Two Famille Verte Vases, Birds in Flowering Trees and Flower Baskets, 1911

This antique color plate is Plate 120 of Gorer and Blacker's Chinese Porcelain and Hard Stones, 1911. It shows a white-ground baluster vase and a stippled green cylindro-ovoid vase with flower baskets. The baluster vase is painted in the five colors with rocks, peony and prunus trees, birds and insects. The cylindro-ovoid vase has two pierced baskets of lotus, peonies, chrysanthemums and poppies divided by long shou characters, with the eight horses of Mu Wang on the neck. Gorer and Blacker describe both as Kang-he period and record the cylindro-ovoid vase in the collection of G. L. Bevan, Esq.; heights 17 3/8 inches (44 cm) and 18 1/2 inches (47 cm), diameters 8 inches (20 cm) and 7 1/2 inches (19 cm).

The sheet is a plate from Chinese Porcelain and Hard Stones, published by Bernard Quaritch in 1911, written by the London dealer Edgar Gorer with J. F. Blacker and printed in color by a photo mechanical process. The work ran to two volumes and two hundred and fifty four plates in an edition of one thousand numbered copies. 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.

In Chinese Porcelain and Hard Stones every piece or group is given a whole page to itself, so each plate is a complete image on its own, set in a wide margin, with the printed plate number as the only lettering on the sheet.

Even age toning. Marked handling soiling along the bottom and left edges. A few small foxing spots 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.