Globular Dragon Bottle with Mu Wang Horse and Ox, Ming, Plate 1911

Printed in color in London in 1911 for Bernard Quaritch, this original antique plate shows a globular bottle or dragon vase with two modeled dragons standing on a body of green rolling waves. The waves are strewn with prunus flowers, carp, prawns, Buddhist symbols, a tortoise and the horse and ox of the Mu Wang story; one dragon is aubergine and the other green, both with red on the spines. The neck shows a man and woman under a pine and a lady seated by a pavilion across a stream. Gorer and Blacker describe it as Ming period and record it in the collection of G. R. Davies; height 16 inches (41 cm), diameter 8 3/4 inches (22 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. Foxing over much of 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.