In a city that is so defined by its history, antiques have always had a major presence in Bath’s shops and auction houses. We chat with Leon from Ma San Auction House, who specialises in the sale of Asian decorative art and antiques, with an expert focus on Chinese items.
The business was built around the expertise and trusted contacts of Danny Ma who has worked in the UK as a dealer in Chinese antiques since the 1980s. When Danny came to the UK as a student from Hong Kong at the age of just 17, he discovered the incredible range of Chinese items available here, often hidden in homeowners’ attics, because so many items were brought to this country by wealthy families in the 18th century. In the 1990s Danny established a stall in the Bath Antiques Centre in Bartlett Street, making frequent trips to China to continue to build relationships and contacts in the market. Danny became one of the top importers in the country for early Chinese ceramics and then opened The Bath Antiquities Centre on The Paragon and Ma Antiques on York Street.
Danny’s son Leon Ma (Executive Director) launched Ma San Auction in Bath in 2016, which is when the business became online auctioneers rather than dealers – this expansion was a way of reaching out to a much wider audience by running auctions using internet bidding. The business has been based in Prince’s Buildings in George Street since 2019 where the shop window displays a tempting range of larger scale Chinese items that will soon be going under the (online) hammer. Ma San holds bi-monthly sales showcasing a range of Chinese and Asian items including ceramics and porcelain, bronzes, jade, furniture, jewellery, wood carvings, and paintings. Objects range from ancient painted pottery found at sites along the Yellow River basin dating to the Neolithic period to jade animal carvings of the Yuan and Ming dynasties (1279-1644) to the high-fired polychrome porcelain of the Qing dynasty (1644-1912) which caught the eyes of wealthy European families in the 17th century.
The lots in the auction are shown on the Ma San website for 2–3 weeks before the sale. The sales last all day, typically with 300 lots per sale. On the day there are lines of people at computers taking online bids as well as people manning the telephones, with 50-60 lots typically being sold each hour. The sales are run on multiple bidding platforms based in the UK, Europe, America and China, so the computers need to stay in sync.
The value of individual pieces often changes from decade to decade according to the prevailing culture and fashion. Danny says that burial pieces found in Chinese tombs were widely available in the 1990s – after the country changed its policies to promote increased foreign trade and investment – but the values have gone up significantly in recent years as pieces are harder to source. Leon tells the story of a soapstone seal that he came across in someone’s house that the owner thought was worthless, but it achieved £30,000. Another remarkable story saw a lady bring in a jade bangle that she had bought in a Chinese street market years before for around £10, which was bought at auction for £8000.
Items are sourced from the whole of the UK, including from Bath and Bristol. With many reproductions now coming out of China, both Leon and Danny are rigorous in their identification of fakes, using their exhaustive knowledge of the styles of the period, identifying marks, the type of clay, the correct weight of a piece, the quality of glaze or the style of painted decoration.
Before the millennium, Danny says that the people who were interested in collecting Chinese art tended to be from the professional and elite classes – doctors, ambassadors, governors, academics and the royal family, who were all highly engaged with the history behind the items. These days the market encompasses plenty of younger people who are interested in buying Chinese items as an investment. Buyers are most typically from China and Hong Kong, as well as America and Europe. Ma San’s reputation is such that buyers don’t need to see and handle the pieces in person, trusting the expert opinion of the specialists at Ma San.
With many thanks to The Royal Crescent Hotel and Spa who allowed us to use the hotel as a location for photography.
Ma San Auction, 2 Princes Buildings, George Street, Bath BA1 2ED Tel: 01225 318587; masanauction.com
To find out more about Bath’s antiques specialists and auctioneers, read the full article at thebathmagazine.co.uk