Two Famille Verte Vases, Silkworm and Landscape Scenes, Plate 1911

Plate 115 of the 1911 book Chinese Porcelain and Hard Stones, an original color plate of Chinese porcelain, illustrates a cylindro-ovoid vase and a baluster vase in famille verte enamels. The cylindro-ovoid vase has a stippled green ground with Po Ku objects around two panels of sericulture, a family sorting silkworm cocoons and the gathering of mulberry leaves. The baluster vase carries a continuous landscape of riders and walkers among pavilions, notable for the absence of blue and its brilliant transparent green. Gorer and Blacker describe both as Kang-he period and record the baluster vase in the Salting Collection; each height 17 1/2 inches (45 cm), diameter 7 1/2 inches (19 cm).

The plate belongs to Chinese Porcelain and Hard Stones, London, Bernard Quaritch, 1911, the book in which the dealer Edgar Gorer and the writer J. F. Blacker illustrated and described two hundred and fifty four pieces of Chinese ceramic and glyptic art. The edition was limited to one thousand numbered copies in two large quarto volumes, with the color plates protected by tissue guards. 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 book records the Edwardian taste for Chinese porcelain, when the famille noire and famille verte wares that collectors associate with the Kangxi period were among the most sought after. R. L. Hobson of the British Museum criticized the book, and later scholarship has revised many attributions of this kind; the periods given in this listing are the authors' own, as printed in 1911.

Even age toning. Handling soiling along the left edge. A few small foxing spots in the margin. All four corners complete.

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