You never know what you can find by accident. How many people can say they accidentally came across something of value? Right inside your home, you start to collect certain things you do not care about before you decide to sell them or throw them away regardless of how you may feel about them. Eventually, it reaches a point where you arrange through it all and throw most of it out. But you then soon discover that there is one item you happen to come across that happens to be of high value that you never knew would be worth anything. How fascinating is it if a similar encounter happened to you?
When a French family who lives in Paris, France receives a unique Chinese vase inside an ordinary shoebox in mint condition in their attic, the vase sold for nineteen million US dollars in Paris, France, after they got it appraised. Unknowingly to them, their vase was the one item that sold for the highest bid. This vase was valuable due to its unique quality. The vase was part of the Chinese Quian period. The narrative of the Chinese vase was for The Chinese Emperor Qianlong. The Chinese Emperor Qianlong had reigned in China from the years 1736 to 1796. He came to be the longest Chinese ruler that had ever lived, and many people still believe he was the last great ruler. The period under Emperor Qianlong was considered extraordinary in recent Chinese history. People today in China understand that art from his collection represents that period, which gives them admiration.
The Chinese emperor loved the arts and was an excellent military strategist. Artworks shaped the Qianlong Emperor because the work made there was unique for so many years. They all include work in ceramic, imperial dragon robes of silk, weapons consumed by Qianlong, cloisonné, golden religious statuary, and more. The Chinese vase has floral scrolls and unique blue dragons. It also has a landscape with cranes, deer, and pine trees around it. All these symbols represent long life, which is fascinating to see in any vase. In France, Sotheby’s labeled the vase as a work of art due to how rare it truly is, being an eighteenth-century item once owned by the Qianlong Emperor. The funny question they all ask themselves today is the vase itself? Although it is a rare find, no one truly knows how this vase was discovered right inside an ordinary shoebox by a family, and it never stayed close to someone during that era in history. Sotheby’s in France did not reveal to anyone any information about the buyer of the Chinese vase. Still, they did believe that the unique Chinese vase was obtained by someone who had a love of art during the emperor’s reign during the eighteenth century.
