Rare Chinese book, Illustrations of Beautiful Places Compile...

Hammer

£5,000

Rare Chinese book, Illustrations of Beautiful Places Compiled, 'Tu Kai Sheng Ji', edited by Liu Houji, published first Winter of Guangxu 1875-76, 8 volumes in a blue cloth folding case Provenance - A. T. Arber-Cooke

CONDITION: The folding case blue cloth is grubby and slack and the cardboard and paper lining of the case have significant worm damage. Fortunately only Volumes 1 and 8 have minor worm damage to the edges, and all volumes with some light water staining near the upper of each page.



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.