Sotheby's takes Tang and Qing dynasty pieces on tour ahead of April 6 auction

A rare collection of Chinese porcelain, bought by a British farmer, is expected to sell for at least 20 million pounds ($27.8 million; 25.4 million euros) when it goes to auction in Hong Kong in April.

Roger Pilkington, from the English village of Aldbourne, took less than a decade between in 1950s and the 60s to acquire 100 pieces of Chinese art spanning over a millennium - between the Tang (618-907) and the Qing (1644-1911) dynasties.

This Chenghua Blue and White Palace Bowl is projected to sell for 4 million to 6 million pounds. The Chenghua period in the latter part of the 15th century is the most celebrated in the history of Chinese porcelain. Photos Provided to China Daily

A Celadon jade brush washer, one of the items from the Qianlong period (18th century) projected to fetch between 100,000 and 180,000 pounds.

"Pilkington was part of a second wave of Chinese art collectors after the war," says Nicolas Chow, deputy chairman of Sotheby's Asia.

"He bought most of his collection through the greatest dealers in Chinese antiques, Bluett & Sons Ltd in Mayfair, which existed since the '20s and was still in its prime in the '60s and '70s."

Pilkington, one of the most eminent and active collectors of his day, paid up to 5,000 pounds for each item at the time.

"The key piece in the collection, the Chenghua Blue and White Palace Bowl, that we are estimating to sell for 4 million to 6 million pounds, he purchased in 1967 for 5,000 pounds," Chow says.

"That was a lot of money in the '60s, and he was buying the cream in a field that at the time was already very expensive there were lots of collectors of Chinese porcelain, it was a great pastime of English collectors, and the finest pieces were traded quite expensively."

Chow says Europe set the tone for Chinese art collecting for much of the early 20th century.

"You had in the 1920s the Oriental Ceramic Society in England. This interest in collecting really informed much of the collecting history in the second part of the 20th century and also in Hong Kong and in Japan," he says.

"There were also a lot of exhibits of collections from the members that really created a climate of great connoisseurship in England, and it's why today England is one of the great centers for studying Chinese porcelain."

The Pilkington collection, which recently arrived in Hong Kong after being shipped from the UK, has already attracted interest from mainland buyers, looking to repossess a piece of the country's great history.

"I think definitely mainland collectors are excited we've had already a few private viewings at our offices in Hong Kong," Chow says.

"Without a doubt there's an extraordinary fascination with imperial objects objects that were made for the use of the emperor and his entourage."

Over the past 15 years, the price of Chinese art has skyrocketed as a result of the dramatic entrance by Chinese mainlanders into the auction arena, according to Chow.

"In the late '90s and early 2000s, they came in with a huge appetite for buying the best and obviously very few references of market prices because for them it was all new," he says.

"If you look at Western collectors, people build their collections slowly, they take it slowly, but Chinese collectors think, 'I'm going to build this collection today' there's no stopping them."

It's this attitude of snapping up the best by Chinese mainlanders mainly from new money that Chow says is now raising the bar for art collectors and their hip pockets worldwide.

"It's definitely changing market prices to a certain extent because when you're new to a field you don't care about market price necessarily. If there's something you like you will fight to buy it. You don't look at what the last one fetched three to five years ago they're forward-looking," he says.

"A lot of Chinese art collectors are newly rich, none of them have inherited their fortunes, so this is new money and they come from various industries you have movie moguls, people who come from the world of finance, property development and eel farming."

The collection, which has remained intact since it was put together by Pilkington, was on exhibition in London in January before being sent to Hong Kong.

"It was something no one had seen for half a century," Chow says.

"People traveled long distances to see it, it was extremely well received."

It was traveling to Shanghai on March 2 and 3 and then to Beijing, Taipei and Tokyo, where it would be on display before going under the hammer in Hong Kong on April 6.

For China Daily