A Lincolnshire woman was left stunned when a box of broken porcelain she found in her loft fetched £162,000 at auction. Gill Stewart, from Benniworth, was getting Christmas decorations down from her loft when she discovered a box labelled ‘broken porcelain’ and decided to have it auctioned.
The porcelain, which turned out to be worth much more than Gill initially thought, was inherited from her grandfather who served in the military. Brigadier RHA Kellie OBE MC was serving in China around the beginning of the 1900s when he collected the items.
It was all handed down to Gill decades ago, when her grandparents died, and has been in her loft ever since. The rare porcelain was sold at John Taylors Auction Rooms in Louth at the end of June. There were 13 lots which sold for a total of £162,000, with the most valuable items being a set of Chinese tea bowls which fetched £59,000.
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(Image: John Taylors Auction Rooms)
Auctioneer and director at John Taylors Auction Rooms, James Laverack, said there was a huge round of applause at the auction house when the first lot sold for £35,000 followed by a “stunned silence”. He said: “I phoned Gill up to ask if she watched the auction on the live stream and she said ‘no’.
“I told her that one lot sold for £59,000 and she said ‘I beg your pardon?’, she was in utter disbelief. The porcelain goes back to around the 18th century. Things that were originally made for the Chinese market are now being bought back by the Chinese.”
(Image: John Taylors Auction Rooms)
John Taylors Auction Rooms is located at The Mart on Eastgate, in Louth, and also offers property services. The business was founded in 1859 by a young farmer named John Taylor and has been trading in the town ever since.
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