Chinese Horseman Figure on Biscuit with Two Cups and Saucers, Ming, 1911

Plate 181 from Volume II of Gorer and Blacker's Chinese Porcelain and Hard Stones, an original 1911 color plate of a porcelain figure of a Chinese rider on an aubergine horse, with two cups and saucers copied from old silk embroidery. Figure of a Chinese on horseback; and two very rare cups and saucers. The rider wears a black coat over green robes, the iridescent black repeated on the sword sheath, the mushroom-form straw hat and reddish brown plumes in biscuit; the horse is a fine brownish tint of aubergine with mane, tail and hoofs almost black, trappings green and yellow and the saddle mottled with black. The cups and saucers have a design copied from a square of old silk embroidery, the saucers with a yellow ground, parts in blue and green, all mottled in black, with a very shallow lip. The book gives it to the Ming period and records height 7 1/2 inches (19 cm); width 6 1/4 inches (15.8 cm), the book giving a size for each piece shown. In the collection of G. R. Davies, Esq.

It was published in 1911 by Bernard Quaritch of New Bond Street, London, in Edgar Gorer and J. F. Blacker's Chinese Porcelain and Hard Stones, a work of two volumes and two hundred and fifty four color plates limited to one thousand numbered copies. The plates are color collotypes, a photographic process that reproduces continuous tone without a visible dot screen, which is why the glazes keep their depth on paper.

What gives these plates their standing is the quality of the collections they record. Pieces illustrated here passed through the great Edwardian cabinets, and several are now in museums, so the book is a photographic record of where this material sat a century ago.

Collectors of Chinese ceramics, of early color printing and of Edwardian book illustration all look for these plates, and they work equally well in an interior scheme as in a collection.

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

Even age toning. Handling soiling along the left edge. Slight wear at the top left corner.