Ming Figure of Vajrapani, Guardian of the Law, Antique Plate, 1911

This antique color plate is Plate 66 of Gorer and Blacker's Chinese Porcelain and Hard Stones, 1911. It shows a large figure of Vajrapani as guardian of the law, seated on a carved wood stand with a sword hilt in his right hand. The face and hands are in extraordinarily brilliant blue enamel, with a soft yellow undergarment and green armor, a black girdle with an aubergine mask of power, and a five-section crown with engraved lotus. The posture is that of a guardian ready to spring in defense. Gorer and Blacker describe it as Ming period and record it, with its companion, in the collection formed by Richard Bennett, Esq., D.L., formerly in a temple in Northern China; extreme height 32 inches (81 cm), greatest width 14 inches (36 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. 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.