Kien-lung Pair of Pheasants Perched on Marbled Rocks, Antique Plate 1911

An original antique color plate from Chinese Porcelain and Hard Stones, London, 1911, this sheet shows a pair of pheasants perched on rocks marbled with green, blue and rose. The heads and bodies are red and hatched, the beaks gilt, and the necks show tiger spotting over soft green tracery. A band of scale pattern feathers sits at the top of the wings, and the long feathers have white shafts. Gorer and Blacker describe them as Kien-lung period and record them in the collection of S. E. Kennedy; height 15 inches (38 cm), width 6 inches (15 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. Handling soiling along the bottom edge. Scattered light foxing in 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.