Leaping the Dragon Gate

A catalog raisonné of the world's most complete collection of seventeenth-century Chinese porcelain. 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.