Featured on the back cover of the catalogue, the 87 cm tall vase was catalogued as Qing Dynasty, Jiaqing period, dating it between 1796 and 1820.
According to Sotheby's Australia, the vendor received the vase as a gift from his father who purchased it from a property house sale in Scotland, near Balmoral.
Bidding started strongly with the auctioneer holding a bid up to about $100,000, and after the auctioneer dropped out, the remaining 4 or so bidders up to the $200,000 mark, leaving two telephone bidders to compete.
According to Sotheby's Australia, the vase was sold to a Hong Kong buyer.
Making up 180 of the 300 lots in the first day of the two sale, 78% of the lots in the oriental section of the auction were sold.
The strength of the oriental section was illustrated by the sale total for the 180 lots of $994,150 ($1,192,980 IBP), compared with the low to high total estimate range of $242,000 to $345,000
This contrasted with the subdued bidding for the first 120 non-oriental lots in the sale where the clearance rate was a disappointing 54%, the only highlights being competitive bidding for three lots of Royal Worcester.
The strength of the Chinese market in purchasing and repatriating their heritage is illustrated by the strong oriental prices being regularly achieved by other Australian based auctioneers including Mossgreen and Philips Auctions in Melbourne, and Davidson Auctions in Sydney.
Overseas, the most notable recent example is a Chinese Qianlong vase (1735-1796) sold in Ruislip, UK in November 2010 for £43 million pounds (IBP) and which had been estimated to sell between £800,000 and £1.2 million.
Believed to have been acquired by an English family during the 1930s or earlier, auctioneer Bainbridge's said that how the vase ended up in north-west London would never be known. The owners, a brother and sister inherited the vase, and had unearthed it in a clear-out of a London suburban house after the sale of the property.
Latest reports from the UK are that the purchaser of the vase has not paid, and that a representative of the auctioneer, Bainbridge's of Ruislip , and the owner of the vase had flown to China to try to finalise the sale, said to be to a wealthy industrialist in China, with links to the Chinese government.
Adding further intrigue to Ruislip mystery is UK press speculation that the Chinese Government or its agents are suspected of sabotaging auctions of treasures thought to have been stolen from China.
Agents are sent to bid for the items but then fail to pay the money.
Whilst this has not been proven to have occurred in the case of the Ruislip vase, there are other cases in which auctions have been sabotaged by agents with links to the Chinese government who win the bidding, then fail to deliver the money, believing they should not have to pay for what is rightfully their property.
In 2009, when Christie’s in Paris sold bronze animal heads looted from the Summer Palace in 1860, a Chinese buyer – an adviser to a government heritage organisation – made a winning bid of £13 million but later said he would not pay as ‘an act of patriotism’.
A full report on the two day Sotheby's Australia two sale of Fine Furniture & Decorative arts will follow after the second day of the sale.