Powder-blue Beakers, Plates and Vases, Three Kang-he Color Plates, 1911

This is a set of three original 1911 color plates, Plates 155, 158 and 159 from Volume II of Gorer and Blacker's Chinese Porcelain and Hard Stones, sold together as one lot. What links them: powder blue pairs: beakers, plates and vases. Plate 155: Pair of beaker vases. Powder-blue grounds decorated with three-clawed dragons and fire-forms in gold; the inside top rim has a band of sprigs of flowers in red with green leaves. The body of each beaker has two reserves shaped as ju-i heads at the top and bottom, with diaper in gold. The book gives it to the Kang-he period and records height 10 3/8 inches (26.3 cm); diameter 5 inches (12.8 cm). In the collection of S. E. Kennedy, Esq. Plate 158: Plates, large, a pair. A ground of fine powder-blue and an edge of plain brown; the rim contains eight panels decorated alternately with lions and red flames and with sacred utensils from the Po Ku, the latter varying on the two specimens. The middle panels show the lung ma. The book gives it to the Kang-he period and records diameter 16 inches (40.6 cm). In the collection of A. E. Cumberbatch, Esq. Plate 159: Vases, a pair, cylindrical. Powder-blue ground; on the body are two fan-shaped panels decorated with landscapes and two ju-i head shaped panels containing utensils; on the neck are two leaf-shaped panels decorated with rocks and flowers. The upper rim shows a bluish white line, the panels being covered with a soluble gum impervious to color. The book gives it to the Kang-he period and records height 17 3/4 inches (45 cm); diameter 7 1/2 inches (18.3 cm).

Chinese Porcelain and Hard Stones, by Edgar Gorer and J. F. Blacker, was published in London by Bernard Quaritch in 1911 in two volumes with two hundred and fifty four color plates, and these sheets are among them, from Volume II. The plates are color collotypes, a photographic process that reproduces continuous tone without a visible dot screen, which is why the glazes keep their depth on paper.

The book appeared at the height of the Edwardian passion for Chinese porcelain, when English and American collections were being formed at speed and a dealer's catalog could shape taste. R. L. Hobson of the British Museum attacked Gorer's attributions in print when the work appeared, and later scholarship has revised many attributions of this kind, which is part of what makes the volumes interesting to read now.

Collectors of Chinese ceramics, of early color printing and of Edwardian book illustration all look for these plates, and they work equally well in an interior scheme as in a collection. The three sheets are the same size and were printed by the same hand, so they hang as one group.

These are original antique prints, not modern reproductions. They are three original sheets sold together as one lot, and the set is never split.

Even age toning throughout. Light foxing in the margins of all three sheets. All corners complete on every sheet.