ABSTRACT
In the spring of 1877 Christopher Dresser (1834-1904)1 spent over three months in Japan at the invitation of the Japanese government. Dresser was, in the eyes of his hosts, a particularly welcome guest because he was employed in London by the South Kensington Museum, which had, in 1857, grown out of the Museum of Manufactures, which in its turn had been set up with the aid of some of the profits of the Great Exhibition of 1851. Almost certainly Dresser was of the party that had welcomed the Iwakura Mission to the South Kensington Museum in 1872.
