Volume 14

A Taste for the Exotic
Foreign Influences on Early Eighteenth-Century Silk designs

edited by Anna Jolly
with contributions by Clare Browne, Sjoukje Colenbrander, Anselm Gerhard, Ernst Götz, Ulrike Grimm, Anna Jolly, Jean-Paul Leclercq, Susan Miller, David Mitchell, Roberta Orsi Landini, Elisabeth Schwarm, Friederike Ulrichs, Angela Völker, Friederike Wappenschmidt

Fascination with foreign modes of expression is a long-standing theme in European art and culture. By the early eighteenth century influences from the Near and Far East were generally filtered through the European canon before finding their place in a finished work of art. The result was a European language of forms flavoured with exotic elements, generally known today by the terms chinoiserie or turquerie. The papers assembled in this publication were presented during an international colloquium held at the Abegg-Stiftung in the year 2002, on the subject of exoticism in early eighteenth-century textiles, including woven silks, embroideries, tapestries and costume, as well as wall paper, ceramics and music.