Chinese Glass Takes Its Place in World of Art

In recent years, collectors of Chinese artworks have piled into Imperial porcelain from the Ming and Qing dynasties, rhinoceros horn carvings, jade objects and Imperial Chinese furniture, and as a result prices have doubled or tripled in many of these categories. 

But prices for Chinese glass have trailed behind, often overlooked by collectors because they are less familiar with a category that appears regularly at auction but in very small quantity.

“Prices for Chinese glass have not gone up so dramatically, and when compared to porcelain and jade carvings, glass is still very much undervalued,” said Pola Antebi, head of the Chinese Ceramics and Works of Art Department at Christie’s Hong Kong. “I think it’s partly because collectors haven’t really focused their attention on this art form. There haven’t been many large exhibitions of Chinese glass, and so it’s not a category that is as well known.”