Team 8 – DD3006

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

Lady at Kew

So in our discussions about the female figure that we want to depict in our exhibition, I discovered a possible candidate in the form of Lady Elizabeth Yorke, also known as Lady Anson (1725–1760).

Portrait of Lady Elizabeth Yorke, Lady Anson (1725–1760), by studio of Thomas Hudson (1701–1779). Inv. no. NT1271067. ©National Trust Collections, supplied by the Public Catalogue Foundation

According to Philip Wilkinson, author of several architectural books like The English Buildings Book, and Stephen Dowell’s Shughborough: Seat of the Earl of Lichfield, Lady Elizabeth Yorke was purportedly responsible for establishing the Chinoiserie style at Shughborough, Staffordshire. She was married to Admiral Lord George Anson, “the most famous naval officer of his day” who became extremely wealthy after capturing the Spanish galleon Nuestra Señora de Covadonga that was filled with American silver. Admiral Lord Anson had spent some time in Canton in 1743, though his opinion of the Chinese was coloured by a poor working relationship with them.

“They suggest the possibility that George’s wife, Elizabeth, was the family member most closely involved with the Chinese House. Chinoiserie, apparently, was an area of decorative design that found many female enthusiasts in the 18th century: perhaps Shugborough’s Chinese House is an example of this feminine influence.”(1)

Thus, using what we know of Lady Elizabeth’s background would add further historical accuracy to our project and communicate our idea that the Chinoiserie lifestyle was an imported idea that gained traction despite contact with those that had actually been to China and knew the Cathay was nothing but a European fantasy.

Sources: 1, 2, 3

Object Label

I’ve had a really busy week, sorry for the lack of updates. Guess this is what happens when you get overwhelmed with paid work on top of 1 submission and a major midterm…

Anyway, time to talk about my object label. In my research on Chinoiserie gardens, I found out that there were very few that remained intact or in its original state. This was because Chinoiserie was a fad followed by the upper classes and as with any other fad, soon went out of style; gardens were remodelled to keep up with the times. What did remain were usually the garden’s architectural structures, like pavilions or Chinese-style bridges, or architectural plans of the structure or proposed garden.

Initially, our team wanted to show the European Chinoiserie lifestyle in general, but it was pointed out to us that it would be too broad and not a good representative of a particular lifestyle, since there would be various factors to account for like time period, the socio-political environment and the state of Chinese imports at the time.

Thus, I had to narrow down my potential objects from three to one when we decided to centralise our findings around the English 18th-century Chinoiserie lifestyle. The three possibilities were originally Woburn Abbey’s Hornbeam Maze (a 19th-century pagoda based on Sir William Chambers’ design), Versailles’ Trianon de Porcelaine (a 17th-century French pavilion made in the Chinoiserie style, surrounded by lush gardens) and the Kew Gardens’ Great Pagoda.

After refining our scope of exploration, the Kew Gardens’ pagoda was the only possible contender.

Sir William Chambers
A View of the Wilderness with the Alhambra, the Pagoda and the Mosque
Plate 43 of William Chambers’ s ‘Plans, Elevations, Sections and Perspective Views of the Gardens and Buildings at Kew ….’ 1763
Etching on paper
1763
315 x 473mm

Object label
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 (London)’ 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.

Chinoiserie Gardens

At the height of the Chinoiserie craze, great varieties of exotic plants and seeds were being imported from China and Japan. According to Alexandra Loske, Art Historian and Curator –

“In the very early 1800s, when the Pavilion interiors received their first oriental make-over, newly-arrived Chinese plants were being successfully propagated at Kew. By 1813 the Royal Gardener at Kew, William Townsend Aiton, recorded a total of 120 species that had recently been introduced from China. In the same year Aiton planted the garden at Carlton House for the Prince Regent. Two years later the Brighton gardener John Furner met with the architect John Nash and Aiton in London to discuss the new planting of the Pavilion gardens, which included many of the newly imported and propagated Chinese plants”

“In his beautifully illustrated and researched book Set for a King (2005) Mike Jones describes the challenges of importing live plants and seeds… Many of them could be found in the Pavilion gardens in the early nineteenth century, for example the Hydrangea, now common in British gardens, but first brought to Kew only in 1789. Others are autumn-flowering chrysanthemums (1795), the tree peony (Paeonia suffruticosa, 1787) and several types of camellia (mid to late 18th century), while the Chinese Lantern (Physalis alkekengi) had been known in Britain since the 16th century.”

Jones’ book also mentions that the Pavilion’s flora and fauna were included and identifiable in the Chinese wallpaper inside the palace, perhaps a deliberate decision so that guests could wonder at the floral wallpaper and visit the rooms that . It is easy to imagine Regency guests marvelling at the flowery wallpaper or walking through rooms that mimicked Chinese courtyards later trying to spot the same exotic flowers in the garden.

Exhibition Object Idea

Armchair
John and William Linnell
About 1754 (made)
About 1840 (japanned)
Beechwood frame, gilt and japanned, with traces of red paint below; modern upholstery
Museum no. W.33-1990
Credit: V & A

I’m thinking of using this object for our exhibition guys! What caught my eye about it is the Chinese latticework on the back and sides of the chair which are even inscribed with Chinese characters and floral motifs. It seems very elegant amidst other kinds of chinoiserie furniture that can look fairly tacky due to being too ‘busy’.