LONDON — Perceptions of the art market can often be shaped by the huge prices paid for work by the West’s most famous painters and sculptors. But there is another culture that can also inspire spectacular sales.

Last month, at Sotheby’s in Hong Kong, a Chinese 18th-century Imperial porcelain “poppy” bowl sold for $21.6 million. At the same auction, an elaborately decorated “fish” vase, also thought to be of Imperial provenance from the Qianlong era, raised $19 million.

Buoyed by a surging economy, Chinese dealers and collectors have since the mid 2000s been bidding formidable sums for the finest artworks from their country’s past. But in recent years, as China’s economic growth has slowed, the market for its antiques has become less frothy.

Just under half the 299 lots offered in Sotheby’s fall series of Chinese works of art sales in Hong Kong managed to find buyers. The Qianlong “fish” vase was marketed by the auction house as the rediscovered pair of another that was bid to an extraordinary 51.6 million pounds, then about $83 million, at a small auction house in London in 2010. The Beijing-based bidder never paid for that vase, and it was sold privately in 2013 to another buyer for $32 million to $40 million. The $19 million bid in Hong Kong for its supposed partner fell well short of that.