Love's Chase Bottles and a Pavilion Garniture, Two Kang-he Plates, 1911

This is a set of two original 1911 color plates, Plates 150 and 151 from Volume II of Gorer and Blacker's Chinese Porcelain and Hard Stones, sold together as one lot. What links them: blue and white bottle and jar groups. Plate 150: Group of five bottles. Fine cobalt decoration on white. The middle one (No. 3) has at the top a double circle followed by a band of zigzags and another of plain crenellated ornament, the zigzags repeated at the base of the neck enclosed with two arabesque crenellated borders, the body showing panels with vases and other objects from the Po Ku in fine blue on a white ground. The pair of small bottles (No. 2) is painted with the design known as "Love's Chase," a mounted lady hiding her face behind a fan, with a band of godroons in two shades of blue at the base. The book gives it to the Kang-he period and records height 8 1/4 inches (21 cm); diameter 4 3/8 inches (11 cm), the book giving a size for each piece shown. In the collection of J. B. Lee, Esq. Plate 151: Two ovoid jars and covers, and a beaker from a garniture of five pieces. Decorated with cobalt blue on a white ground; the body of the jars shows pavilions and balustrades in a garden, the design repeated on the other side and on the neck of the beaker, with a border enclosing a panel at the top containing sacred objects. The beaker has similar decoration, but the bulbous enlargement in the middle contains two groups of flowers with rocks and reeds in panels enclosed in two borders; the borders at the top and base are of blue zigzags. The book gives it to the Kang-he period and records height 15 3/4 inches (40 cm); diameter 10 3/4 inches (27.3 cm), the book giving a size for each piece shown. In the collection of J. B. Lee, Esq.

The plates belong to Edgar Gorer and J. F. Blacker's Chinese Porcelain and Hard Stones, issued in London by Bernard Quaritch in 1911, a work in two volumes whose two hundred and fifty four color plates were printed to the highest standard the period could reach. 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.

Edgar Gorer was one of the most visible dealers in Chinese art of his generation. He traded as S. Gorer and Son at 170 New Bond Street with a branch at 500 Fifth Avenue in New York, dealt chiefly in Kangxi, Yongzheng and Qianlong porcelain, and sold to Sir William Lever. He died on 7 May 1915 when the Lusitania was torpedoed, and his body was never recovered.

Collectors of Chinese ceramics, of early color printing and of Edwardian book illustration all look for these plates, and they work equally well in an interior scheme as in a collection. 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 one of the two sheets. All corners complete on every sheet.