Although chinoiserie, or the European taste for Chinese things, had a long history, it reached a peak in the eighteenth century with the expanded trading relationship between Europe and China. A set of six chinoiserie decorative prints and Chinese export porcelain exhibited here are products of this mode of art. These objects show an interesting set of images: the Chinese imagined by the European on the prints and the Europeans imagined by the Chinese on the porcelain. Both, however, were produced for the Western consumer, not the Chinese. Thus, the relationship between the two in chinoiserie was hardly mutual, and it was too superficial to call it a “cultural exchange.”  

Due to a lack of knowledge, the China represented in chinoiserie was an imaginary empire in Western minds, even if it actually involved the “real” China in political, economical, religious realms at some level. By examining decorative designs and export ware, this section of the exhibit examines a sophisticated moment of chinoiserie.