Pair of Famille Verte Bottles and a Tabaret, Antique Color Plate, 1911

Printed in color in London in 1911 for Bernard Quaritch, this original antique plate shows a pair of bottles flanking a small square tabaret, or stand. The bottles have a green and yellow mosaic trellis with chrysanthemum reserves and four oval panels of lung ma in flames and lions. The tabaret top is painted with philosophers by a stream and an attendant carrying wine vessels, and its legs show the t'ao t'ieh mask holding a feng-huang in its jaws. Gorer and Blacker describe the bottles as Kang-he period and the tabaret as early Kang-he period and record all three in the collection of A. E. Cumberbatch, Esq.; bottles height 12 3/8 inches (32 cm), diameter 6 7/8 inches (18 cm); tabaret height 3 3/4 inches (10 cm), length and breadth each 7 7/8 inches (20 cm).

Edgar Gorer and J. F. Blacker brought out Chinese Porcelain and Hard Stones in 1911 through Bernard Quaritch, the New Bond Street bookseller, in an edition of one thousand numbered copies. The two volumes carry two hundred and fifty four color plates, each a full page photographic reproduction of a single piece or group, with a tissue guard and a facing description in English and French. 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 plates were made while large collections of Chinese porcelain were being formed in Britain and America, and the text names the collections that held many of the pieces illustrated, among them those of P. A. B. Widener, George Salting and Richard Bennett.

Even age toning. A few small foxing spots in the margin. All four corners complete.

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