Pensioner stunned as old vase kept in a shoebox fetches £381,000

A Hans Coper vase has sold at auction in Devon for a record £381,000, the highest price ever paid for a piece of modern and contemporary studio pottery. The sale caught not just the seller – a pensioner whose husband had paid £250 for the item in the 1970s – but the entire market unawares.

The owner took the vase to an open valuation day at her local auction house, Bearnes Hampton & Littlewood in Exeter. Less fond than her late husband of its uncompromising aesthetics, she had kept the vase in a cupboard after his death. Auctioneer Nic Saintey told the Guardian that he knew immediately that it was a Hans Coper, but thought the seller, who had brought it in a shoebox, might not.

In fact, the seller was aware, though did not expect the value to be the £5,000-6,000 Saintey first estimated it to be.

“It’s a shame you haven’t got any Lucie Rie,” Saintey told her, referring to the Austrian master potter who made the most expensive studio pottery piece sold, a minimalist white bowl with concentric biro-blue lines, which sold in late 2016 for $212,500 (£173,000).

“Well, I do,” she said. “At home.”

Saintey suggested she put the vase back in the box – several enthusiastic buyers were within earshot – and arranged for a home visit.

Source: theguardian