HONG KONG –
A wristwatch once owned by China’s last emperor, Aisin-Gioro Puyi, has sold for $6.2 million at an auction in Hong Kong.
The attractive price is partly due to the rarity of the Patek Philippe Reference 96 Quantieme Lune, one of only eight known to exist. But according to the Phillips auction house handling the sale, the seven-figure sum is also due to the remarkable history of this 86-year-old watch – a history that has seen it brought to Siberia in the past year. the time the former ruler was imprisoned for 5 years in the Soviet Union.
This 1.2-inch-diameter platinum watch features an Arabic dial, rose gold-tone hands, and a “moon phase” function that indicates how visible the moon is from Earth at any given time. any. Some of its internal mechanisms date back to 1929, although this model was not sold by Patek Philippe – a Swiss watch manufacturer known for fitting complicated movements into slim cases – until 1937.
It is not known how Puyi obtained this watch, although records show it was originally sold through a luxury boutique in Paris. Phillips added that historical documents prove the former emperor took it to a Soviet prison camp in Khabarovsk. He then gave it to Georgy Permyakov, a fluent Mandarin speaker who served as his Russian tutor and interpreter during his incarceration.
Puyi, who formed the basis for the 1987 Oscar-winning film “The Last Emperor,” ascended the throne as a toddler in 1908. However, he was forced to abdicate less than four years later. That was when a republican uprising overthrew the Qing dynasty. he was allowed to continue living in the imperial palace in Beijing (and was briefly reinstated as emperor in 1917).
In 1924, he fled Beijing and formed an alliance with Japan, which later made him emperor of the puppet state, Manchuria, in northeastern China’s Manchuria region. After Japan’s defeat in World War II, Puyi was captured by Soviet troops and held as a prisoner of war. According to Phillips, he gave the watch to Permyakov in 1950, shortly before the former emperor returned to China to stand trial for war crimes.
According to the press release, Phillips spent three years researching the history of the object and confirming its provenance – a process that Thomas Perazzi, head of the auction house’s watches division Asia region , described in a statement as “an unprecedented research project with a worldwide watch team. experts, historians, journalists and scientists.”
In its catalog listing, Phillips cites Puyi’s grandson Yuyan (who was detained with him) as recounting in his memoirs that his uncle wore this watch “day in and day out.” ‘ while in Manchuria. The catalog also says that Puyi had previously given the watch to his nephew, but later asked for it to be returned to Permyakov.
Almost a decade after returning to China, Puyi was pardoned and lived as a civilian in Beijing until his death in 1967. Meanwhile, Permyakov kept the watch until his death. in 2005, it was then passed on to his heirs before being handed over to Phillips by its current owner in 2019. The watch has been on display in New York, Singapore, London, Taipei and Geneva before it heads back to Hong Kong, where it goes on sale at Phillips’ new Asia headquarters on May 23.
The watch was offered alongside a number of other former Puyi properties. Among them were 15 watercolor paintings, believed to be by Gobulo Runqi, Puyi’s brother-in-law, and a red paper fan also given to Permyakov, engraved with a poem by the former emperor.
One of Puyi’s manuscript notebooks, which Phillips says “provides a never-before-seen view of (his) mind,” was also sold along with a copy of Confucius’s “The Analects.” Death, with the two items combined brought in more than $121,500.
The sale will be followed by a two-day watch auction at Phillips with around 240 watches. Among the historical highlights is the limited-edition 1969 Omega Speedmaster Apollo XI that was given to NASA astronaut Charles “Pete” Conrad Jr., the third person to ever set foot on the moon.
