November 2015 – DD3006

Reflection: Final Thoughts on DD3006

I don’t really have much to say regarding the process of making our exhibition miniature as I left that to the experts, namely Xia Yin, En Ge and Kerr Hui. I just supplied them with the barbie doll and some of the furniture, as well as the digital mock up of my window, before they turned them into the lovely diorama pieces that you see before you.

My job was mainly text-based, meaning that I worked on rewriting our wall text and vetting through everyone’s object labels, catalog entries and the final proposal. I’m not going to lie, it was quite an ordeal handling everyone’s work in this way, especially because the catalog entries would be individually graded, but my group and I believed that it had to be done for consistency’s sake in terms of content and format. I can’t even begin to tell you how excellent it was to get great feedback from Prof Sujatha about our writing, which really justified the splitting of the workload in hindsight.

From the project, I learned that it was important to play to everyone’s strengths. I also learned that working on a topic that several other groups were doing as well wasn’t always a bad or unoriginal idea. As seen in the final submission of everyone’s projects, there were very different aspects of Chinoiserie that each group explored and in different ways. This just speaks as to the resonance that this topic had with me and many of my other course mates.

As a whole, this course taught me more than just the art that was produced under colonisation. It gave me an overview of how colonial powers affected the societies that they colonised, for better or for worse. It gave me a concrete idea of the trade that was happening on a global scale, and how it was very similar to trade patterns now despite its slower pace. I learned that foreign trade was a diplomatic art in some cases, and in others, a knife at one’s throat when push came to shove. I gained some idea of organising exhibitions, from conceptualisation to the actual writing of content for it, and overall, had a good time assuming the role of curator.

Week 7 Journal

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

Although my class presentation AND final project were on the topic of Chinoiserie, if I could have a room of my own, I’d probably decorate it in the Japonaiserie style. Why? Purely because Chinoiserie does not resonate with my personal aesthetic. Despite the elaborately feminine details that Chinoiserie possesses, I find that the line between beauty and tackiness is often blurred when it comes to this decorative style. The Georgians may have found it elegant and appealing to their eyes, coming off the Rococo trend, but I think that the lush design elements look too busy when arranged together. I would not be comfortable in such a room that constantly calls attention to itself, and it would be difficult to style the room so that it appears modern and classy, rather than outdated or gaudy.

In my mind, my perfect Japonaiserie room would have my favourite ukiyo-e images arranged artfully on taupe or pale brown walls. Hokusai’s Great Wave Off Kanagawa would sit next to Utagawa Kuniyoshi’s Haunted Old Palace at Soma and Cats Suggested as the Fifty-three Stations of the Tokaido. A large Byōbu or decorative screen in the style of Rakuchu-Rakugai would be placed in a corner of the room as a private changing area, and my bed would be low, filled with white bedsheets and dark duvets and pillows. While sleeping on a tatami mat might be more authentic, I’d take advantage of the comfort that Europeans bring to Japonaiserie with the traditional mattress bed.

Furniture in my room would be sparse, on the comfortable side of spartan, mostly adhering to a rich chocolate brown colour palette. A tiny bonsai might accompany a little maneki neko (fortune cat) statue on a dresser, and the maneki neko might reappear on my noren, or traditional Japanese curtains. Can you sense an overall theme here? (Haha, I love cats.)

Haunted Old Palace at Soma by Utagawa Kuniyoshi

Screen Painting of Kyoto and Environs by Kano Eitoku Right-hand screen

Object Label (draft 3)

I don’t know why I’m still getting like 11% plagiarism on this… Apparently my artwork and book titles are getting flagged despite being italicised on Turnitin?

A View of the Wilderness with the Alhambra, the Pagoda and the Mosque
Edward Rooker (British, 1724–74)
1763
Etching on paper
H. 1.24in. (3.15 cm); W. 1.86in. (4.73 cm)
Prints and Drawings, British Museum
1863,0509.281

This etching depicts the Great Pagoda at Kew Gardens, designed by Sir William Chambers (1722–96). It was featured in Chambers’ book Plans, Elevations, Sections and Perspective Views of the Gardens and Buildings at Kew in Surrey in 1763, following the completion of the gardens in 1762. The ten-storey octagonal pagoda was the tallest Chinese-style building in England at the time, towering over much of Kew Gardens at a height of 50m (164ft). It was also the most accurate of all Chinese-style buildings in Europe for its time, despite the minor error of it having an even number of storeys, where true Chinese pagodas had an odd number of storeys.

The design of the pagoda was based on Chambers’ travels to Canton, and the pagoda’s vibrancy was the talk of the town; its roofs were covered with varnished iron plates and each corner had a gilt golden dragon made of wood perched on it. A total of 80 dragons were made for the roofs but by the 1780s, were removed due to rot. This short lifespan was characteristic of many of Chambers’ work at Kew Gardens such as the House of Confucius, Alhambra and Exotic Garden, which have all subsequently been demolished. It was therefore a surprise for the public that it remained standing and even served as a site for bomb testing during the Second World War.

Wall Text (draft 3)

Edited the wall text for that 2% of plagiarism (haha).

Chinoiserie: The Borrowed Lifestyle explores how trade with China influenced lifestyles in eighteenth century Europe, with a focus on England. The term ‘Chinoiserie’ refers to a style of Western decorative arts that borrows imagery and techniques from Chinese culture. Inspired by the work of prominent Chinoiserie enthusiast Lady Elizabeth Anson (1725–1760) at Shughborough Hall in Staffordshire, England, this exhibition showcases four different English-produced, Chinese-inspired objects from that time period. It aims to recreate the typical lifestyle of an upper-class female Chinoiserie enthusiast during Chinoiserie’s heyday.

For centuries, China fascinated the West’s imagination with its whimsical motifs of mountainous landscapes, pagodas, fabulous birds, mandarins, dragons and phoenixes. Initially, only a handful of objects found their way from the East to Europe, and these were so highly prized that they seldom entered the open market. However, the eighteenth century marked a significant change in such economic conditions, as the rise of trade with China made acquiring these objects much easier. The influx of imported goods like porcelain, lacquer ware and Chinese silk opened the floodgates to an obsession with all things Chinese in Europe, particularly in England, and with these items came the import of the ideas and techniques used to produce them.

Demand for Chinese-style goods became so high that English artisans began attempting to reproduce these products for the domestic market, inspired by the visuals that they saw on the objects, as well as the materials that they were made of. The fusion of Chinese iconography with an English sensibility became known as ‘Chinoiserie’, and remained popular from 1750 to 1765.

The influence from Chinoiserie on the English lifestyle was apparent in various ways.

From the Chinese came a new style of dressmaking, with Chinese patterns, textiles and details like colour palettes or adornments incorporated into European silhouettes. A woman’s wardrobe was always fair game when it came to society gossip and Chinoiserie gowns were marks of wealth, status and sophistication. In other words, being en vogue (“fashionable”). Chinoiserie architecture also became popular, with playful Chinese structures like pagodas and wooden bridges appearing as attractions in the stylish gardens of private and royal estates. Their exoticism was a breath of fresh air to the Georgian public, and turned natural outdoor spaces into ones of cosmopolitan imagination. Interiors were not left unfurnished in the Chinoiserie style either; homes were filled with china, lacquer ware and all sorts of other accoutrements that marked them as being heavily influenced by the Chinoiserie fad. This cultural borrowing even spawned new social norms, as from the Chinese came tea drinking, a distinctly non-English social habit that quickly became the cornerstone of polite English society. The surge in popularity of this activity even stimulated demand for domestically produced Chinoiserie tea sets that catered to English tastes while remaining aesthetically Chinese.

In short, Chinoiserie seamlessly infiltrated English homes and society’s way of life, manifesting itself in fashion, interior design, architecture, and ceramics. Though borrowed, it was not an exact imitation of the Chinese lifestyle, with the English adapting ideas and aesthetics to suit their own cultural needs while remaining steadfastly fascinated by the fantasy of China.

(520 words)

Wall Text (draft 2)

The influence from Chinoiserie on the English lifestyle was apparent in various ways.

Interiors were not left unfurnished in the Chinoiserie style either; homes were filled with china, lacquer ware and all sorts of other accoutrements that marked them as being heavily influenced by the Chinoiserie fad. This cultural borrowing even spawned new social norms, as from the Chinese came tea drinking, a distinctly non-English social habit that quickly became the cornerstone of polite English society. The surge in popularity of this activity even stimulated demand for domestically produced Chinoiserie tea sets that catered to English tastes while remaining aesthetically Chinese.

In short, Chinoiserie seamlessly infiltrated English homes and society’s way of life, manifesting itself in fashion, interior design, architecture, and ceramics. Though borrowed, it was not an exact imitation of the Chinese lifestyle, with the English adapting ideas and aesthetics to suit its own cultural needs while remaining steadfastly fascinated by the fantasy of China.

(496 words)

Catalog Entry

A View of the Wilderness with the Alhambra, the Pagoda and the Mosque, 1763
Sir William Chambers (Scottish, born in Sweden, 1723–1796)
Etching on paper (315 x 473mm)
The National Trust Collection

This etching on paper showcases an artist’s impression of the Kew Gardens’ landscape, with particular interest on three follies within the garden. Namely, the Alhambra, the Great Pagoda and the Mosque. Created in 1763, it is the 43rd plate of Sir William Chambers’ ‘Plans, Elevations, Sections and Perspective Views of the Gardens and Buildings at Kew’, a book published in 1763 upon the completion of the Kew Gardens in 1762. Detailing his architectural work for Augusta, Dowager Princess of Wales and mother of George III at Kew Gardens, the book aimed to “promote the fashion for Chinese-style buildings in England’ (Knox, 1994, p. 22), and indeed helped to perpetuate the trend during that period.

Born in 1723, Swedish-born William Chambers was son to a Scottish merchant and at the age of 16, left his education in England to work in the employment of the Swedish East India Company. During his service there, Chambers made two trips to Canton; once in 1743 and another in 1748. Both trips lasted a year. In China, Chambers was fascinated by the culture and documented his experiences fastidiously, making notes and sketches of the strange architecture and scenery. This small act would later be seen as the origin of Chambers’ passion for Chinese architecture and landscaping.

By 1749, Chambers retired from the Swedish East India Company to pursue his interest in architecture. He attended the Ecole de Arts in Paris before enrolling under the tutelage of Charles Louis Clerisseau in Rome to study classical architecture. Upon his return in 1755, he was employed as drawing master to the Prince of Wales, who would later be known as King George III. Work within the royal household proved crucial to Chambers’ architectural career, as it was then the Dowager Princess engaged Chambers to help design the grounds at Kew, as well as beautify it with garden buildings. Chambers used this opportunity to apply his knowledge of Chinese architecture and gardens, and constructed a number of garden buildings for the princess in various fantastic architectural styles, not least of which were 9 classical temples, a mosque, an Alhambra (a type of Moorish palace-fortress) and several Chinese-style follies like the House of Confucius, an aviary and the Great Pagoda. The end result was a feast to the eyes of the Georgian public, and while he was not the first architect to try replicating Chinese architecture, the accuracy of his work on the Pagoda from his experiences in Canton solidified Chambers’ status as the foremost expert in England on Chinese-style architecture.

While some critics nowadays would write off Chambers’ work as tacky or gimmicky, he sparked a fad for buildings and gardens in the Chinese-style, known as chinoiserie. Without Chambers’ experiences in China, subsequent architectural horrors ensued by his imitators’, who based their designs solely on the hearsay of English travelers to Canton or the imagery depicted on the delicate china they brought back. By 1765, the obsession with all things Chinese, or appearing to be, became a lifestyle for the upper classes and reached its peak, with the image of the Cathay (a fantasy world of their imagined China) spawning not just buildings and gardens, but also fashion, decorative arts and tea-drinking. (533 words)

Bibliography

Knox, T. (1994). The great Pagoda at Kew. History Today, 44(7), 22.

The China Pagoda at Kew (1931, Feb 14). South China Morning Post (1903-1941). Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/1549401535?accountid=12665