Enfilade

From Bloomsbury:

Emile de Bruijn, Borrowed Landscapes: China and Japan in the Historic Houses and Gardens of Britain and Ireland (London: Philip Wilson Publishers, 2023), 256 pages, ISBN: ‎978-1781300985, £35 / $45.

The art and ornament of China and Japan have had a deep impact in the British Isles. From the seventeenth century onwards, the design and decoration of interiors and gardens in Britain and Ireland was profoundly influenced by the importation of Chinese and Japanese luxury goods, while domestic designers and artisans created their own fanciful interpretations of ‘oriental’ art. Those hybrid styles and tastes have traditionally been known as chinoiserie and japonisme, but they can also be seen as elements of the wider and still very relevant phenomenon of orientalism, or the way the West sees the East. Illustrated with a wealth of new photography and published in association with the National Trust, Borrowed Landscapes is an engaging survey of orientalism in the Trust’s historic houses and gardens across England, Wales, and Northern Ireland. Drawing on new research, Emile de Bruijn demonstrates how elements of Chinese and Japanese culture were simultaneously desired and misunderstood, dismembered and treasured, idealised, and caricatured.

Emile de Bruijn studied Japanese at the University of Leiden and museology at the University of Essex. After working for the auctioneers Sotheby’s, he joined the National Trust, where he currently works as a decorative arts curator. Among his previous publications is Chinese Wallpaper in Britain and Ireland (Philip Wilson Publishers, 2017).

c o n t e n t s

Acknowledgements

Introduction
1  A Pattern Emerges, 1600–1690
2  Emblems of Aspiration, 1690–1735
3  Peak Chinoiserie, 1735–1760
4  Fictions Have Their Own Logic, 1760–1780
5  Competing Perspectives, 1780–1870
6  The Age of Japonisme, 1870–1900
7  New and Old Orientalisms, the 20th Century

Picture Credits
Notes
Bibliography
Index