Customer Reviews

Chinoiserie

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The Far East has inspired Western fashion, interior design and film in recent years: think cropped jeans embellished with embroidered silk, sleeveless Mandarin collar tops, Ralph Lauren's bold mix of red and pink silk bedding, or the profusion of Asian-focused films including Seven Years in Tibet. But this trend is nothing new. Eastern imagery has appeared in Western design for centuries, never really going out of style, and peaking in popularity at various points in history. Ever since the fourteenth century when Europeans first read The Travels of Marco Polo, Westerners have romanticized China and its neighbors, and Western decorative arts have been especially affected by Eastern style. In her book Chinoiserie, Dawn Jacobson explains the phenomenon in great detail. Her focus is on furniture, accessories, interiors and architecture and she highlights the Chinoiserie craze in creations ranging from Chippendale furniture to Delftware to Grauman's Chinese Theater. The illustrations are exquisite and plentiful. Jacobson's text is scholarly-this is an art history text as well as a coffee table book-and the chapters are well organized.

"Thus it has happened...we must all seek the barbarous gaudy gout of the Chinese; and the fat-headed Pagods and shaking Mandarins bear the prize from the greatest works of antiquity; and Apollo and Venus must give way to a fat idol with a sconce on hits head"
-- Mrs Montagu, 1749

Jacobson's book is a loving, wise, readable, and historically-grounded survey of a big topic -- Chinoiserie in Western design. All the elements of decor are covered with attention paid to architecture, landscaping, and painting. The book begins with International Gothic and ends in the 20th century; most of it is devoted to the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries.

Another handsome and well-designed art book from Phaidon: a hefty trade paperback with dustcover, 240 pp on heavy stock, 3.25 pounds, something like 325 illustrations (about 60% of them in color.) Glossary, "Places to Visit," "Further Reading," Index.

TABLE OF CONTENTS
Grandeurs and Treasures: The Origins of Chinoiserie
From Chinese Art to Chinoiserie: China Comes to Europe

The Pleasure of Life: Rococo Chinoiserie in France
The Spread of the Style: Chinoiserie in Europe in the 18th Century

No Small Spice in Madness: Rococo Chinoiserie in English Interiors
Chinoiserie in the Landscape: The Jardin Anglo-Chinois in the 18th Century
Through the Looking-Glass: 19th Century Chinoiserie and the Spread to the New World

The 20th Century: Chinoserie's Last Hurrah