Rijksmuseum Buys Back Restituted Porcelain Trove at Auction

A group of rare 18th-century Meissen porcelain objects surpassed expectations in a New York auction at Sotheby’s on Tuesday. Some 120 lots sold for a collected $15 million, nearly five times their $3.1 million estimate. More than half of those lots were bought back by the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, which was forced to give up the objects this year amid a restitution claim.
The porcelain items were made by the German manufactory Meissen, and are prized for their rarity. Some items from the a