An imperial gold ewer made for the Qianlong Emperor has sold for HK$55.8 million at Christie's in Hong Kong, becoming the most expensive object of the house's autumn season of Chinese ceramics and works of art. The elaborate vessel was given its own dedicated single-lot sale, titled For the Son of Heaven: The Imperial Qianlong Gold Ewer, during Hong Kong Asian Art Week.

Made from solid gold, the ewer is decorated with pearls, rubies, sapphires and turquoise and bears a Qianlong mark from the emperor's reign, which ran from 1736 to 1795. Christie's pointed to its intricate filigree and gemstone decoration as examples of the craftsmanship of the Imperial Workshops at the height of the Qing dynasty.

Records from those workshops describe a jewel-embellished gold ewer commissioned in 1740 and completed for the emperor in 1741, and the surviving vessel closely matches that commission in scale and decoration. Christie's stopped short of identifying the two definitively, but the connection ties the object directly to the Qianlong court. The house also compared it with the celebrated Jin'ou Yonggu cup, the Golden Cup of Eternal Stability used by Qing emperors at New Year ceremonies.

The ewer later entered the collection of Dr Carl Kempe, a prominent 20th-century European collector of Chinese art, and has been exhibited internationally and extensively published. Its result outpaced other major imperial works in the same group of sales, including a yangcai hundred-deer vase from the Ai Lian Tang Collection at HK$35.06 million and a blue-and-white flask from the Au Bak Ling Collection at HK$25.3 million.