Noted Porcelains of Successive Dynasties

This color illustrated porcelain catalogue of Chinese culinary objects was compiled by the famous Ming art collector Xiang Yuanbian (1525-1590).  He was the first Chinese scholar to compile a catalogue of porcelains with colored illustrations.  The manuscript was not published during Xiang’s lifetime.  It was eventually acquired by the British scholar S.W. Bushell (1844-1908) who took it to London where it was lost in a fire.  Fortunately copies of it had previously been made in China.  John C. Ferguson (1866-1945) studied one of them, translated it into English and annotated the text.  This 1931 publication is considered to be one of the most beautiful books of the Republican period (1911-1949) and a fundamental work for the study of Chinese porcelain.