JADE & Other Hard Stones

Rawson, Jessica & John Ayres. Chinese Jade throughout the ages. London; Victoria & Albert Museum: 1975. An exhibition organized by the Arts Council of Great Britain and the Oriental Ceramic Society, and the first jade exhibition by the Oriental Ceramic Society since 1948. Featuring more than 500 objects from a variety of public and private collections, this is an important catalog with scholarly notes and text. Hardcover. 8.5"x11", 152 pages, many b/w and some color illustrations; original softcovers bound into red cloth; minor soil. [06439] $40.00

Tanner, P. de. "Chinese Jade. Ancient and Modern. Descriptive catalogue, illustrating the most prominent pieces of a collection of jade articles, with special reference to sepulchral jades" Berlin; Dietrich Reimer / Ernst Vohsen: 1925. Tanner was the Commissioner of the Chinese Maritime Customs Service, and collected a wide variety of antique Chinese jades while in China between 1913 and 1919. Sinkankas comments-

"One of the outstanding jade books, but not well known due to its rarity... Its text is meager and its principal value lies in the enormous variety of objects of which there are approximately 2,000 portrayed upon the plates...".

Indeed. Tanner was an omnivorous rather than acutely discriminating collector, buying both fine and crudely made objects, in quartz, jadeite and hardstone as well as jade. There are pendants, discs, plaques, figures, axes, knives & swords, bells, vases, urns, musical instruments, mythological creatures- you name it, it's here.

Volume 2 includes 7 colored plates showing object which illustrate the wide variety of colors jade comes in. I would be remiss not to acknowledge that Sinkankas also notes-

"As an encyclopedia of forms that imaginative Chinese lapidaries created from jade this book is worth whatever is asked for it".

2 volumes. Hardcover. 13"x9.5". Volume 1- 35 + 15 pages + 64 b/w plates with facing descriptive pages; Volume 2- 17 + 2 + 8 +3 pages, plus 53 b/w plates and 7 color plates, all with facing descriptive pages. Original cloth, respined with new leather spines; half-title to Vol. 1 torn in half and repaired; some cover wear and soil, a little internal soil. [02757] $1500.00

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