CHINESE WHISPERS: Chinoiserie in Britain 1650–1930

A major exhibition at Brighton Museum and the Royal Pavilion

3 May to 2 November 2008
Adults £5.00, Concs £3.00, Children free
 

CHINESE WHISPERS is the first major exhibition in Britain for more than 70 years to highlight the impact of chinoiserie on style, fashion, décor and social behaviour. Spectacular displays, which include major loans from throughout the country, trace the history of chinoiserie in Britain from the late 17th century until the 1930s.

Chinoiserie is exotic, stylish, often outlandish and, above all, fun. In a chinoiserie interior, surfaces are adorned with fantastic mountainous landscapes, pagodas, fabulous birds, mandarins, dragons and phoenixes.

This glittering exhibition, the culmination of many years of research, includes examples of the earliest Chinese and China Trade objects exported to Britain, as well as outstanding chinoiserie furniture, ceramics, silver, textiles and rarely seen prints and drawings.

CHINESE WHISPERS provides a context for Brighton’s magnificent pleasure palace, the Royal Pavilion - an exhibit in its own right. Completed in 1822, its extravagant interiors and imaginative furnishings represent the pre-eminent example of a late flowering of the chinoiserie style.

In the mid-18th century, chinoiserie was seen as a reaction to classicism - and, in the opinion of some critics, a descent into hedonism! The style was particularly suited to light, feminine spaces: wealthy women’s bedrooms, dressing rooms and drawing rooms in stately homes were frequently hung with expensive, hand-painted Chinese wallpaper and furnished with oriental and chinoiserie porcelain. Chippendale suggested that his delicate Chinese, fret-back chairs would be ‘very proper for a lady’s Dressing Room’. Lacquered surfaces complemented the mysterious translucence of porcelain and provided textures that were considered to be particularly appealing to women. As Chinese lacquer was extremely expensive, ‘do-it-yourself’ manuals were published and ‘japanning’ became a popular female accomplishment.

Taking tea - another commodity brought back from China - was becoming a fundamental part of polite society and also stimulated the growth of our ceramics industry. Potters endeavoured to discover the secret ingredients for making Chinese porcelain and developed their own forms for teapots, bowls and cups, decorated with imaginative chinoiserie motifs, whilst silversmiths created exquisite pieces such as caddies, pots and epergnes, also decorated in the Chinese style.

Playful ‘Chinese’ structures, such as pavilions (with upswept roofs, bells and dragon finials), as well as seats and bridges, first appeared as features in the fashionable gardens of private and royal estates. Before long, the ‘Chinese style’ reached a wider audience in the supper-boxes and walkways of the London pleasure-gardens of Vauxhall and Ranelagh. The outstanding chinoiserie garden building of this period was the dramatic pagoda in Kew Gardens, designed by William Chambers, which became well-known in Europe through the dissemination of engravings.

China mania reached its height in the 1750s. Even playwrights such as Ben Jonson and William Wycherley took up the theme, and David Garrick staged A Chinese Festival.

By 1790, the vogue for Chinese style and decoration was in decline. A revival of interest was largely due to the flamboyant character and sophisticated taste of George, Prince of Wales, later George IV. The extraordinary Royal Pavilion at Brighton is a ‘complete’ oriental fantasy inside and out. It represented a major departure in the history of chinoiserie: whereas previous houses had a ‘Chinese’ room or a ‘Chinese’ pavilion in the grounds, China is the defining theme of the interiors of this unique building. The opulence and drama of the Music Room and Banqueting Room, in particular, evoke a ‘China’ of imperial extravagance – something quite different from the whimsical chinoiserie of the mid-Georgian period.

A century later in the 1920s and 30s, there was a resurgence of interest in chinoiserie decoration that filtered through society: from bespoke ‘Chinese’ rooms for the wealthy, to cinemas for the masses. Modernist designers embraced Chinese styles, creating interiors dominated by dramatic black and scarlet lacquers, mirrors, lavish use of gold and large Chinese patterns. Fashionable ladies wore wide-sleeved Chinese coats and boasted Chinese hairstyles.

Women whose tastes were inspired by the orient were considered seductive, modern and subversive. In John Galsworthy's fourth book of the Forsyte Saga, The White Monkey (1924), Fleur Forsyte has commissioned a ‘Chinese’ drawing room in her London house – and even keeps a Pekingese dog. “It contained four pictures – all Chinese – the only school in which her father had not yet dabbled. The fireplace, wide and open, had Chinese dogs with Chinese tiles for them to stand on. The silk was chiefly of jade-green.” Fleur seems constantly on the brink of having an illicit affair and Galsworthy makes a link between her ‘Chinese’ room and her possible transgression. In the next novel, she is an apparently dutiful mother: this room has been redecorated in the respectable Louis Quinze style, and she has changed her dog to a Dandie Dinmont terrier.

In Brighton Museum, visitors to CHINESE WHISPERS will be transported to a world of the imagination, with sumptuous displays in spectacular settings. The Royal Pavilion itself has now been magnificently restored to the glory of its hey-day, and special exhibits include some of the finest Royal loans.