Why Chinoiserie?

Commodities were the way-to-go for 18th century Europeans who wanted to experience Chinese culture. As we have seen, luxurious Chinese objects caused nothing less than a craze for all things Asian, and introduced new materials, techniques and designs to the Europeans. The vogue for Chinoiserie began at the royal court of Louis XIV and rapidly spread to other European countries. Very soon, European manufacturers began to reproduce Chinoiserie-commodities to fulfill the demand gaps, creating a lucrative economical environment across the whole region.

The fusion of ‘exotic’ aesthetics and materials into everyday European high-class life merged the foreign and the familiar together, creating material worlds that were both alien and quotidian, and producing objects such as our toilet box or even entire rooms. This chinoiserie lacquer box can be seen as an agent of cultural motion: it deconstructs the ‘original’, translating the aesthetics and materials of the East into the West, merging aesthetics, tastes, materials, techniques and cultures.

The popularity of chinoiserie did not rest only in its aesthetic and cultural values: it soon became a symbol of power. In 17th century Versailles, the idea of an aristocrat was the so-called honnête homme: the transformation of a person into a work of art by cultivating pleasing modes of speech, dress, manners and adornment. The honnête homme ideal was both the attitude of the noble and a marker of status, and chinoiserie paraphernalia enhanced its ideals due its aesthetic, cultural and monetary values. Beyond their beautiful looks, chinoiserie objects such as lacquered toilet boxes showed sophistication, social and economic power and enhanced the honnête of their owners.

Chinoiserie furnishing played a complex role in the European aristocracy and in global trading, merging desire, status, cultivation, craftsmanship, power and aesthetics. Our lacquered toilet box is a single piece in such a scheme, but one must not forget that even the smallest of objects can unbox a rich and intricate world of travels, far-away cultures, precious materials, and beauty.