FIRST EDITION 1924 LIMITED TO 750 COPIES THIS BEING No. 326. Quarto, approximately 305 x 260 mm, 12½ x 10 inches, photogravure portrait frontispiece, 5 maps or which 3 folding, 18 colour plates with tissue guards and 70 plates in monochrome with several images to each plate making a total of 249 images, 528 pages. In original publisher's dark green cloth, gilt lettering to spine and upper cover, top edge gilt. Binding lightly rubbed, some small indentations and scratches to upper cover, slight shelf wear to edges, otherwise a tight and clean copy. Sir Catchick Paul Chater amassed a large collection of historical pictures and engravings relating to China which he gifted to the colony. The Chater Collection was the subject of a work by its curator, James Orange, in 1924, at which time the collection stood at 430 items. Its backbone was the collection of Wyndham Law of the Chinese Maritime Customs Service, and included oil paintings, watercolours, sketches, prints and photographs, most of which are based on landscape scenes of the South China trading ports in the 18th and 19th centuries, and of British activities in China. The Chater Collection was dispersed and largely destroyed during the Japanese occupation, and only 94 pieces (now an important part of the collection of the Hong Kong Museum of Art) are known to have survived. Sir Catchick Paul Chater (1846-1926) was a prominent British businessman of Armenian descent in colonial Hong Kong.