CHINESE CERAMICS - The George Eumorfopoulos Collection. Catalogue of the Chinese, Corean and Persian Pottery and Porcelain by R. L. Hobson, London, 1925-28. Volumes I - VI, folio, 450 plates, some coloured, cloth. FIRST EDITION. ONE OF 725 COPIES. (6)

CHINESE, KOREAN AND PERSIAN CERAMICS -  The George Eumorfopoulos Collection. Catalogue of the Chinese, Corean and Persian Pottery and Porcelain by R. L. Hobson. London: Ernest Benn, Ltd., 1925-28. Volumes I - VI, large folio (450 x 310mm). Half titles, titles printed in blue and black, 450 plates, some mounted and coloured. Original textured black and gold cloth boards, black cloth title panels to the upper covers, the spines lettered in gilt, uncut (extremities very lightly scuffed, some creasing at the foot of spines). Provenance: Longstock House (small stamps to the rear pastedowns of the first 4 vols.); publisher's prospectus for another related work loosely-inserted. FIRST EDITION of this monumental catalogue of part of the unrivalled collection of collector and philanthropist George Aristides Eumorfopoulos (1863-1939). ONE OF 755 COPIES, VOLUME ONE NUMBER 489 OF 725 COPIES AND VOLUMES II - VI NUMBERS 184 OF 725 COPIES, ALL "ON VAN GELDER MOULD-MADE PAPER". George Eumorfopoulos was a British collector, of Greek lineage, of Chinese, Korean and Near Eastern Art. He had originally intended to bequeath his entire collection to the British nation but the Great Depression of the 1930s forced him to sell part of it to the V&A and the British Museum for the generous sum of £100,000. He also donated some 800 pieces to the Benaki Museum in Athens. He was the founder, and first President of, the "Oriental Ceramic Society". Rowland Outline and Bibliographies of Oriental Art p.61. (6)