Chinoiserie

Chinoiserie is a term denoting a style of European design showing Chinese or pseudo-Chinese figures and ornamental motifs. The term is most often applied to decorative arts produced from the second half of the seventeenth century to the early nineteenth century, when early trading contacts between Europe and East Asia were at their height. Key to the creation of chinoiserie was German manufacturer Meissen. Founded by Elector Augustus the Strong of Saxony (reg.1694–1733), at Meissen (near Dresden) in 1710, it is the oldest porcelain factory in Europe and the first to produce ‘true’ or hard-paste porcelain. The private collection of Chinese and Japanese porcelain amassed in the ‘Japanese Place’ in Dresden by Augustus the Strong became one of the largest and most important in Northern Europe, and much of the porcelain produced at Meissen copied or was directly influenced by this collection. With the appointment in 1720 of the painter and colour chemist Johann Gregorius Höroldt (1696–1775), Meissen began to artfully copy East Asian decoration and adapt it to European taste. Höroldt’s fanciful scenes of Chinese life, so-called ‘Höroldt chinoiseries’, had a decisive influence European design for over a century.