Bonhams Asian Art Sale Realizes £1,045,606 with 64.6% Sell-Through

The Bonhams Asian Art auction, in a sale that closed on 3 November 2026, achieved a total realized value of £1,045,606,^[1] with 297 of 460 lots sold, representing a 64.6%^[1] sell-through^[1] rate. According to official results published by Bonhams, the sale brought together a wide variety of regional works, spanning early jades, woodblock prints, and decorative objects from private collections [S1].

Among the notable offerings was a celadon and russet jade 'five poisons' waterpot and cover from the Qing Dynasty, which sold for £58,100^[2] [S2]. Carved in the form of a large recumbent toad with a lizard, scorpion, and snake clambering over its back, the piece was consigned from the Surrey collection of Lt. Colonel Athol Rowe and Mrs. Another prominent lot was a 19th-century famille verte yellow-ground 'dragon' opium pipe, which sold for £32,500^[3] [S3]. This piece features an enamelled and gilt coiled dragon amidst billowing cloud scrolls [S3].

The sale's sell-through rate of 64.6% was 17.5 percentage points below^[1] the Art category average of 82.1% across^[1] tracked houses. Against the five-year Art median of 77.1%^[1] across 117 comparable sales, the sale's 64.6% sell-through was 12.5 percentage points below^[1]. By realized value (USD-normalised), this sale ranks #79 of 352 Bonhams sales in the same calendar year.

Lot-level figures cover the 295 sold lots with recorded lot prices, with the house reporting 297 lots sold. The sold-lot price profile shows a median sold lot of £2,210,^[1] a 90th-percentile sold lot of £6,656,^[1] and an average sold lot of £3,521^[1]. The priciest tenth of sold lots accounted for 39.4% of the value^[1] recorded at the lot level, indicating a high concentration (value was concentrated in the priciest lots). The Gini coefficient of value concentration across sold lots was 0.49^[1], which also represents a high concentration (value was concentrated in the priciest lots).

Among the highlights, a group of five jade carvings from the 20th century sold for £23,400 [S4]. This group includes a reticulated dragon plaque, a pig head, a she-shaped pendant, a circular plaque, and a carved jade ball [S4]. In the prints section, Utagawa Hiroshige's complete set of fifty-five woodblock prints, Gojusan-tsugi meisho zu-e, mounted in an album, sold for £22,100 [S5]. The series depicts the starting point, halting places, and finish of the historic Tōkaidō Road linking Edo and Kyoto [S5].