Pair of Hexagonal Famille Noire Vases and Covers with Prunus, 1911

This antique color plate is Plate 24 of Gorer and Blacker's Chinese Porcelain and Hard Stones, 1911. It shows a pair of hexagonal famille noire vases with covers, each side a panel framed with a green fillet. White prunus blossom on aubergine trunks rises from the foot of each side, decorated in three colors. Lotus petal borders in aubergine and white circle the shoulders and the double bud knobs. Gorer and Blacker describe them as Late Ming period and record them in the Franks Collection, British Museum; height 12 1/4 inches (31 cm), diameter 4 1/2 inches (11 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. Handling soiling along the bottom edge. 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.