A COLLECTION of Japanese works of art have fetched four to five times their price estimates at auction.

The objects – which included fine ornaments, carvings and decorative furniture – went under the hammer at the summer antiques sale at Darlington auction house, Thomas Watson.

Central to the sale was a collection of about 20 Japanese okimono figurines, with many dating back to the Meiji era, which spanned the first half of the Japanese Empire from 1868 to 1912.

The intricately carved ornaments mainly depict individual figures or scenes and were often produced specifically for export to the west.

One ornament of a fisherman holding a net with a child at his feet went for £800 – about four times its price estimate of £200 to £300.

Two Japanese carvings of crabs, also thought to be from the Meiji period, sold for £1,100 – way in excess of their £200 to £300 price estimate.

A Japanese tsuitate, one of the oldest forms of Japanese screens, fetched £1,100 - more than double its price estimate - while a pair of bronze figures, each signed Miyao and Miyao Chuzu, sold for £1,600.

David Elstob, business development manager at the auction house said he was delighted with the prices achieved at the sale, which he put down to the current buoyancy of the oriental market.

“Interest in these lots was particularly keen with multiple bids being placed on the phone, via the Internet and in the saleroom itself,” he said.

“The individual pieces were of particularly high quality and it is unusual to have such a large number of similar objects in the one sale. They came mainly from two private collections from Southport and the North-East.”