Could this be the bargain buy of the year?
But experts believe its real value could be nearer £5 million (€6.7m).
The ewer was sold last Thursday at an auction held by Lawrences Auctioneers of Crewkerne, Somerset.
Expected to fetch about £100 to £200 in the Somerset sale, the jug eventually fetched the far higher sum of £220,000, with its anonymous seller doubtless marvelling at an apparently handsome profit. The identity of the buyer has also not been disclosed.
Lot 424 is catalogued as: “A French claret jug: The rock crystal body carved with animals, the silver gilt mounts with enamelled decoration, 19th century, 30cm, (cracked and damaged). In fitted box of Morel a Sevres. £100-£200.”
But experts believe it is a rock crystal ewer from the Fatimid dynasty, which ruled parts of northern Africa and the Middle East in the 10th-12th centuries. Only five examples were previously known to have existed.
“This is the first time one has ever known to have appeared at auction,” the publication said on its website theartnewspaper.com.
“The last one to surface on the market was purchased by the Victoria and Albert Museum in 1862.”
One dealer, who described the crystal ewer as a “Holy Grail” of Islamic art, recounted how he had looked at the item but failed to identify the ewer from the auctioneer’s online catalogue.
Historians have chronicled how many ewers and other rock crystal artifacts were destroyed in the 12th century, ensuring their rarity.
The Art Newspaper did not say who had valued the ewer at up to £5m, but a far smaller vessel from a similar period fetched £558,100 (€750,800) at a Sotheby’s auction in October, more than 10 times its pre-sale estimate.
The Art Newspaper said that apart from the ewer bought by the Victoria and Albert Museum, the others remain in ecclesiastical collections.
Another was dropped by an employee of the Museo degli Argenti in Florence in 1998 and shattered irreparably.
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