong and had set a guide price of a much more modest 500,000 euros. “This is a major work of art, it is as if we had just discovered a Caravaggio,” Olivier Valmier, the Asian arts expert at the auction house, told reporters before the sale. The vase, which was in perfect condition, “is the only known example in the world bearing such detail,” he added. Rare porcelain from the Qian period has been going for astronomical prices recently. A bowl made for Qianlong’s grandfather sold last April by Sotheby’s in Hong Kong went for $30.4 million dollars.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
An 18th-century Chinese vase forgotten for decades in a shoe box in a French attic sold for 16.2 million euros […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[97],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12099","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-publications"],"yoast_head":"\n