Chinese Wine Pots and a Bell Shaped Ewer, Two Ming Color Plates, 1911

This is a set of two original 1911 color plates, Plates 176 and 182 from Volume II of Gorer and Blacker's Chinese Porcelain and Hard Stones, sold together as one lot. What links them: wine pots and ewers. Plate 176: Group of two wine-pots and a vase. Wine-pot with white spout, mounted in silver, and imitation yellow cane-work handle; yellow ground stippled with black, decorated with figures, raised and colored, of Shou Lao, his attendant and his attributes, a deer and a crane, and ornamented with flowers. The small hexagonal vase, in its pierced stand, one of a pair, has on each side a lozenge-shaped panel enclosing an archaic character upon alternate yellow and black grounds, with symbols on a yellow ground at the base. The book gives it to the Ming period and records height 7 5/8 inches (19.5 cm); width 5 1/4 inches (13.3 cm), the book giving a size for each piece shown. In the Cope Collection. Plate 182: Group of two wine-pots and a wine-ewer and cover. The bell-shaped ewer has spout and handle imitating basket-work in bamboo, its yellow ground decorated with arabesques of aubergine and white peonies and green foliage, separated by various borders, with yellow flowers on a green ground. The wine-pots, of Shou character shape, differ in decoration; one has face and spout decorated like the ewer with aubergine and white peonies on a yellow ground, enclosing in a raised frame a ju-i head shaped panel. The book gives it to the Ming ; Early Kang-he period and records height 12 inches (30.5 cm); width 7 5/8 inches (19.4 cm), the book giving a size for each piece shown. From the collection formed by Richard Bennett, Esq., D.L.

The sheets come from Chinese Porcelain and Hard Stones, the two volume work by the London dealer Edgar Gorer and the writer J. F. Blacker, published by Bernard Quaritch of 11 Grafton Street, New Bond Street, in 1911 in an edition of 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.

Hung as a group with other plates from the same work, it builds into a decorative scheme with a common palette and a common hand. The two sheets are the same size and were printed by the same hand, so they hang as one group.

These are original antique prints, not modern reproductions. They are two original sheets sold together as one lot, and the set is never split.

Even age toning throughout. Slight wear at the corners of one of the two sheets. Brown marks on both sheets.