With six hundred stunning full-color illustrations, this book
celebrates the most important collection of seventeenth-century Chinese
porcelain in the world, assembled by the distinguished British diplomat
Sir Michael Butler (1927–2013). Butler’s lavish collection covers most
types of porcelain produced at Jingdezhen, in Jiangxi province, during
the seventeenth century.
This comprehensive volume features nearly all
of the pieces in the collection, presented in sections featuring the
main categories of porcelains in the collection: Late Ming, High
Transitional, Shunzhi, Early Kangxi, Mid-Late Kangxi, Monochromes, and
Famille Verte, as well as disputed pieces. An introduction by Katharine
Butler tells the fascinating story of the circumstances that encouraged
her father to acquire, collect, and passionately study Chinese
porcelain of the seventeenth century; how he found rare pieces with
dates, interesting inscriptions, seal marks, or narrative scenes; and
how the collection and his scholarly publications came to be
internationally renowned.