Two Yellow Ground Baluster Vases, Deer and The Happy Meeting, Plate, 1911

An original antique color plate from Chinese Porcelain and Hard Stones, London, 1911, this sheet shows two yellow ground baluster vases. The vase on the left shows spotted deer among mountains and pines in shades of green and aubergine, with white cranes on the neck. The vase on the right is painted with The Happy Meeting, a man and his lyre-carrying attendant meeting a friend on a rocky causeway, unusually in blue and yellow under the glaze. Gorer and Blacker describe both as late Ming or early Kang-he period and record both in the Salting Collection; the deer vase height 17 1/8 inches (45 cm), diameter 8 inches (20 cm), the other height 15 1/2 inches (39 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. A few small foxing spots in the margin. All four corners complete. One larger brown mark.

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