Design Books in the Chinese Taste: Marketing the Orient in England and France, 1688-1735

Abstract

This article examines design books replicating Asian and Asian-inspired imagery in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century England and France. Often created to provide craftsmen with new sets of decorative patterns, the designs compiled in these books served to imitate a range of new manufactured products imported from Asia, for which local demand was growing at a steady pace. Design books provide a particularly fruitful entry point into the European conception of the ‘orient’ by synthesising exotic images from a variety of pictorial sources into convenient formats. The present discussion focuses on two specific books: A Treatise of Japaning and Varnishing, by John Stalker and George Parker, published in London and Oxford in 1688, and Livre de desseins chinois, tirés d’après des originaux de Perse, des Indes, de la Chine et du Japon by Jean-Antoine Fraisse, which appeared in Paris in 1735. Using these case studies, I argue that not all patterns found in design books were intended to be replicated on real objects; some also circulated independently as images available to a broader consumer base than previously thought. I examine the books’ contents, publishing history and the marketing strategies employed for reaching wide audiences and generating a desire for the ‘orient’.