The Capital Punishment of the Cord, Antique China Print, 1801
€ 440
Original antique · The actual sheet photographed · Certificate of authenticity on request · Sold unframed · Worldwide shipping from € 15 (rates)
Date
1801
Mapmaker / artist
J. Dadley after Pu Qua, for George Henry Mason
Publisher
W. Miller, Old Bond Street, London
Technique
Stipple Engraving
Coloring
Original hand color
Sheet size
24.9 × 34.5 cm (9.8 × 13.6 in)
Condition
Good
Reference
BG-14488-11
What the condition grades mean
Excellent
Bright and clean, with no faults worth mentioning.
Very good
Only light signs of age, such as faint toning.
Good
Normal signs of age for a sheet of this period: toning, some foxing, small marks or neat old repairs.
Fair
Clear faults such as staining, tears or repairs, priced to match.
Every fault we see is written in the condition note, and the whole sheet is shown uncropped in the photos.
Condition
Light uneven toning, browner toward the edges. Marked handling soiling along the left and right edges. Scattered foxing in the margin. All four corners complete.
About this sheet
This is an original antique hand colored print of a Chinese punishment, a stipple engraving by J. Dadley for George Henry Mason's The Punishments of China. A man is bound upright to a wooden cross while an executioner behind him draws a cord tight about his neck and a second figure steadies the frame. The figures are hand colored against plain paper, the plate number is engraved in the upper corner and the Dadley and W. Miller imprint sits below the image.
The sheet is one of the twenty two plates of Mason's The Punishments of China, London, printed for W. Miller, Old Bond Street, 1801. Pu Qua of Canton supplied the drawings, J. Dadley engraved them in stipple, and each plate was issued with a leaf of letterpress explaining the scene in English and in French.
Strangling was the lesser of the two capital punishments in the Qing code, reserved for offenders whose bodies were to be left whole, and the distinction mattered a great deal to those sentenced. Mason's explanatory leaf sets this out. The sheet is mounted and carries that letterpress leaf on the verso, and it frames well in plain dark wood for a study, a library or a hallway.
Light uneven toning, browner toward the edges. Marked handling soiling along the left and right edges. Scattered foxing in the margin. All four corners complete.
This is an original antique print, not a modern reproduction. This item is sold unframed. Any framed or interior images are shown for presentation and inspiration only, unless the listing explicitly states that the item is sold framed.
