Ming Wu Ts'ai Reticulated Incense Burner and Cover, Antique Plate, 1911

An original color plate of 1911 from Gorer and Blacker's book of Chinese ceramic art, this sheet is given over to a large reticulated incense burner with cover. On the top of the cover Shou Lao, seated under a pine, receives a peach from a disciple; sixteen panels of pierced yellow hexagons on the sides of the cover and base reserve the Eight Immortals standing on clouds above and eight playing boys below. The five-color enamels of aubergine, yellow, blue, greens and iron red fill the robes, clouds and borders. Gorer and Blacker describe it as Ming period and record it in the collection of G. R. Davies, Esq.; height 10 3/8 inches (27 cm), diameter 9 3/4 inches (25 cm).

Chinese Porcelain and Hard Stones was issued in London by Bernard Quaritch in 1911, in two large quarto volumes limited to one thousand numbered copies. Edgar Gorer and J. F. Blacker wrote the text, which runs in English and French, and the two hundred and fifty four plates were printed in color from photographs of the pieces themselves rather than drawn by hand. This sheet is one of them. 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.

Gorer and Blacker chose the showpieces of the trade: tall black ground vases, green ground beakers, figures and animals, many of them from named private collections in Britain and America. The plates are a record of Western taste in Chinese ceramics in 1911 as much as of the objects themselves.

Even age toning. Scattered light foxing in the margin. All four corners complete.

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