Word of the Week: Chinoiserie

A rare Queen Anne japanned maple and pine [highboy or] high chest of drawers, signed "Rob Davis" in script, Boston, Massachusetts, 1735-1739.Chinoiserie (pronounced shin-wah-zah-REE) is like so many French words – it makes the very ordinary, in this case “Chinese-esque,” sound lyrical. Chinoiserie entered European decorative arts in the 17th century, as fascination with the region grew despite the fact that trade with much of the East, particularly China and Japan, was often historically heavily regulated and very restricted. Artists and craftsmen did their best to mimic the examples of Chinese style they encountered.

Chinoiserie reflects the fantastical element in the Western imagination of China and as a result often contains rather fanciful versions of the country. It also mimics traditional Chinese art in terms of the attitude towards scale and perspective and in the use of stereotypical design motifs (pagodas, dragons, cranes, etc.). The mimicry also extends to attempting to replicate materials as well across a variety of media. Artisans attempted to create Chinese-esque porcelain, decorated wallpaper sheets with Chinese scenes, and used lacquer-like materials to finish furniture and also tinwares in a style known as “japanning.” The term chinoiserie is also occasionally, although less accurately, used in describing the form or shape of a piece.

The fascination with the East would shift in and out of fashion over the years, but chinoiserie decoration is most commonly associated with the Rococo period, particularly in France and with the court of Louis XV, during the third quarter of the 18th century, but it also experienced a resurgence roughly 100 years later as one aspect of the Aesthetic Movement, sparked in part by the Crystal Palace Exhibition of 1851 and peaking in popularity in the 1870s and 1880s. Aesthetic Movement decorative arts feature ebonized wood with gilt decoration, draw heavily on the Eastern natural world (flowers and peacocks, for example), and revisit the classic blue-and-white style of porcelain. While the Aesthetic Movement was mostly driven by the opening of trade with Japan and a style that is more “Japonesque,” chinoiserie is still periodically used to describe items of the period with a generic “Asian style” of decoration.

18th-century japanning happened in such a small region of America, at least in regards to furniture, and was confined primarily to major urban centers so when pieces that early appear on the marketplace, their age alone often confers value, but particularly if they retain any original decoration. 19th-century objects with chinoserie decoration are more common and, coming from a more industrialized age, they appear all along the range of quality and condition, so Aesthetic Movement chinoserie is available at almost any price point.