Furniture played a major role in the 315-lot, £190,000 specialist sale at Lyon & Turnbull (25% buyer’s premium) in Edinburgh on March 20.
Topping the day by a distance was a Qing 18th or 19th century hardwood tiao zhu (corner leg table). The 5ft 5in (1.69m) long table featured archaistic carved scrolls and dragons and sold on its lower estimate at £30,000 to an American collector.
Rare eastern hardwoods are sufficiently prized to make age less relevant, but some of the bids for 20th century furniture did surprise L&T expert Dr Ling Zhu.
Leading sellers included an early 20th century horseshoe-back armchair jiao yi (referring to the crossed legs) which went to Taiwan at £6500 against a £300-500 estimate.
A pair of similar jiao yi dated early to mid- 20th century which went to a German online bidder at £10,000, 10 times the lower estimate.
Probably later still, a low-back armchair in huanghuali took a five-times top estimate £7500 from a UK-based collector.
