Snow-Flake Sang de Boeuf Sprinkler, Two Views on Two Plates, 1911

This is a set of two original 1911 color plates, Plates 165 and 166 from Volume II of Gorer and Blacker's Chinese Porcelain and Hard Stones, sold together as one lot. What links them: two views of the snow flake sprinkler. Plate 165: Vase, or long-necked sprinkler. Belongs to the class of single-color glazes in which the color is in the glaze itself, a variety of sang de bœuf known as "snow-flake"; covered with a deep red glaze, crackled and mottled. Two views are shown of this piece. The book gives it to the Ming period and records height 9 1/2 inches (24.2 cm); diameter 4 1/2 inches (11.5 cm). In the collection of Edward Wassermann, Esq. Plate 166: Vase, or long-necked sprinkler. Belongs to the class of single-color glazes in which the color is in the glaze itself, a variety of sang de bœuf known as "snow-flake"; covered with a deep red glaze, crackled and mottled. Two views are shown of this piece. The book gives it to the Ming period and records height 9 1/2 inches (24.2 cm); diameter 4 1/2 inches (11.5 cm). In the collection of Edward Wassermann, Esq.

They were published in 1911 by Bernard Quaritch of New Bond Street, London, in Edgar Gorer and J. F. Blacker's Chinese Porcelain and Hard Stones, a work of two volumes and two hundred and fifty four color plates limited to one thousand numbered copies. 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 volumes were produced as a record of pieces Gorer handled or admired, and the plates were made with unusual care for the period. A century later they survive as some of the best color images of early twentieth century taste in Chinese ceramics and hard stones.

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 two 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 two original sheets sold together as one lot, and the set is never split.

Even age toning throughout. Light foxing in the margins of both sheets. Slight wear at the corners of both sheets. Shallow nicks along an edge of one of the two sheets.