Octagonal Vase with Dark Green and Blue Enamel Ground, Gorer Plate 1911

An original antique color plate from Chinese Porcelain and Hard Stones, London, 1911, this sheet shows a tall octagonal vase with four wide and four narrow faces on a transparent dark green enamel ground. Flowers and foliage in dark blue enamel outlined in gold cover the ground. The wide faces hold white panels of landscapes and figures, the narrow faces chih-lung, with symbol panels on the shoulder and flowers and insects on the neck. Gorer and Blacker describe it as Kang-he period and record it in the Franks Collection, British Museum; height 22 1/8 inches (56 cm), width 7 inches (18 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. Handling soiling along the bottom edge. Scattered light foxing in the margin. All four corners complete. One larger brown mark.

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