ABSTRACT

After the opening of Japan to the West, and with the reduction of tariffs, Japanese artefacts became sought after by artists and architects, particularly in Britain, France and the United States. In 1874, the London Furniture Gazette announced that ‘Fashion has declared for Japanese Art’. 1 In 1888, the Woman’s World reported that ‘There is hardly a drawing-room in the kingdom in which the influences of Japanese art are not felt … most of the Japanese wares that are sold in England are exceedingly cheap, and there is consequently some danger that they may be vulgarized’; nonetheless, it recommended a visit to ‘some great warehouse’, where, ‘a little taste and a five pound note will work miracles in the most sombre and puritanical of houses’. 2