Chinese Porcelain Collections in the Near East: Topkapi and Ardebil (3 volume set)

Hong Kong University Press, 1981 Book. Very Good. Hardcover. 1st Edition. English text.; Hardcover (3 volume set in slipcase with two clasps.).; 23 x 30.5 cm; 7 Kg; Black and white and a few colour illustrations throughout.; Volume I-Introduction, ISBN 962-209-004-4, 273 pages; Volume II-The Topkapi Palace Museum, ISBN 962-209-005-2, 282 pages; Volume III-The Ardebil Shrine Collection, ISBN 962-209-006-0, 372 pages.; Used books with signs of wear on the interior and exterior, as well as the slipcase. The lettering on the front cover and spine is slightly worn. Very good set overall. Interior as new, except for stamps from a previous owner on the rear of the front cover of each volume. The interior of the slipcase is also stamped.; "This volume, together with the one on the collection of Chinese porcelain from the Topkapi Sarayi in Istambul and the Ardebil Shrine in Tehran, was first published by Gakugei Shorin, Tokyo, in 1972 in a three-volume Japanese limited edition, now out of print. This completely revised and rearranged edition in English preserves the scope and all the illustrations of the original edition. In connection with the Topkapi and Ardebil collections special mention must be made to the 1930 Topkapi catalogue by Ernst Zimmermann, John Alexander Pope (Topkapi in 1952 and the Ardebil 1956), as well as articles by Mehdi Bahrami, Sir Percival David, R.L. Hobson and Soame Jenyns. All these have contributed much to my understanding of the collections and their history" excerpt from Volume I.; "When I first stepped into the exhibition room of the Topkpai Saray Museum I was surprised. About five thousand pieces of Chinese porcelain were on display but an even greater number, estimated at six thousand pieces, were still stored in three basements. But the size of the collection is matched in importance by its value, for there are some forty pieces in the collection which are among the finest Chinese blue-and-white ware, made in the fourteenth century. We have had to revise our previous belief the Yuan period was a dark age because of these excellent Yuan pieces which have survived in this collection so far away from China. The blue-and-white porcelain from the Yuan to the Ch'ing period is the largest group in the Topkapi collection but there are also celadons, white, yellow, blue, brown, and polychrome wares. So, to the baptism of Istanbul with the various cultures, Hittite, Egyptian, Roman, Byzantine, Persian, and Islamic, one must now add that of a Chinese ceramic culture. The porcelain of many kinds dates from the thirteenth to the eighteenth century and can be compared in size and quality with the best collections elsewhere." excerpt from Volume II; "What we have come to know as the Ardebil collection of Chinese porcelain consists of about eight hundred pieces of blue-and-white, celadon, polychrome and other porcelains, nearly all of which are not now at Ardebil. Most of these pieces have been removed to the Archaeological Museum in Tehran. The Ardebil collection has special importance, not only because such a collection was made and preserved at all, near the Caspian Sea so far from its place of manufacture in China, but also because it is know that the main collection dates from not later than 1611 when Shab Abbas presented it to the Shrine in the town of Ardebil from which it takes its name and where it was housed until 1935. Even now the important collection, which includes such treasures as nearly forty pieces of fourteenth-century blue-and-white Chinese porcelain, is only partially known. I hope this volume will be welcomed for its extensive illustrations, many in colour, of a large part of the collection, including many of which have not been published before. In addition I have illustrated pieces from the collection which are now in Isfahan and Tabriz. It is reasonable to assume that the latest pieces could not be dated later than the thirty-fifth year of the Wan-li period of the Ming dynasty and the earliest in the middle of the fourteenth century." excerpt from Volume III..