Featured Jade Teapot sells for £2 million

Just...Wow!

 

Ah well- what's 2 mil to a Laird ?...prob a new roof !
Gotta admit, if I was running thru the Thrift at a brisk clip- I might've thought a pretty piece of Fire-King Jadeite.
Tis madly perfectly worked rock tho.

 

i'd give it house room if I found it in a rummage/jumble sale.

 

Qianlong had an eye for beauty, and this perfect teapot is another example of his excellent taste.

The laird who once owned the teapot passed away in 1926, so he won't be getting the £2 million. The last owner was a Hong Kong based collector.

 

And my wife thinks I waste money LOL

 

If you had two mil laying around to spend on a teapot...and you spent it on a teapot, would she still yell?

 

I wonder what tea would taste like if it was steeped in a jade teapot?

 

I doubt it was ever used for tea. It was used to make a few buxx for some underpaid artisan.

 

Perhaps the artisan, part of the Imperial household, was a treasured person, well kept an' comforted by lots of exquisite materials, all the skills, tools an' processes of the Imperial shops, an' his choice of the myriad concubines from His Majesty's harem...but he wasn't free to leave, being indentured for life as a result of his singularly valuable talent. A virtual slave, like a Eunuch.

 

Artisans who worked for the imperial household worked in one of many workshops. They had a good income but had no access to the imperial concubines and were not indentured labourers.

There were dozens of specialised workshops of different sizes, some very large, like Jingdezhen, the famous porcelain centre. Some of the employees were foreigners, like the Jesuit priests who introduced the pink enamels that were used on famille rose porcelain.
Imperial concubines were exactly that, concubines of the emperor, not prostitutes for employees or anyone who entered the Forbidden City.

 

Thank you, AJ...I stand humbly corrected.

 

That is fascinating.