Recent aquisitions

Fang, Ciu Chinese Ceramics, Song Yuan Dynasty.
Taipei, Artist Publishing Co, 1997, Second edition, Octavo, Hardcover, book condition: Near fine, dust jacket condition: Near fine. 679 Pages, Illustrated thoughout in colour by over 550 photographs.
Profusely-illustrated work on Song and Yuan ceramics. Chinese text but with text captions in English. A useful guide.
Item nr: 12448

Heissig, Walther Catalogue of Mongol Books Manuscripts and Xylographs. The Royal Library Copenhagen. Catalogue of Oriental Manuscripts Xylographs Etc. in Danish Collections Vol. 3.
Copenhagen, Royal Library, 1971, First edition, Quarto, Hardcover, book condition: Near fine, dust jacket condition: Near fine. 305 Pages, some black and white plates.
Walther Heissig (December 5, 1913 - September 5, 2005) was an Austrian Mongolist. He was born in Vienna. He studied prehistory, ethnology, historical geography, sinology and Mongolian in Berlin and Vienna, and got his doctoral degree in 1941 in Vienna. Afterwards he traveled to China, worked at the Fu-jen University in Beijing and visited Inner Mongolia. in 1945/46 he had to leave China in an affair about alleged espionage for Japan by German nationals[1] In 1951 he obtained his habilitation at Göttingen, but, on failing to obtain a position there, he undertook to pursue his second habilitation at the Bonn in 1957. In 1964, he was appointed the Chair of the Central Asian seminar at Bonn University.
Item nr: 12447

Yuan Ch´en Western and Central Asians in China Under the Mongols. Their transformation into Chinese. Translated and annotated by Ch'ien Hsing-hai and L. Carrington Goodrich.
Los Angeles, Monumenta Serica at the University of California, 1966, First edition, Quarto, Hardcover, book condition: Fine, dust jacket condition: Very good: light wear. 328 Pages.
An interesting and rare work!
Item nr: 12446

Lessing, Ferdinand D. Mongolian - English dictionary.
Berkeley - Los Angeles, University of California Press, 1960, First edition, Octavo, Hardcover, book condition: Near fine. 1217 Pages.
This dictionary contains the Mongolian vocabulary of all periods from 1940 on, and offers the English transliteration, the modern Cyrillic transcription, the old Mongolian script form and an English definition of the Mongolian words.
Item nr: 12445

Poppe, N. The Mongolian monuments in HP'ags-pa script. Second edition translated and edited by John R. Krueger.
Wisebaden, Otto Harrassowitz, 1957, Second edition, Octavo, Softcover, book condition: Near fine. 147 Pages, 12 black and white plates. Folding map.
Göttinger Asiatische Forschungen, Bd. 8.
Scarce!
Item nr: 12444

Golzio, Karl-Heinz Kings, khans, and other rulers of early Central Asia: chronological tables.
Köln, E.J. Brill, 1984, First edition, Octavo, Softcover, book condition: Fine. 130, Pages, numerous maps.
Scarce!
Item nr: 12443

Masuda, Koh Kenkyusha's New Japanese-English Dictionary.
Tokyo, Kenkyusha, 19586, Fourth Edition, Octavo, Hardcover, book condition: Fine, dust jacket condition: Very Good. 2110 Pages.
An excellent standard reference dictionary.
Item nr: 12442

Langlois, John D. China under Mongol Rule.
New Jersey, Princeton University Press, 1981, First edition, Octavo, Hardcover, book condition: Fine, dust jacket condition: Near fine: very small tear to top spine of the dustjacket closed. 487 Pages, a few black and white photgraphs.
Interesting collection of essays on Chinese civilisation under the Mongols encompassing history, politics, religion and art.
Hard to find in this good condition!
Item nr: 12441

Mostaert, Antoine Dictionaire Ordos.
New York / London, Johnson Reprint Corp. 1968, Second edition, Quarto, Hardcover, book condition: Near fine. 950 Pages. Orginally published in 3 volumes between 1941 - 1944.
Born in Bruges, 10 August 1881, Mostaert studied Latin and Greek during his Secondary education. He joined the CICM Missionaries, and was ordained priest. As a seminarian in Belgium he studied Chinese, which he came to know well; he also began to learn Mongolian using Isaac Jacob Schmidt’s Grammatik der mongolischen Sprache (St. Petersburg, 1831) and a Mongolian New Testament. He served as a missionary in the town of Boro Bal?asu in the southern Ordos region from 1906-1925. His early work concentrated on Ordos Mongolian, with studies of phonology and the compilation of a dictionary. He also translated Catholic works from Chinese into Mongolian. The Monguor language formed another field of study. From 1925-1948 he lived in Beijing, where he devoted himself primarily to scholarship. In 1948 he moved to the United States, where he lived until his retirement to Belgium in 1965. Died in Tienen, 2 June 1971. His Mongol name was Tiyen Ba?si or Nom-un Ba?si Tiyen, deriving from his Chinese name Tian Qingbo.
In addition to linguistics he worked on ethnography and folklore. In 1926 he began work on an analysis of the Secret History of the Mongols. Overall, Mostaert seems to have had the most extensive command of Mongol of any twentieth century Western scholar, derived from his decades living among the Ordos Mongols as a pastor. Nicholas Poppe called him the most outstanding scholar in the field of Mongolian studies. (Source: Wikip.)
SCARCE!
Item nr: 12440

Medley, M. Yüan Porcelain and Stoneware.
London, Faber & Faber, 1974, First edition, Octavo, Hardcover, book condition: Fine, dust jacket condition: Near fine. 134 pages text, index and 124 plates in mainly black and white.
Early ceramics and pottery from the Yuan dynasty, written by one of the great authorities on the field, the curator of the Percival David Foundation. The aim of the book is to follow the development of the ceramics in the historical and social background of the times.
Item nr: 12439

Boberg, Folke Mongolian - English Dictionary in 3 Volumes.
Stockholm / Copenhagen, Förlaget Filadelfia AB / Ejnar Munksgaard, 1954, First edition, Octavo, Hardcover, book condition: Fine, dust jacket condition: Near fine Dustjacket with protective Mylar cover. 2122 Pages in total.
Boberg was the only Swedish missionary to ever publish anything on the Mongolian language. This dictionary is by far the most important work published to date on the subject and extremely difficult to find!
Item nr: 12438

Vaccari, Oreste & Mrs. Enko Elisa Vaccari Vaccari's Standard English-Japanese Dictionary, the Unabridged Edition.
Tokyo, Vaccari's Language Institute, 1967, Quarto, Hardcover: Three-Quarter Leather, book condition: Very good, dust jacket condition: Very good. 2350 Pages. A standard reference work.
Item nr: 12437

American Art Association - Anderson Galleries Important porcelains including pieces from the Imperial collection. Property of Ton-Ying & Company.
New York, American Art Association - Anderson Galleries, 1930, First edition, Octavo, Hardcover. Rebound in buckram. book condition: Very good: small portion of first title page missing. 133 Pages, 399 lots described and many depicted in black and white. Prices realised written in red ink in the margins.
A very interesting auction catalogue on mainly Chinese taste porcelains. Also included are, snuff bottles, bronzes, enamels, semi-precious mineral carvings and rare early dynastic pottery.
The Tonying (Tongyun) Company was established in Paris in 1902 by Zhang Renjie (1877-1950), also known as Zhang Jingjiang, millionaire financier, Nationalist Government official and patron of both Sun Yat-sen and Chiang Kai-shek. Westerners dubbed him Curio Zhang.
Son of a wealthy family from Zhejiang Province, Zhang gained an official appointment in 1902 as an attaché on the staff of the Qing government’s Minister to France, Sun Baoqi. It was while in Paris that he established the Tonying Company for the import and sale of works of art, tea and silk, with the financial assistance of $300,000 Chinese dollars from his father, Zhang Dingfu.
Zhang’s business brought him into contact with a number of revolutionaries, including Sun Yat-sen in 1906, whose activities Zhang agreed to fund, largely from the profits of the Tonying Company. From then on, Zhang became a supporter of the Guomintang, becoming one of the Four Elder Statesmen of the Guomintang, following Sun’s death in 1925 and a staunch supporter of Chiang Kai-shek, whose rise to power in 1926 Zhang masterminded. In 1928, he became Chairman of the National Reconstruction Commission, established by the Nationalist Government and later the same year, Governor of Zhejiang Province, a post he held until January 1930. Following the outbreak of the Sino-Japanese war, Zhang left China for good in 1938, traveling first to Europe and then after the outbreak of the Second World War, to New York, where he died on 3rd September 1950.
The Tonying Company remained a family business branching out to New York from its original base in Paris and its source in Shanghai. As well as dealing in its own right, the Company supplied a number of British dealers, including John Sparks and Bluetts. Because of Zhang’s position in China, the Company was able to source high quality works of art directly, including items from the old Imperial Collection. A long-standing friend from his Paris days was Li Shizeng, who became chairman of the newly created Palace Museum in 1925 and was responsible for the inventory of the Imperial Collections. Zhang also oversaw the beginning of the removal of more than half of the Imperial Collections to Shanghai in 1933 following the Japanese invasion of Manchuria. It was during this period that many imperial works of art found their way into Western collections, through dealers such as Zhang. His unfortunate appearance (he suffered from a crippling foot disease which gave him a Richard III lurching gait) and his associations with members of China’s underworld narcotics trade (known as the Green Gang) all contributed to his reputation. Although Zhang dealt extensively on the Shanghai stock exchange, a great deal of his wealth and therefore the financing of the Nationalist cause, came from the profits created by the Tonying Company.
Literature: Howard L. Boorman (ed), Biographical Dictionary of Republican China, Vol.1, New York 1979, pp.73-77.
Harold R. Isaacs, The Tragedy of the Chinese Revolution, Stanford 1961.
Sterling Seagrave, The Soong Dynasty, London 1985.
Harold Z. Schiffrin, Sun Yat-sen and the Origins of the Chinese Revolution, Berkeley 1968.
Item nr: 12435

Tokyo National Museum Sometsuke - The flourishing of underglaze blue porcelain ware in Asia.
Tokyo, Tokyo National Museum, 2009, First edition, Quarto, Softcover, book condition: New. 167 Pages, followed by 19 pages with English text and object descriptions. Main text in Japanese. 181 objects depicted in colour.
Catalogue to the exhibition held in 2009 at the Tokyo National Museum.
The sometsuke (underglaze blue) technique, of painting a design in cobalt-based pigments on a white porcelain base and coloring it in vivid indigo, was perfected in China during the Yuan period (1271-1368). Eventually, this technique came to Vietnam, Korea and Japan, and sometsuke full of individuality was produced in many areas. This exhibition catalogue features sometsuke from all over the East and introduces them from several viewpoints, looking at the liveliness of the designs, the beauty of the ground and the intimate connection they had, as vessels, to daily life.
An excellent catalogue.
Item nr: 12434

American Art Galleries Beautiful Old Chinese Porcelains - The Private Collection of the Late Edward Wassermann.
New York, American Art Galleries, 1916, First edition, Octavo, Softcover, book condition: Near Fine. Unpaginated. 465 lots described and depicted in colour and black and white.
Wassremann's sale, held on the 14th of April 1916 at American Art Galleries realised $ 88,550. It included a Lang Yao Vase, oviform with spreading foot, short neck and flaring lip, formerly in the Bennett collection ($ 5.000 to Parish Watson), and a pair of Kangxi ginger jars with teak covers ($ 1.950) with a brilliant glaze of pale yellow decorated with lotus scroll and conventional blossoms in emerald green, bluish green, and soft brown (report in the New York Times). Four sang de boeuf pieces from Wassermann's collection are illustrated in Chinese Porcelains and Hardstones by Edward Gorere and J.F. Blacker (1911). (cit. Provenance, Davids & Jellinek, London 2011).
The first 238 lots have prices realised written in the margins in pencil.
A very rare catalogue in beautiful condition!
Item nr: 12433

Eskenazi Ltd. Ancient Chinese Sculpture from the Alsdorf Collection and Others.
London, Eskenazi, 1990, First Edition, Quarto, Cloth, book condition: Fine, dust jacket condition: Near Fine. 76 Pages, 24 plates and 13 figures in colour. Map, chronology, bibliography.
With introductory essay by Edmund Capon on Buddhism in the Tang Dynasty, and a documentation on 'The Conservation of a Guanyin Figure' by Sophie Budden and Valerie Kaufmann. 24 sculptures in wood and stone are described in detail and illustrated in marvellous colour.
Item nr: 8367

Jorge Welsh Linglong.
London, Jorge Welsh, 2004, First edition, Quarto, Hardcover, book condition: New. 175 Pages, fully illustrated in colour. 66 Objects depicted and described.
The seventh Jorge Welsh Dealer's catalogue of an exhibition that focuses on 'linglong' - pierced Chinese porcelain. Illustrates 66 pieces of Qing dynasty porcelain (together with a couple of earlier pieces), many made for export, that have pierced patterns as part of their designs. Includes fruit baskets, plates, vases, ewers etc. All well-illustrated in colour and described in detail. Dual text in Portuguese and English.
Item nr: 11960

Getz, John A Catalogue of Chinese Porcelains collected by Mr. and Mrs. Charles P. Taft, Cincinnati, Ohio with Notes and Illustrations compiled and described by John Getz.
New York, Privately Printed, 1904, First edition, limited to 100 copies, Octavo, Rebound in three quarter blue leather, Signed by the author to Mr. and Mrs. E.A. Benjamins, book condition: Near fine. (xxxii), 127, (vi) Pages. 32 Pages with tissue guarded plates depicting nearly every item described and in colour and black and white. This is number 78 (hand written) of a limited edition of 100 copies. Top edges gilt.
Charles P. Taft was amoung the great collectors of the early 20th century and had a keen eye for only the best Kangxi, Yongzheng and Qianlong pieces that he acquired mainly from the noted dealer B. Duveen.
This catalogue was compiled by the noted scholar of the late 19th and eary 20th century, John Getz with assistance from Duveen.
The Taft collection of Chinese porcelain is to date complete and on view at the Taft Museum in Cincinnati, Ohio.
Privately printed catalogues such as this one are extremely scarce and rarely find their way to the open market. This catalogue should be on any shelf next to the Leonard Gow Collection of Chinese Porcelain and Blacker and Gorer's Chinese Porcelains and Hard Stones.
A true must for the collector!
Item nr: 12429

Eliens, Titus M. Imperial Porcelain from the Shanghai Museum.
Zwolle, Waanders, 2011, First edition, Quarto, Softcover, book condition: New. 144 Pages, over 100 colour illustrations.
The catalogue to the exhibition held in the Municipal Museum in The Hague.
Only the best was ever good enough for the court of imperial China. It had its own special factories using the highest quality porcelain, the most virtuoso craftsmen and the finest pigments to produce the crème de la crème of Chinese ceramics. Now, for the very first time, a hundred of these masterpieces from the collection of the Shanghai Museum are to be exhibited outside Asia. However, the forthcoming Sovereign Splendour exhibition at the Gemeentemuseum Den Haag will not present these magnificent examples of imperial porcelain in isolation: through a focus on the symbolism and significance of their decoration, it will also introduce the public to the fascinating myths and traditions of pre-revolutionary China.
In the early seventeenth century, it became fashionable in the Netherlands to collect Chinese porcelain. Pieces imported by the Dutch East India Company (VOC) were in great demand at auction, despite the high prices they fetched. However, the objects that were so popular in this country were specifically made for export and were of far lower quality that the porcelain produced for the imperial court.
During the Ming (1368-1643) and Qing (1644-1911) dynasties, countless masterpieces were produced and passed down from generation to generation. A key difference between ordinary porcelain and that of the imperial court is the mainly ceremonial, rather than domestic, nature of the latter. Following the 1911 revolution that ended the reign of the last emperor, Xuantong, what survived of the imperial porcelain collection was split up. The Shanghai Museum possesses the largest collection of it in China and has now, exactly a century after the fall of imperial China, agreed to exhibit a representative selection here at the Gemeentemuseum.
The pieces are of the very finest quality and illustrate the sophisticated lifestyle enjoyed by the emperors over many centuries. An example of this quality and sophistication is a charming quail-shaped lidded box with a Fencai glaze, dating from the time of Emperor Qianlong (1736-1795). The little bird’s eyes, beak and feathers are depicted in minute naturalistic detail and true-to-life colour. The meticulous care of the maker is particularly evident when the box is turned over to reveal two tiny legs depicted in relief on the bottom.
The paintwork on the dishes, vases and jars is not purely ornamental, but often includes auspicious symbols. For example, bats and clouds stand for ‘superabundant everyday happiness’, while the pomegranate, peach and citron symbolise ‘many sons and long life’ and the five-clawed dragon is deemed to represent imperial power.
The opportunity to hold this exhibition came about as the result of a very special relationship between Dutchman Henk Nieuwenhuys and the Shanghai Museum. A few years ago, Nieuwenhuys donated his private collection of Chinese export porcelain to the Shanghai Museum, where it is now on permanent display.
Item nr: 12050

Refuge, B. Swankalok, de Export-Ceramiek van Siam.
Lochem, De Tijdstroom, 1976, First edition, Octavo, Softcover, book condition: Very good. 146 Pages, 213 black and white photographs. Dutch text with English summary.
Excellent work on the export ceramics of Siam.
Inhoud: Historisch overzicht. De ceramiek van de Tai. De export-ceramiek uit Soekothai. De verwantschap met de ceramiek van Annam. De export-ceramiek van Swankalok. Het Swankalok beschilderd - eerste familie. Het Swankalok bruin en wit - tweede familie. Het Swankalok wit - derde familie. Het Swankalok bruin - vierde familie. Het Swankalok celadon - vijfde familie.
Item nr: 12416