added by
Caroline Bedard to
Meubles (23 months ago)
Interviewing Vanessa de Vargas and taking an online tour of "Beachy Chinoiserie" style cottage made me realize we haven't shown you a chinoiserie ideabook yet. I'll take a stab at it:
What exactly does Chinoiserie mean? In this day and age, I simply look to my pal Wikipedia to say these things as clearly as possible. Quoting from other sources, Wiki says "Chinoiserie, a French term, signifying 'Chinese-esque', refers to a recurring theme in European artistic styles since the seventeenth century, which reflect Chinese artistic influences. It is characterized by the use of fanciful imagery of an imaginary China, by asymmetry in format and whimsical contrasts of scale, and by the attempts to imitate Chinese porcelain and the use of lacquerlike materials and decoration."
So, back then, Louis XV dug it because it worked well with all that rococo stuff he loved so much, and the English garden designers based their follies upon "Chinese-esque" architecture. That's all fine and dandy, but