Pair of Famille Noire Beakers with Blue Birds, Antique Color 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 pair of famille noire beakers with a median band, the black enamel under a brilliant green glaze. Prunus trees rise from rocks on the cornet necks and the design is reversed below the band, with blue birds throughout, thirty on one beaker and eleven on the other. The borders differ slightly between the two. Gorer and Blacker describe them as Ming period and record them in the collection formed by Richard Bennett; height 18 1/2 inches (46 cm), diameter 9 1/8 inches (23 cm).

The sheet is a plate from Chinese Porcelain and Hard Stones, published by Bernard Quaritch in 1911, written by the London dealer Edgar Gorer with J. F. Blacker and printed in color by a photo mechanical process. The work ran to two volumes and two hundred and fifty four plates in an edition of one thousand numbered copies. 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.

In Chinese Porcelain and Hard Stones every piece or group is given a whole page to itself, so each plate is a complete image on its own, set in a wide margin, with the printed plate number as the only lettering on the sheet.

Even age toning. A few small foxing spots 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.