Description

Immediate dispatch from Somerset. Nice book in great condition. Pages in excellent condition. Images are beautiful bright and vivid. Gift message in front. Small water mark on bottom dustcover not affecting book. No notes or highlighting. See images. Fantastic book.

About the book >.>.> Chinese Armorial Porcelain presents a fascinating blend of information on Chinese export ware heraldry and taste and social history in this country during the eighteenth century. As Sir Anthony Wagner Garter King of Arms writes in the fore- word ‘The social historian no less than the herald the connoisseur and the collector may learn much from this book.’ The major part of David Howard’s book consists of a dictionary of armorial porcelain services painted in China for the British market between 1695 and 1820. Pieces of nearly 2000 services are illustrated by styles chronologically the arms blazoned and the families described; and in all 2900 services are recorded. Perhaps the greatest value of the book to the collector lies in its extensive analyses of this ware. The porcelain provides evidence which has made it possible for the author to date exactly the first appearance of famille rose and identify almost as if with hallmarks the detailed changes of style through the century. The book also covers the manufacture of this porcelain in eighteenth- century China its rapidly rising values in the twentieth century and very many other aspects of the ware and its owners. David Howard has travelled widely in every continent as a merchant and as a collector himself with many years’ interest in heraldry and the arts he understands what other collectors feel. They will not he says ‘always find that the service was made for Pitt or live for a son of William Penn or the father of Edward Gibbon but…. may be just as pleased to discover the arms to be of Hill im- paling Dale or Byde with Hope in pretence.” (OS)