Coral Red and Ruby Monochromes, Two Chinese Color Plates, 1911

This is a set of two original 1911 color plates, Plates 172 and 173 from Volume II of Gorer and Blacker's Chinese Porcelain and Hard Stones, sold together as one lot. What links them: coral red and ruby monochromes. Plate 172: Vase, double gourd, with curved handles. Outside surface covered with a monochrome glaze of coral-red (rouge de fer), derived from iron peroxide; the inside and the base are covered with a green glaze, and at the upper rim is a circle of white between the inside and outside. A surviving fragment mentions yellow, green, and blue in "five-color" decoration. The book gives it to the Kien-lung period and records height 17 5/8 inches (44.7 cm); width 10 inches (25 cm). In the collection of F. Schweder, Esq. Plate 173: One of a group of three vases (No. 1), and one of a pair (No. 2), in egg-shell porcelain. Covered with a beautiful ruby glaze, the last color of the Chinese palette; the paste or body of the porcelain is so fine and translucid that it is worthy of the decoration conferred upon it, and shows to advantage when it is plain, as here. The book gives it to the Yung-ching period and records height 9 3/4 inches (25 cm); diameter 4 inches (10 cm), the book giving a size for each piece shown. In the collection of S. E. Kennedy, Esq.

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.

A sheet of this size frames well at about forty by fifty centimeters and suits a study, a hallway or a dining room where its color can be seen close to. 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. Light foxing in the margins of both sheets. All corners complete on every sheet. Shallow nicks along an edge of one of the two sheets.