Chinoiserie

As you may know I love Chinoiserie, and I always think of anzu illustrations as being essentially English but influenced by Asian design be it Japanese, Chinese or even Tibetan. I think that cross between East and West often results in something special and different. Chinoiserie started in the seventeenth century, with the West translating traditional Chinese images and decorating everything from china to cabinets to architecture with them. Preoccupation with Chinese styles was so strong that whole Chinese villages were even built in Sweden and Russia, and rulers such as Augustus the Strong built Chinese summer style palaces. Aside from the look of it, I love that chinoiserie often captures an exotic fairyland, full with cobweb bridges, bamboo pavilions overlooking lakes filled with water-lilies, vases full of lotuses, and swinging lanterns. So I have decided to do a new Chinoiserie range to launch in Summer. Some of you may remember our previous collection, but I am working at the moment on a variety of new images for a new range on the same theme, and in addition bringing back a couple of popular discontinued images such as the Screen vase above (currently only available in the US). Keep checking back for more details!