With fees added on the winning bidder, an Asian private collector, paid £9.7m for the vases. A spokesperson for Sotheby's said: 'The jars are the only complete pair ever to have appeared at auction.
The blue-glazed, silver and gilt vase was created for the court of the Qianlong Emperor An "extremely rare" 18th Century Chinese vase bought in the 1980s for a few hundred pounds and kept in a kit ...