Rare Chinese book, Qinding Xiqing gujian. [Catalogue of the ...

Hammer

£3,200

Rare Chinese book, Qinding Xiqing gujian. [Catalogue of the Xiqing antiquities], published 14th year of the reign of Qianlong 1749, documenting the Palace collection of ritual bronzes with archaic inscriptions, dimensions and weights, 6 volumes with yellow wrappers, in a blue cloth folding case, 25.6cm Provenance - A. T. Arber-Cooke

CONDITION: The outer folding case has damage and staining to the blue cloth and losses and tears to the paper and card lining. Fortunately the books have survived in reasonable condition.

All six volumes have some slight wear and creasing to the outer yellow paper wrappers with ink numbers, minor browning near edges of pages and a feint stain near the lower edge of most pages.

Additional faults-

Volume 1 -loose silk stitching to back of binding. Ink inscription on inside page.

Volume 2 - Tiny area of worm damage to front edge of a few leaves.

Volume 3 - loss to corner of back wrapper

Volume 4 - slight black ink marking on cover and small loss to label

Volume 5 - slight staining to label

Volume 6 - slight staining and losses to label and black ink mark to cover. loose silk stitching to back of binding.



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.