12 phone bidders, a 97 minute battle and more than 200 bids… that’s what it took for a calligraphy handscroll by Yuan dynasty master Rao Jie to sell at Sotheby’s Hong Kong in mid-April. The scroll – Calligraphy in Cursive Script – transcribes two Tang literary classics – Han Yu’s Song Meng Dongye Xu (Farewell to Meng Dongye) and Liu Zongyuan’s Zi Ren Zhuan (The Tale of the Carpenter). It’s the longest of its kind known by Rao, coming in at nearly six metres (or twenty feet).
The winning bid came after more than an hour and a half of relatively small incremental amounts that resulted in a final price of $52.2m including buyer’s premium. And yes, that’s ‘m’ for million. “I just want to have a massage and do nothing to recharge myself. A quiet weekend will be much appreciated,” said auctioneer CC Wang, who now holds the title for conducting Sotheby’s longest-ever bidding battle.
Rao Jie was a calligrapher who worked during the Yuan dynasty (1271 to 1378). The scroll is extremely well known in collecting circles and has been in Chinese Imperial collections; former owners include Emperor Qianlong and a cousin of Puyi, the last emperor of China. It was sold at Sotheby’s Hong Kong from a private Japanese owner.
