Rare Chinese book 'Ping pi bai jin fang', concerning Nationa...

Hammer

£10,000

Rare Chinese book 'Ping pi bai jin fang', concerning National defence and military strategy, published 52nd year Qianlong's reign 1787, 14 parts bound in 12 volumes, Provenance - A. T. Arber-Cooke

CONDITION: All volumes with later brown outer wrappers and some occasional tears or small losses and pen inscriptions. All pages have a layer of paper between each leaf of script.

Volume 1 staining to some pages (mostly near the front and back), losses to title page now remounted, tear to first page

Volume 2 slight worm damage to first page and occasional small holes to pages, some pages with staining to bottom

Volume 3 slight worm damage to first page and occasional small holes to pages, some pages with staining to bottom

Volume 4 slight worm damage to last page and occasional small holes to pages, some pages with staining to bottom

Volume 5/6 Worm damaged and repaired pages throughout, some pages with staining to bottom

Volume 7/8 slight worm damage to spine, some pages with staining to bottom

Volume 9/10 slight worm damage to spine and edges, some pages with staining to bottom

Volume 11. slight worm damage to spine and wrappers, some pages with staining to bottom, some pages dog-eared

Volume 12 slight worm damage to spine and wrappers, some pages with staining to bottom

Volume 13 slight worm damage to spine and wrappers, some pages with staining to bottom

Volume 14 part 1, some pages with staining to bottom

Volume 14 part 2 slight worm damage to spine and end wrapper lacking, some pages with staining to bottom and dog-eared corners



Provenance - Alfred Theodore Arber-Cooke (c.1905-1993); thence by family descent. Arber-Cooke was an antiquarian and avid collector of Asian works of art, and antiquities principally collecting from the 1930s to the 1970s. He amassed a good reference library on Chinese & Asian coins and wrote on several occasions (1969-70) to to the academic F.A. Turk regarding the study of coin amulets and other non-currency coinages of China. A number of the Asian numismatic reference books will be offered in our 29th March sale.



Arber-Cooke initially lived in Wimbledon, Greater London and was involved with the Surrey Archaeological Society. He wrote the book 'Old Wimbledon', with a foreword the MP Sir Arthur Fell, published in 1927. He later moved to Llandovery in Carmarthenshire, Wales, again involved with local archaeology and wrote the History of Llandovery, published in 1975.