Group of Two Bottles and a Gourd Vase, Apple Green Ground, Plate 1911

An original color plate of 1911 from Gorer and Blacker's book of Chinese ceramic art, this sheet is given over to a group of two long-necked bottles and a gourd-shaped vase on an apple green ground. The bottles carry a conventional arabesque of flowers and leaves reserved in white after old brocade designs, with zigzag and key pattern borders. The paler green gourd vase is painted with flowering prunus on aubergine trunks rising from rocks. Gorer and Blacker describe them as Kang-he period and record them as from the collection formed by Richard Bennett; bottles height 10 5/8 inches (27 cm), diameter 5 3/8 inches (14 cm); gourd vase height 8 1/2 inches (22 cm), diameter 4 5/8 inches (12 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. A few small foxing spots in the margin. Slight wear at the top left corner.

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