Apple Green Beaker Vase with Two Dragons, Ming, Gorer Plate 1911

This is Plate 28 from Chinese Porcelain and Hard Stones, an original 1911 color plate of Chinese porcelain showing a large apple green beaker vase with two four-clawed dragons among clouds and flames. Two four-clawed dragons, one with a yellow head and aubergine body and the other the reverse, turn toward a yellow sacred jewel among clouds of aubergine, yellow, green, blue and white. The lip was broken and cut down and now has a metal rim, and the base carries the Ch'eng Hua mark. Gorer and Blacker describe it as Ming period and record it in the Salting Collection; height 27 1/4 inches (69 cm), diameter 10 7/8 inches (28 cm).

Edgar Gorer and J. F. Blacker brought out Chinese Porcelain and Hard Stones in 1911 through Bernard Quaritch, the New Bond Street bookseller, in an edition of one thousand numbered copies. The two volumes carry two hundred and fifty four color plates, each a full page photographic reproduction of a single piece or group, with a tissue guard and a facing description in English and French. The plates are color collotypes, and the book records that it was produced and printed by the Menpes Printing and Engraving Company of London and Watford.

The plates were made while large collections of Chinese porcelain were being formed in Britain and America, and the text names the collections that held many of the pieces illustrated, among them those of P. A. B. Widener, George Salting and Richard Bennett.

Even age toning. A few small foxing spots in the margin. All four corners complete. One larger brown mark.

This is an original antique print, not a modern reproduction. This item is sold unframed.