My Mom found this book in her church basement and gave it to me for my birthday. I have no idea what it says, but the pictures/plates are beautiful. There are 25 color plates and 12 black and white plates and there is a hand-stitched book included, all in a box with bone clasps. If anyone knows what this is or can translate it, leave a comment or email me. I can scan more pages if need be.
Click on the picture and then click the arrows to go through the seven pages.
2 comments:
The book appears to be Chinese. There are no Japanese phonetic characters. The forms appear to be Chinese. Nice photos.
Also, I would hazard a guess that the book is 20th Century in that it is set up with the spine on the left when closed and read like a western book from front to back. Your images display the characters upside down.
Wes
This, from an email:
Eric,
Perhaps someone else has replied by now, but your book is, in fact,
written in Japanese by a man named Kouzui Ootani. I would translate
the title as "Old Ceramics of China." It was published in Kyoto on
April 10, 1932. The text starts out in 2400 BC, saying that the Chinese
people have had the technology to "boil the oceans to make salt" and to
"bake the earth to make ceramics" since before recorded history. The
map is of Tang and Sung dynasty Chinese ceramic locations, but it
includes the Korean penninsula and a bit of Japan, where the only place
identified is Karatsu. The Japanese were in both Manchuria and Korea in
1932, so it makes for a pretty interesting historical document. If you
want to locate the map, the river through the center is the Yangtze
which empties into the ocean at Shanghai. Beijing is at the top with
Tianjin to it's immediate right. Karatsu is at the bottom right and
Pusan is just above that.
John Neely
Logan, Utah
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