1950s Italian Faience Chinoiserie Design Table Lamp Embroidered Shade

Details

Description

A vintage 1960's Italian hand painted faience vase table lamp in a stunning chinoiserie pattern, along with a lovely embroidered … Read more A vintage 1960's Italian hand painted faience vase table lamp in a stunning chinoiserie pattern, along with a lovely embroidered shade and crystal ball finial.

Chinoiserie is an art form inspired by the world. The blend of elegant European design with intriguing, exotic East Asian artistic traditions is versatile enough to work with every interior design style. Whimsical designs, lush garden scenery, and embellished finishes contribute to chinoiserie's worldly aesthetic.

Chinoiserie is an entirely European invention. “Chinoiserie differs from authentic East Asian design in almost every way imaginable,” says Dr. Bertram. Imagine a massive game of telephone: 16th-century European traders would bring back tales of East Asian civilizations to Europe, along with precious few illustrations and objects, thus descriptions would be shared by word-of-mouth and become increasingly inaccurate the further the stories spread. “There was not nearly enough knowledge to distinguish between very different national cultures,” says Dr. Bertram. “This meant that European interpretation of Asian design was ill-informed, blending Chinese and Japanese products under the umbrella term of ‘Indian’, and tending to recycle again and again a few key motifs such as the blue-and-white color palette, scenes of the Chinese royal court living a life of leisure, and symbols of exoticism such as palm trees and monkeys.” See less