Ashmolean Eastern Art Online, Yousef Jameel Centre for Islamic and Asian Art

By the mid-1600s, European and Chinese merchants based in Japan were exporting porcelain and lacquer to the West and Southeast Asia. These export wares were made specifically to the taste of foreign customers. Japanese potters often copied shapes and designs that had been sent from Europe.

Along with Chinese porcelain, Japanese porcelain and lacquer became the height of fashion in Europe, where the secret of making porcelain had not yet been discovered. These precious wares, often lumped together as ‘Indian wares’, were prized by wealthy collectors, who displayed them in their grand houses.

As Daniel Defoe describes, these porcelain displays were often elaborate arrangements of many individual pieces:

‘…the Custom…of furnishing houses with China-Ware…piling their China upon the Tops of Cabinets, Scrutoires and every Chymney-Piece,to the Tops of the Ceilings…’

(Daniel Defoe, A Tour thro’ the Whole Island of Great Britain, 1724-26)