Pan Sho Chia, Disciple of Buddha, with Dragons, Ming Figure, 1911

An original color plate of 1911 from Gorer and Blacker's book of Chinese ceramic art, this sheet is given over to a figure of Pan Sho Chia, a disciple of Buddha, seated on a rock with two dragons. He holds one dragon on his knee and sets his right foot on another rising from the sea, wearing green armor engraved with lozenges over aubergine garments and yellow breeches. The stand front shows two dragons rising from crested waves, and all the flesh is in biscuit. Gorer and Blacker describe it as Ming period; height 13 1/8 inches (34 cm), width 5 3/4 inches (15 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. 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.