Item #100548 A Gallery of Japanese and Chinese Paintings
A Gallery of Japanese and Chinese Paintings
A Gallery of Japanese and Chinese Paintings

A Gallery of Japanese and Chinese Paintings

Tokyo, Kokka Publishing Company, 1908.

Folio, [10] leaves (printed rectos only) plus 108 plates (80 collotypes from photographs and 28 tipped-in coloured wood-engravings) interleaved with letterpress descriptions in Japanese and English.

Cord-bound brocade cloth; all edges gilt; covers a little worn at the extremities; scattered light foxing (confined mainly to the interleaves); bottom corner of the entire book block bumped; a very good copy (with the colour plates in fine condition).

The plates are reproductions of masterpieces of Japanese and Chinese art (78 and 30 plates respectively). Other copies on the market at present invariably call for only 100 plates (65 Japanese and 35 Chinese), and some of them have a variant title page (printed without the date, which also appears in our copy as June 1908 at the end of the preface). The preface makes interesting reading; not only does it spell out the precise numbers and types of plates, it draws attention to the 'unusually large number of coloured wood-engravings, twenty-eight in all, a number rather exceptional in a work of this size. We desire to add that all these coloured prints are of that unequalled workmanship which is to be expected from the hands of artizans in the exclusive employment of the Kokka Company'.

Item #100548

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