August 2026
Chinoiserie and Chinese art: telling the original from the interpretation
Two families of objects, often confused, with neither the same history nor the same value.
Chinese art means objects made in China: export porcelain, lacquer, bronzes, furniture in huanghuali or elm. Chinoiserie is a European invention: a decor imagined from engravings and executed in Paris, Delft or Meissen.
The decoration often gives away the origin. An authentic Chinese scene respects a hierarchy of planes and a rapid brush hand; European chinoiserie piles up pagodas, monkeys and parasols in a highly decorative symmetrical composition.
In terms of material, eighteenth-century Chinese porcelain rings clear, has a very white body and sometimes fine crazing in the glaze. The European faience that imitates it is more porous, heavier, and chips to reveal a beige body.
Neither family is superior to the other. Chinoiserie has its own history, that of the European taste for elsewhere; but an object sold as Chinese must genuinely be so.
