Cylindro-Ovoid Vase with Dragon and Tiger, Apple Green, Gorer Plate 1911

This is Plate 52 from Chinese Porcelain and Hard Stones, an original 1911 color plate of Chinese porcelain showing a cylindro-ovoid vase on an apple green ground, decorated in underglaze blue with yellow, aubergine and green enamels. A four-clawed dragon among clouds above the sea faces a tiger on a blue rock, with two sacred jewels between them, a dryandra and a pine on rocks, and rose sprigs on the neck. The authors read the scene as the conflict of heaven and earth. Gorer and Blacker describe it as Kang-he period and record it in the collection of Mrs. Colis P. Huntington; height 16 3/4 inches (43 cm), diameter 7 inches (18 cm).

The plate belongs to Chinese Porcelain and Hard Stones, London, Bernard Quaritch, 1911, the book in which the dealer Edgar Gorer and the writer J. F. Blacker illustrated and described two hundred and fifty four pieces of Chinese ceramic and glyptic art. The edition was limited to one thousand numbered copies in two large quarto volumes, with the color plates protected by tissue guards. 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 book records the Edwardian taste for Chinese porcelain, when the famille noire and famille verte wares that collectors associate with the Kangxi period were among the most sought after. R. L. Hobson of the British Museum criticized the book, and later scholarship has revised many attributions of this kind; the periods given in this listing are the authors' own, as printed in 1911.

Even age toning. Scattered light foxing in the margin. All four corners complete. Several larger brown marks.

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