Ming Famille Noire Ovoid Jar and Cover with Eight Flower Panels, Plate 1911

Printed in color in London in 1911 for Bernard Quaritch, this original antique plate shows a large ovoid famille noire jar with cover, the black ground washed with green enamel and divided into eight panels. Each panel holds a flowering tree on green and blue rocks with finches or butterflies, among them prunus, rose, peony, magnolia, guelder rose and chrysanthemum. Round the foot a rolling wave border is surmounted by a border of white lotus, and a narrow rolling wave collar divides the shoulder from the neck, both decorated with flowers and leaves; the cover is split into four panels of rocks and flowers. Gorer and Blacker describe it as Ming period and record it in the Franks Collection, British Museum; height 24 inches (61 cm), diameter 14 1/2 inches (37 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. All four corners complete. Minor edge wear, shallow nicks along the left.

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