About this Item
Examples of Chinese ornament selected from objects in the South Kensington Museum and other collections. London: S. & T. Gilbert, 1867. First edition. Folio (13 1/8 x 9 inches; 334 x 230 mm.). 15, [1, blank] pp. Complete with six intertextual illustrations and 100 chromolithographic plates, including the chromolithograph title-page. With all tissue guards present. Textual title-page in red and black. There are two different iterations of this book, one in which the chromolithograph title-page is considered "Plate I" and the following plates start the numbering at "Plate II." (This version being numerically in line with the list of plates. The other version, as in the present copy, has the first plate after the chromolithograph title labeled "Plate I." In this version, the numbering skips over the number "V", which then at plate VI, brings it in line with the list of plates and the other version. All plates are present and inline with the copies with correct numbering. Original full red cloth, rebacked preserving original spine. Boards paneled in tooled blind. Front board with ornate gilt stamping. Spine lettered and stamped in gilt. All edges gilt. Board edges beveled. Some light foxing to title-page. A minor bump to fore-edge, causing some very minor marginal flaws to a few plates, not affecting illustration. Previous owner's bookplate on front pastedown. Overall a beautiful copy with the plates bright, and beautiful. In Examples of Chinese Ornament, published some ten years after his most famous work, Grammar of Ornament (1856), Jones gathers together and interprets one-hundred brilliant, full-page, full-color examples of Chinese ornament in order to demonstrate the ways in which these beautiful patterns accord with the ornamental principles first delineated in his Grammar. "I venture to hope that the publication of these types of a style of Ornament hitherto little known will be found, by all those in the practice of Ornamental Art, a valuable and instructive aid in building up what we all seek,--the progressive development of the forms of the past, founded on the eternal principles which all good forms of Art display" (Jones, from the Preface). Cordier, Sinica, 1566. HBS 68407. $6,000.
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