Plum Tree and Finches on an Apple Green Baluster Vase, Gorer Plate 1911

Plate 31 of the 1911 book Chinese Porcelain and Hard Stones, an original color plate of Chinese porcelain, illustrates a baluster vase on a brilliant apple green ground with plum trees and small bamboo rising from rocks. Plum trunks and bamboo grow from rocks at the foot, with white blossoms touched with yellow on greenish yellow twigs and colored finches flying above. A raised ring circles the neck, a line at the middle shows the vase was made in two parts, and the base bears the Ch'eng Hua mark. Gorer and Blacker describe it as Ming period and record it in the Franks Collection, British Museum; height 16 7/8 inches (43 cm), diameter 7 3/4 inches (20 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. A few small foxing spots in the margin. All four corners complete. Minor edge wear, shallow nicks along the left.

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