AMAZING: Auctioneer Aymeric Rouillac shows the 17th-century chest that had been used as a TV stand. (
)
Now that’s what you call a treasure chest!
A wooden box bought for $150 and used for decades as “Daddy’s bar” and a TV stand sold for $9.5 million after it was discovered to be a rare Japanese antique missing since 1941.
“That has to have been the bargain of the century,” said a spokesman for London’s Victoria and Albert Museum, which had been searching worldwide for the ornate, 5-foot-long box.
It was bought in 1971 by a French oil engineer living in London — a short walk from the museum.
Experts made the astounding discovery after the engineer — who had retired to France in 1986 — died and his children, with the help, of auctioneers cleared out his home.
Amsterdam’s Rijksmuseum bought the chest Tuesday at auction — making the owner’s children overnight millionaires.
Like their dad, they were clueless about its real value — which they called “Daddy’s bar” because he stored liquor in it after using it for years as a TV stand.
But the chest — one of only 10 that were created by master 17th-century Japanese craftsman Kaomi Nagashige in Kyoto for the Dutch East India Co. — has a fascinating history.
Jules Cardinal Mazarin, then chief minister of France, got hold of the original 10 in 1658, and they passed down through his family for generations.
British novelist William Beckford later took possession of two chests and bequeathed them to his daughter Euphemia.
She later married the Duke of Hamilton, and they sold the pair in 1882 to raise money to fix up their castle, The Daily Mail reported.
The Victoria and Albert Museum bought one, and the other was sold to collector Sir Trevor Lawrence, and then to a Welshman named Sir Clifford Cory.
When Cory died in 1941, “it disappeared off the radar,” one expert told the paper.
But it was later learned that a London-based Polish doctor named Zaniewski had bought it — and he sold it to the French Shell oil engineer for the bargain-basement price.
The cedar container is decorated inside and out with gold lacquer, and the designs include incredibly detailed images of famed Japanese myths, such as “The Tale of Genji,” which many experts say is the world’s first novel.
“The thing to note about this chest is that it is the best of the best. It was the best when it was made and the same still applies today. It has an incredible back story which makes it all the more special,” crowed Menno Fitski, head of East Asian art at the Rijksmuseum.With Post Wire Services