Vase with Eight Immortals Worshipping Shou Lao in Relief, Antique Plate 1911

This antique color plate is Plate 126 of Gorer and Blacker's Chinese Porcelain and Hard Stones, 1911. It shows a cylindrical, slightly ovoid vase with enameled and gilt relief decoration. The figures, modeled in relief and painted in enamels with gilding, show the eight Taoist immortals with their attributes honoring Shou Lao seated on a crane in the clouds beside a pine. The rest is gilt brocade on soft red, with key borders at rim and collar. Gorer and Blacker describe it as Kang-he period and record it in the Salting Collection, Victoria and Albert Museum; height 17 3/4 inches (45 cm), diameter 7 1/2 inches (19 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. 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.