ABSTRACT
Interior design is a medium of cultural transplantation. In the late nineteenth century, when Japonisme was prominent in western art and design and, as John MacKenzie has argued, ‘popular Orientalism’ was at its height, ‘pseudo-oriental’ objects and furniture as well as ‘authentic’ oriental crafts filled domestic living spaces.1 Yet the apparent distinction between the ‘pseudo-oriental’ and the ‘authentic’ was a nuanced and permeable association. Indeed, some notionally ‘authentic’ objects were the commercial outcome of ‘pseudo-western’ influences. The interplay between these cultural perspectives can be examined through the material culture of Japanese leather paper, a commodity that sought to combine Japanese craft techniques with western demand to produce a highly decorative and commercial material.2 In this chapter, the production and retailing of Japanese leather paper is examined in order to illuminate how objects of cultural hybridity were perceived by both British and Japanese homemakers.
