ABSTRACT
By the end of the seventeenth century, tea had become the aristocratic drink of choice, and by the eighteenth century it was served in fashionable salons throughout western Europe. The formal serving of tea prompted the development of delicate porcelain serving pieces and the miniaturization of spoons (to become “tea” spoons), together with a huge increase in the consumption of tropically grown sugar as a sweetener. Accompanying the growing export of tea from China was a special Chinese porcelain ware painted with blue designs as part of the glazing. The pictures on this “blue ware” fueled an interest in Chinese landscape images, particularly those that depicted landscapes in the distinctive flattened perspective typical of Asian landscape painting. The rapid increase in the formal drinking of tea, and the creation of porcelain ware with Chinese images of landscape for serving it, became integral to the craze for “Chinoiserie”—a fascination with Chinese design, Chinese art, Chinese garden design, and Chinese architecture. For roughly a century, from about 1700 to 1800, “Chinoiserie” flourished, resulting in the making of splendid porcelain ware, “Chinese” interior and furniture design, and far-fetched Chinese garden “follies,” as well as the creation of asymmetrical picturesque landscapes that produced the English garden park movement. By the end of the eighteenth century, this landscape movement had spread, resulting in “jardins anglais” in France (even at Versailles) as well as “Englisch gärtens” in German-speaking states across Europe.2 But as to a correct understanding of the true principles and major achievements of Chinese architecture and garden design, European ignorance of China was considerable. The underlying concepts of true Chinese design would become better understood in the West only a century and a half later.
