Fish Cistern with Carp Painted Inside, Yung-ching Green on Black, Plate, 1911

Plate 208 from Volume II of Gorer and Blacker's Chinese Porcelain and Hard Stones, an original 1911 color plate of a large bowl or cistern for fish, green enamel on black with famille rose flowers outside and a painted fishpond with carp inside. Cistern or large bowl, for fish. A glaze of green enamel upon a black ground, charged with prunus flowers, chrysanthemums, peonies, etc., with foliage in enamels of the famille rose and fine gilding; interrupted on each side by a large scalloped oval panel, with a rouge de fer lotus-leaf band and a white fillet above godroons enclosing pendeloques; inside is a veritable fishpond with carp, lotus and foliage, flowers and plants, painted in various colors. The book gives it to the Yung-ching period. In the collection of Benjamin Altman, Esq.

The sheet comes 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.

The book appeared at the height of the Edwardian passion for Chinese porcelain, when English and American collections were being formed at speed and a dealer's catalog could shape taste. R. L. Hobson of the British Museum attacked Gorer's attributions in print when the work appeared, and later scholarship has revised many attributions of this kind, which is part of what makes the volumes interesting to read now.

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.

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

Even age toning. A few small foxing spots in the margin. Slight wear at the top left corner.