Two Famille Noire Baluster Vases, Dragons and Black Hawthorn, Plate 1911

This antique color plate is Plate 18 of Gorer and Blacker's Chinese Porcelain and Hard Stones, 1911. It shows two famille noire baluster vases, the black ground covered with a thin brilliant green glaze. One vase shows two four clawed dragons stretched among clouds; the other, of the black hawthorn type, has aubergine prunus trunks rising from dark green rocks with bamboo shoots, bearing white and pale green flowers. Gorer and Blacker describe both as Early Kang-he period and record them in the collection formed by Richard Bennett; each height 17 3/4 inches (45 cm), diameter 8 1/2 inches (22 cm).

Chinese Porcelain and Hard Stones appeared in 1911 under the imprint of Bernard Quaritch, 11 Grafton Street, New Bond Street, London. Edgar Gorer and J. F. Blacker illustrated two hundred and fifty four pieces across two volumes, every one of them given a full page color plate printed from a photograph. Volume I, from which this sheet comes, runs from Plate 1 to Plate 135. 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 printed in color from photographs of the pieces, so the black and green grounds, the iron red and the white of the porcelain are recorded directly rather than drawn by an artist. A plate from this book reads as a record of an object rather than as a decorative picture of one.

Even age toning. Scattered light foxing in the margin. Slight wear at the bottom right corner. Several larger brown marks.

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