Porcelain Pillow and Green Enamel Bowl, Late Ming, Gorer Plate 1911

This antique color plate is Plate 42 of Gorer and Blacker's Chinese Porcelain and Hard Stones, 1911. It shows a group of two pieces, a porcelain pillow with yellow ground reserves and a bowl with a green enameled ground. The pillow has an aubergine and green lozenge trellis ground enclosing two yellow reserves with feng-huang, and its ends carry pomegranates, swastikas and perforated metal bosses. The bowl has flowers reserved on black scrollwork under green enamel, is green inside, and has a border of pale green godroons. Gorer and Blacker describe them as late Ming or early Kang-he period and record them in the Salting Collection; pillow length 14 1/8 inches (36 cm), width 4 3/4 inches (12 cm), height 4 1/4 inches (11 cm); bowl height 3 3/4 inches (10 cm), diameter 7 3/8 inches (19 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. Scattered light foxing in the margin. All four corners complete. Several larger brown marks.

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