AFA Autumn 2019

Antiques & Fine Art 105 2019 n the seventeenth century, luxury goods imported from Asia captivated the collective imagination of the West. Enterprising artisans and craftspeople in England, Europe, and America saw opportunity in the continuing demand for such luxur y goods as lacquerwares, porcelains, and textiles. Their ensuing, more affordable iterations created a fascinating and stylistically confusing hybrid of aesthetics applied to Western-made goods. Such efforts by Western artisans to imitate various Eastern cultures ignored regional differences among peoples who inhabited diverse regions around the Indian and Pacific Oceans, as well as portions of the Mediterranean Sea. Motifs served as shorthand communication to evoke disparate, faraway lands, creating the style generically known as chinoiserie . More imaginative than accurate, this style incorporated pseudo-Chinese figures, pagodas, and fanciful landscapes. Using Historic Deerfield’s extensive collection of decorative arts and library holdings from the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries, the exhibition Inspired Design: Asian Decorative Arts and Their Adaptations explores the creative, cultural, and aesthetic principles surrounding goods inspired by, or made in imitation of, Asian decorative arts. Three organizing narratives interpret Historic Deerfield’s selection of decorative arts within the time and place of their original use. “Creation and Process” compares the production techniques of Asian export art with European copies. For Western craftspeople, reproducing the exact techniques of their Eastern counterparts proved challenging. Often the raw materials, skill sets, Fig. 2: Dish, Dublin, Ireland, 1760–1770. Tin-glazed earthenware (delftware) painted in cobalt blue. With an underlined “9” on reverse (1379).