Imperial Palace Baluster Pair, Underglaze Blue Landscape, Kien-lung, 1911

Plate 217 from Volume II of Gorer and Blacker's Chinese Porcelain and Hard Stones, an original 1911 color plate of a pair of baluster vases from the Imperial Palace, trees and mountains in underglaze blue with green enameled rolling waves. Pair of baluster vases. Painted with a continuous landscape; the trees, rocks, mountains, etc., in underglaze blue, the rolling waves enamelled in delicate green outlined in black and crested in white. Amongst the trees are numerous pavilions in white and black enamel, and a border of blue palmettes. The book gives it to the Kien-lung period and records height 13 3/4 inches (35 cm); diameter 7 inches (17.6 cm). From the Imperial Palace.

It was published in 1911 by Bernard Quaritch of New Bond Street, London, in Edgar Gorer and J. F. Blacker's Chinese Porcelain and Hard Stones, a work of two volumes and two hundred and fifty four color plates limited to 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.

Hung as a group with other plates from the same work, it builds into a decorative scheme with a common palette and a common hand.

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

Even age toning. A few small foxing spots in the margin. All four corners complete.