Woman Pays Asian Record £10m to Keep Qing Bowl in Family

A Hong Kong businesswoman paid £10m today for a Qing dynasty bowl that had been put up for auction by her own brother - setting a new record for art sold in Asia.

Alice Cheng astonished onlookers at the Christie's sale in Hong Kong by doubling the expected price for the ceramic, then saying it was a spur-of-the-moment decision.

"I didn't expect to buy it, but my interest grew during the bidding process," she said.

Mrs Cheng is one of the most influential women in the former British colony. She is managing director of Chinese Taching Petroleum and a representative of the powerful Beijing-based advisory body, the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference.

Her brother is renowned for having one of the world's best collections of Chinese art. He has sold off more than a dozen pieces this year to mark his 80th birthday. The delicate white bowl bears the mark of the Qianlong emperor (1736-1795), in whose palace it was enamelled.

Once owned by the Woolworth heiress Barbara Hutton, its swallow pattern decoration and famille rose glaze are said to make it a masterpiece of its genre. A complementary bowl is in the collection of the Percival David Foundation in London.

At HK$151.3m, its sale price yesterday far surpassed the previous record for artwork sold in Asia: a Qing "Pheasant" vase auctioned by Sotheby's in Hong Kong a year ago for HK$115.48m.

The market for Chinese and Chinese-themed art is booming. In April this year, Sotheby's sold an 18th century Baoteng sabre for HK$5.93m - the highest price ever paid for a Chinese sword - to an anonymous Chinese bidder.

The month before, Sotheby's sold a 14th century Yuan dynasty jar in New York for $4.7m (£2.4m) - a record for Chinese art sold by the auction house in the United States. Even this was a fraction of the $27.7m paid last year for another Yuan vase at an auction in London.

With so much art changing hands at such high prices, Mrs Cheng may have decided it was better to keep the ancient vase in the family for a little longer.