Architecture (A History of Chinese Art, Volume IV)

Volume IV (of four) only.  First edition, first impression.  xiv, 78pp, followed by 190 monochrome plates, each with a captioned tissue guard.  Blue cloth-covered boards with bevelled edges, gilt titles on the spine. Small folio.  Cloth a little worn and brushed, lightly rubbed on extreme corners and gently pushed at spine ends.  Text block edges light toned, with some spotting on fore and lower edge.  Replaced endpapers.  Some occasional foxing on first and last few pages else neat. clean and bright.  Binding is robust and square.  A Oswald Serin was a Scandinavian art historian and Keeper of Paintings and Sculpture at Nationalmuseum in Stockholm from 1928 to 1945, His monumental A History of Early Chinse Art was published in four volumes, the first being published in 1929. Each of the volumes is now very hard to find but the work remains one of the standard reference works on the topic. This volume, volume IV covers architecture and has chapters on walls, sacrificial altars, terraces and stairways, wooden buildings, pagodas, stone bridges etc.