Taoist Trinity, Three Shang Ti Figures with Jade Tablets, Antique Plate 1911

This antique color plate is Plate 84 of Gorer and Blacker's Chinese Porcelain and Hard Stones, 1911. It shows a group of three seated figures of the Shang Ti, the Taoist trinity, each holding a hieratic jade tablet. The figures come from one mold and differ only in color, each with a Tibetan style coronet with black jewels and capes and robes in brocaded green, yellow and aubergine. The stands have green ice crackle grounds with flowers and triangular carpets. Gorer and Blacker describe the group as late Ming or early Kang-he period and record it in the collection of Henry Hirsch; height 11 1/4 inches (28 cm), breadth 5 1/8 inches (13 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. All four corners complete.

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