Team 7: Catalog Entry

Pair of side curtains of a bed DP291607 FRENCH CURTAIN 2

Pair of side curtains for a bed with chinoiserie and bizarre designs
French
Early 18th century
Linen, embroidered with wool and silk
Panel .1a-c: 134 × 34 in. (340.4 × 86.4 cm); panel .2a-c: 137 × 34 in. (348 × 86.4 cm)
Irwin Untermyer (until 1953; to The Metropolitan Museum of Art)
Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond, 1945. The Human Story in Needlework, no. 56.
A. Standen, Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin, December 1954.

Chinoiserie (French for Chinese-esque) is a decorative style in European art, design, and architecture influenced by Chinese motifs and techniques. It began in the 17th century and gained its popularity in the 18th century. It assimilates into rococo by the works of Francois Boucher thus the two shares various similar qualities and characteristics such as the asymmetrical designs, curves, light colours, ornate, and playful both in theme and style.

This pair of side curtains, embroidered with chinoiserie designs, would have decorated the sides of a European state bed of about 1700, usually reserved for important guests. The decorative style reflects a romantic view of China derived from illustrations in books by Western travellers. The floral motifs, figures dressed in vaguely Chinese garments characterized by the wide-sleeve and the over and under skirt, fantastic creatures such as phoenixes and dragons highlight the interest in the theme of fantasy and the exotic. Bizarre silks are a style popular in Europe during the late 17th to early 18th century yet its precise origin is still undetermined. The style “bizarre silk” is characterized by the bold colours, large-scale, and asymmetrical patterns of silk fabrics featuring stylized leaves and flowers. Asymmetry, a characteristic prevalent in Chinese design and architecture is distinct from Europe’s artistic style focused on balance and order. These early chinoiserie embroideries display an attempt to capture the aesthetic of disorder that Europeans were intrigued by.

Consider the figures and the clothing styles on the embroidery. Some of them look European and are florid faced, a characteristic of the rococo style. Some figures are wearing loose gown with wide-sleeves called banyan, a garment worn by men in the 18th century influenced by Asian clothing. This choice of inexpensive yet durable garment also reflects a sense of informality and practicality. Men of intellectual and philosophical bent were usually painted in portraitures wearing banyans. It could then be interpreted that the figures holding various kinds of instruments are learning the art of their occupations while being stimulated by the natural environment outdoors surrounded with flowers and fantastic mythical beasts. It is interesting to note that there are both men and women figures practising studious habits outdoor. This could reveal the desire, and perhaps reality, of equality between men and women as women are not merely contained to the domestic space. They too belong in the intellectual domain and exterior environment hence the sense of equality. Though the floral motifs reflect the theme of feminity, the mythical beasts suggests the theme of power. It seems like women are able to gain a sense of agency even within the bedroom space and through imagination. However, only the Chinese-looking man with drooping moustache and full robe in panel .1a-c is depicted as most powerful as he is able to control two dragons with either a robe or a chain.

The curtains are made of linen embroidered with wool and silk. These materials emphasize the significance of textiles in Chinoiserie during the 18th century. It was not Chinese textile design but the designs of Chinese porcelains and lacquers that influenced the European textile chinoiserie. The two main decorative textiles produced in China for the European market during the 18th century were embroideries and painted silks. Embroidery is a form of compound cloth construction where a fabric is ornamented with designs from a threaded needle. The bed curtains reflect the form of embroidery called the needle-point. It is a hand-embroidery form where rounded stitches fill the base scrim or needlepoint cloth completely. The resulting piece is heavy and stiff. Needlepoint is used for upholstery, pillow tops, hand-made rugs/carpeting, and framed wall art. Very small stitches are termed petit point and very large stitches are called gros point (Nielson 83). All the designs are depicted in an extraordinary range of colours on a brilliant yellow silk ground that seems to mimic gold threads which was incorporated greatly during the 16th-18th century in embroidery.

Complete bed furnishings from the 17th and 18th centuries are rare thus making this well-preserved curtain pieces gifted from Judge Irwin Untermyer a significant and precious material to be studied and appreciated by all at the museum. Furthermore, it is interesting to realize that such style, seen frequently in early 18th century, French canvas work, represents the early ungainly struggle before the elegant French rococo style.

Works Cited

Brett, Katharine B.. Bouquets in Textiles: An Introduction to the Textile Arts. Toronto: Royal Ontario Museum of Archaeology, 1955. Web. 2nd November 2015.

A. Standen. “Embroideries in the French and Chinese Taste”. Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin. December 1954. 144-146. Antiques, LXVII, 1955. P 420, fig. 6 (detail); Untermyer Needlework, 1960. Pp. lxiii-lxiv, 59. fl. 144, colour pl. 145, figs 187, 188. Web. 2nd November 2015.

Highlights of the Untermyer Collection of European and Continental Decorative Arts. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1977. GoogleBooks. Web. 2nd November 2015.

Pair of side curtains for a bed. 18th century. Linen, embroidered with wool and silk. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Web. 2nd November 2015.

Nielson, Karla J.. “Yarns and Fabric Construction. Interior Textiles: Fabric, Application, and Histories. New York: John Wiley & Sons, 2007. 63-88. GoogleBooks. Web. 2nd November 2015.

Team 7: Object label (Revised)

Gathering from the past advice by the professor, I am advised to change the object that I have previously chosen (“At-home dress, 18th century”). As my group is focused on Chinoiserie in the bedroom space, I have tried researching for other objects to choose from. Instead of dresses, I decided to look at other textiles such as curtains, carpets, upholstery, etc. I have decided to choose the following as my new Chinoiserie object:

Pair of side curtains of a bedDP291607 FRENCH CURTAIN 2

Pair of side curtains of a bed
Early 18th century, probably French
Linen, embroidered with wool and silk
Gift of Irwin Untermyer, 1953
The Museum of Metropolitan Art

This pair of side curtains, embroidered with chinoiserie designs, would have decorated the sides of a European state bed usually reserved for important guests. The decorative style reflects a romantic view of China derived from illustrations in books by Western travellers. The floral motifs, figures dressed in vaguely Chinese garments characterized by the wide-sleeve and the over and under skirt, fantastic creatures such as phoenixes and dragons highlight the interest in the theme of fantasy and the exotic. Bizarre silks are a style popular in Europe during the late 17th to early 18th century yet its precise origin is still undetermined. The style “bizarre silk” is characterized by the bold colours, large-scale, and asymmetrical patterns of silk fabrics featuring stylized leaves and flowers. Asymmetry, a characteristic prevalent in Chinese design and architecture is distinct from Europe’s artistic style focused on balance and order. These early chinoiserie embroideries display an attempt to capture the aesthetic of disorder that Europeans were intrigued by.

References:
Pair of side curtains for a bed. 18th century. Linen, embroidered with wool and silk. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Web. 2nd November 2015.
http://www.metmuseum.org/collection/the-collection-online/search/227617

7: Chinoiserie / Japonaiserie

If you could have a room of your own, how would you set about decorating it? Chinoiserie? Japonaiserie?

I’d choose Chinoiserie if given the choice between the two to design and decorate a room/apartment of my own. Chinoiserie gives a soft, sweet and feminine touch to the interior. The wallpaper and pillow fabric covers depict the typical Chinoiserie imagery of pretty florals, green leaves, and little birds gracefully perched on gentle branches of the trees. The clean design and opened windows allow the sunlight to enter the living space thus creating a wonderful area to read or indulge in afternoon tea sessions comfortably be it on your own or with your friends.

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I believe this could be the small corner of either a dining room or a bedroom. I love the reflection that gives a sneak peak of the blue and white porcelain vase placed on top of a wooden wardrobe. The wallpaper design is faint yet soft and pretty still. Black lacquer furniture with golden details gives the room an elevated sense of beauty and sophistication. It reflects the owner’s high taste, eye for details, and status. I absolutely love the white-blue design and texture of the seat’s fabric cover!

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I’d keep the palette to white, cream, brown or mostly blue and white. I love the blue and white design of this sink and water tap that has both Chinese and Turkish influences.

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Team 7: Individual Object Label

Team 7: Chinoiserie

Azmeera: Focus on textiles / fabrics / clothes / fashion

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At-home dress, ca. 1850.  English.  Chinese aubergine silk damask and velvet Purchase, gifts in memory of Paul M. Ettesvold, and Judith and Gerson Leiber Fund, 1994.

An at-home dress, made of Chinese patterned silk, uses an export textile in a Western garment. Arguably, Asian textiles were associated in the Western mind as much with private leisure as with ceremony. Many Eastern textiles entered Western dress first as intimate boudoir and other at-home garments such as robes and banyans, suggesting the qualities of exoticism and erotic mystery associated with far-off lands. The selvage at the back waist reveals Chinese characters indicating the textile’s manufacturer, and the flaring sleeves are what the West calls the pagoda style.

In the field of textiles there have been two great periods of Chinese influence. The first, in the 14th century, has already been described in the section on Italian silks. The other great period began in the 17th century with the further opening up of trade with the East via the Cape of Good Hope.

On the collapse of the Ming Dynasty in the seventeenth century, when trade resumed and artifacts flowed West again, the prized commodities that had to travel so far to the Italian port cities and to Portugal, England, and Holland were the most portable, and most telling of the East’s customs and culture. Easiest of all such products to import because of their relatively light weight, import textiles from China prompted fascination with the technical skills involved in weaving, hand-painting, and needle-work of Chinese silk. Textiles were accompanied by other luxury objects. The porcelains carried to the West in the same period provided depictions that showed the West how costume was worn in China.

It is important that it was not Chinese textile design but the designs on Chinese porcelain and lacquer that inspired the European textile chinoiserie referred to above. This inspiration lasted right through the 18th century and can be found in every branch of the textile arts. Exotic flowers, foliage imitating bamboo, pagodas, fantastic architecture, and quaint figures are there in great variety.

The two most important kinds of decorative textiles produced in China for the European market during the 18th century were embroideries and painted silks.

Almost without exception, the precious cloth was readily made into Western tailored garments. Thus, a French eighteenth-century cloth-of-silver dress is identifiably of the period, recognizable by its silhouette – with extended centre-back pleats from neckline to hem and panniered lateral extension – and by its floral pattern. Amidst rococo roses, however, reside pagodas and palm trees. These are fashionably present as they are in Georgian design, “Chinese Chippendale” mid-eighteenth-century furniture, Jean-Baptiste Pillement’s fantasies, and the colourful wallpapers with Chinese themes that adorned Enlightenment boudoirs.

The faraway dream of Cathay and of forbidden cities suggested to the European imagination a set of ceremonies and court life to rival those of Europe. Little was known of the Chinese court, and its ritual was therefore concocted in fable and reified images purporting to depict the most magnificent and densely peopled festivals and rites. Thus, images of full-dress ceremony would appear stately in the manner of the eighteenth century of the first half of the nineteenth century. After the Prince of Wales (later George IV) had the Brighton Pavilion built in the 1780s, the extravagance of exotic fabrication seemed capricious and profligate, discordant with the intense economic matters of empire. Likewise, textiles assumed a new sobriety. By the 1850s, however, exoticism was tempered increasingly by an ethnographic respect and accuracy, as the bourgeoisie that was looking for an East beyond formal gardens and enigmatic ceremonial pomp sought and delighted in a bona-fide Chinoiserie […] An at-home dress of the 1850s is characterisetic of this nineteenth-century change in attitude. The ebullient and inventive Chinoiserie of earlier times now became a deliberate and self-conscious use of Chinese materials and symbols. Floral medallions might not be taken in the West to be direct symbols of China, but they were surely locatable to the constraint and gravity characteristic of China. To wear a Chinese dress at home was not a frivolous and fanciful gesture; it was an imperial act, signifying worldly knowledge.  

Other possible objects:

Dress (Robe à la française), 1740s England; textile Dutch or German Silk, linen, pigment; L. at center back 58 in. (147.3 cm) Purchase, Harris Brisbane Dick Fund, 1995.
Dress (Robe à la française), 1740s
England; textile Dutch or German
Silk, linen, pigment; L. at center back 58 in. (147.3 cm) Purchase, Harris Brisbane Dick Fund, 1995.

This painted silk gown is The Costume Institute’s earliest example of the eighteenth- century fashion for exoticism and chinoiserie. The gown’s bold, somewhat fantastical floral pattern, with its use of dense areas of saturated color, is not, however, typical of the more commonly seen Chinese export silks, with their delicate and naturalistic designs.

Technical analyses of The Costume Institute’s examples of Chinese export textiles by the Museum’s Objects Conservation Laboratories revealed pigments bound in animal glue with underpainted designs in lead white outlined in silver and black paint. In contrast, the analysis of this gown disclosed the presence of a plant gum binder but no underpaint or silver and black painted outlines. Four pigments were used to create the palette—Prussian blue, gamboge, and red and brown lake—suggesting that the gown is most likely of European manufacture.

As early as the late eighteenth century, factories had been established in England, France, Holland, and Germany to replicate Chinese painted silks. Huguenots had begun to produce silks in Germany with the support of the Prussian governor, and it is likely that this textile is of Dutch or German origin. In addition, evidence suggests that the gown itself was constructed in England and thus is an exceedingly vivid surviving example of the intersecting transits of culture and commerce that permeated the period.

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dress1

References:

“At-home dress [English]” (1994.302.1) In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History . New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000–. http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/works-of-art/1994.302.1. (October 2006)

“Dress (Robe à la française) [England; textile Dutch or German]” (1995.235a,b) In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History . New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000–. http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/works-of-art/1995.235a,b. (September 2008)

Richard Harrison Martin, Harold Koda. Orientalism: Visions of the East in Western Dress. Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York, N.Y.). GoogleBooks. Web.

Brett, Katharine B. Bouquets in Textiles: An Introduction to the Textile Arts. Royal Ontario Museum. 1955. https://archive.org/stream/bouquetsintextil00bret/bouquetsintextil00bret_djvu.txt