The Meiyintang chicken cup from the Chinese Ming dynasty. Photograph: Vincent Yu/AP
Chinese chicken cup fetches record ￡21m at auction Hong Kong sale of tiny painted cup dating from Ming dynasty sets world auction record for any Chinese porcelain
A rare wine cup fired in the imperial kilns of China's Ming dynasty more than 500 years ago has been sold in Hong Kong for HK$281.2m (￡21.7m), making it one of the most expensive Chinese cultural relics ever auctioned.
The tiny porcelain cup from the Chenghua period, dating from 1465 to 1487, is painted with cocks, hens and chicks, and is known simply as a "chicken cup". It is considered one of the most sought-after items in Chinese art, held in a reverence equivalent to that of the jewelled Faberge eggs of tsarist Russia.
"Every time a chicken cup comes up on the market, it totally redefines prices in the field of Chinese art," said Nicolas Chow, the deputy chairman of Sotheby's Asia, after the sale.
The last time a similar cup was auctioned, in 1999, it fetched HK$29m. With just 16 known Chenghua chicken cups surviving to the present day, most in public museums, only a handful have ever come to auction. Four remain in private hands.
In a packed auction hall, bidding for the cup began at HK$160m and bounced between three parties before the cup was eventually sold to a Chinese collector, Liu Yiqian.
The price, including fees, was a new world auction record for any Chinese porcelain, exceeding the ￡19.4m paid for a Qing double-gourd vase in 2010.
The cup came from the celebrated western collection of Chinese ceramics known as the Meiyintang, accumulated over half a century by the Swiss pharmaceutical tycoons the Zuellig brothers.
With the purchase by Liu, a Shanghai-based billionaire with his own private museum, the Meiyintang centrepiece is expected to become the only known genuine chicken cup in China.
Over the past decade, prices of Chinese art have soared with the country's economic boom, and while the market has moderated since 2011, demand for the highest-quality Chinese art has remained undiminished.
National pride and the cachet of historical relics such as chicken cups have fuelled Chinese buying both on the world stage and at home, where a slew of auction houses have sprouted up to ride the market.
But some experts said China's slowing economy and credit squeeze may have sapped some market enthusiasm for the chicken cup, with the price falling just short of its high estimate. "The price was OK, not so high, not so low," said Robert Chang, a leading collector based in Hong Kong.
Richard Littleton, a western dealer at the sale, said: "There were not as many bidders, which was kind of surprising. Where is all this big Chinese money we were expecting to see?"
