Imperial Palace Vases in Duck's Egg and Green, Two Color Plates, 1911

This is a set of two original 1911 color plates, Plates 188 and 189 from Volume II of Gorer and Blacker's Chinese Porcelain and Hard Stones, sold together as one lot. What links them: imperial Palace pastel ground vase pairs. Plate 188: Vases, a pair. A ground of delicate duck's-egg blue decorated all round with displayed dragons (chih-lung) flying in the clouds above the waves of the sea; the whole design outlined in gold, with delicate enamel colors of red, blue, green, white and rose stippled in, and a colored band of ju-i heads resting on a soft red ground. The book gives it to the Kien-lung period and records height 14 inches (35.6 cm); diameter 7 inches (17.8 cm). From the Imperial Palace, Peking. Plate 189: Pair of bottle-shaped vases, with wide necks and extended rims. A ground of delicate green known as hedge-sparrow egg, decorated with arabesque designs of chrysanthemums and foliage in a fine white pate sur pate, all covered with a brilliant glaze; there is a zone of alternate ju-i heads and bats. The book gives it to the Chia-ch'ing period and records height 8 inches (20 cm); diameter 4 1/2 inches (11.5 cm). From the Imperial Palace.

The sheets come 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.

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.

Framed simply in a dark wood molding with a generous cream mount, it holds a wall on its own and sits comfortably beside furniture of almost any period. The two sheets are the same size and were printed by the same hand, so they hang as one group.

These are original antique prints, not modern reproductions. They are two original sheets sold together as one lot, and the set is never split.

Even age toning throughout. Light foxing in the margins of both sheets. All corners complete on every sheet.