On 24 April, auction house Elstob & Elstob is hosting a sale titled ‘Fine Art & Antiques’. While the catalogue is replete with the expected and sought-after suspects – fine porcelain, furniture, glass and collectables – there’s also a slightly more unusual side to the sale. Here, you’ll find Chinese porcelain and bronzes, high-quality wine and rare spirits – let’s dive in.
This 500ml bottle of Baijiu Kweichow is an exceptionally rare release of vintage 1952 Moutai. The team at Elstob & Elstob believe it was produced from the tiny reserve of 1952, which has been stored to commemorate the creation of Moutai in Guizhou Province that same year. It is likely that this particular release was proclaimed to celebrate the 60th anniversary in 2012 (both 1952 and 2012 have been the Chinese Year of the Drag). Alternatively, it was released to celebrate 65 years of the Moutai with the release ‘QR Code’ referral to 2017.
This beautiful bowl, measuring 19.5 cm in diameter, is a Junyao bowl from the Yuan Dynasty. It is covered with a milky lavender glaze, with a reddish purple splash to one side of the interior. The lower edge of the glaze has an irregular line above the foot revealing the brown body.
This rare crossbow – ’Nu’ – comes from the Eastern Han Dynasty. Its mechanism is intact, with green patina, retained in its wooden arm with traces of the scale (though bow no longer present). It measures 54 cm long and 21 cm in height.
The unit for calculating the bow's strength is called 'shi' or 'a stone'. According to records, bows are rated as one, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, ten, twelve stones, and so on. The most common is six stones, the range being approximately 260 metres.
Moving closer to home, we have this Victorian burr walnut davenport by Gillows (and stamped accordingly). The sliding top features a baluster spindled gallery and a gilt-tooled leather inset hinged writing surface. It opens to reveal four drawers, the base of which is fitted with twin slides above three graduated drawers opposed by dummy drawer fronts, raised on gadrooned feet and moving on castors. It measures 85.5 cm in height, 51 cm in width and is 57 cm deep.
This rare London delft sack bottle is dated, incredibly, at 1648. It is of a globular shape, the loop handle with heart-shaped lower terminal, and is inscribed in blue ‘SACK 1648’ above a curlicue. Measuring 16 cm high, it was acquired from Bonhams in 2003 and is illustrated by Lipski and Archer in Dated English Delftware, fig. 1357.
Finally, in an appropriate mix of Eastern and British culture, we have the mixed media on board work Geisha Girls by British artist Valeriy Gridnev. Gridnev was born in Russia in 1956, where he also studied, but he now lives and works in the UK. Here, Gridnev has exhibited widely, completed numerous portraits of notable sitters, and has received a host of awards, including the ‘Royal Society of Portrait Painters’ Arts Club Award in London in 2006, the same year he was elected a member of the British Artists Royal Institute of Oil Painters. In 2011, he was elected a member of the Federation of British Artists Royal Society of Portrait Painters.
