Two volumes. 222 pages of text and 225 mounted Woodburytypes interleaved with tissue guards. (8vo) 25.4x15.9 cm (10x6¼"), publishers sanguine colored cloth with ornate black and gilt pictorial decoration, all edges gilt. First Edition.
Photographs showing more than 400 ceramic objects. The first edition of an often reprinted work, based on a series of lectures on pottery and porcelain Chaffers gave in the Society of Arts in 1867. Having been asked to publish these lectures he states as follows: "A recent invention of photography having been submitted to me by Mr. Cundall as a desirable and comparatively economical means of illustrating these Lectures, I resolved to adopt the Woodbury process of printing the plates in permanent ink from metal cliches, transferred from photographic negatives. These have been taken under my superintendence, expressly for this work, from examples in well-known collections, thus securing in every instance absolutely faithful copies of the originals.: - Preface. A rich and tasteful collection of impressive images. Copy complete, and plates 139 and 140 seem never to have been bound in. The 225 plates are bound as follows: plate I-138, 141-198, 218-227, 208-217, 199-207.