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Finds and Interests
Our WorthPoint Price Guide updates daily, with thousands of new items streaming in from our Industry Partners. I like to try to pick a few that are really special to share with our followers. There’s usually a good story behind so many of these pieces, and sharing my passion for antique and vintage items is why I love my job so much.
With so much new data coming in daily, I never quite know what will turn up. This week, I noticed a phenomenal Chinese vase from our Industry Partner, Yosemite Auctions, and it really is quite an item.
A Chinese “Hundred Deer” Vase Shaped After an Ancient Bronze Hu
This particular vase is called a “Hundred Deer” vase, and the motif appears on a great many Chinese porcelain pieces. The vase takes its shape from a Chinese ritual vessel called a “hu,” a form that would have held wine or water for ancestral offerings.
The base carries a six-character “Da Qing Qianlong Nian Zhi” mark, but Yosemite Auctions notes in the catalog that this is a later apocryphal mark rather than evidence that the vase was made during the Qianlong reign of 1736 to 1795. The catalog dates the piece to the nineteenth century, which is exactly where a mark like this one usually points. That is the kind of dedication Yosemite puts into their sales, and a house that tells you plainly what a mark does and does not prove is a house worth bidding with. Backing up items with accurate information is essential in this business.
What the “Hundred Deer” Motif Means, and Why “Lu” Matters
The deer motif was common, as it represents wealth and success. The Chinese word for deer is “lu,” which is a homonym for another word meaning “bureaucratic benefits,” which can refer to career or job success. The vase has coral-red handles that set off the painting of a wooded scene with deer, streams, and large forested areas.
When the hammer finally dropped on July 7, 2026, the vase brought a very respectable $33,410, out of a sale total of $93,188. It still sports a dealer’s paper label affixed underneath that describes it as a “powder enamel vase with hundred deer figure,” so the design and subject are documented right on the piece.
Quality Items, Well Researched, from Partners We Are Proud Of
The data in the WorthPoint Price Guide streams in daily, and I am always on the lookout for the sales that show quality items, well researched and verified, from sellers that make us proud to partner with them. This vase hits all those marks.
Search more than one billion prices in the WorthPoint Price Guide to see what your porcelain is really worth.