Breaking record: Ming-era 'chicken cup' values 36.05 million $

HONG KONG (AFP) - The Meiyintang Chenghua 'Chicken Cup' is displayed by deputy chairman for Sotheby's Asia Nicolas Chow after it was sold for a record price in Hong Kong on April 8, 2014.

Sotheby's auction house said that the rare Ming-era Chinese wine cup broke the world auction record for any Chinese porcelain, selling in Hong Kong for 36.05 million USD to a mainland Chinese collector.

The tiny white porcelain cup, decorated with a colour painting of a rooster and a hen tending to their chicks, was made during the reign of the Chenghua Emperor between 1465 and 1487.

According to the auction house, the sale set a record for Chinese porcelain defeated a gourd-shaped vase from the Qianlong period in 2010, which was valued at 32.58 million $, per total.

Nicolas Chow, deputy chairman of Sotheby's Asia, described the cup as the "holy grail" of Chinese art. "There is no more legendary object in the history of Chinese porcelain. This is an object bathed in mythology", he told reporters after the sale.

"It has gone to an extraordinarily good home in Shanghai in the collection of Liu Yiqian".