Japonisme and Architecture in France 1550-1930

Is Japonisme also a history of architecture? In this book, the authors trace the evolution of taste for Japanese architecture in the West. Born long before what nineteenth-century art critics called Japonisme, this taste canbe detected in a wealth of objects : screens, porcelain, lacquer-work, woodcuts ,photographs, interior decoration, or garden pavilions… With more than 400 illustrations incolour, this handsome book presents note worthy historical and archaeological studies of the best-known buildings from the heyday of Japonisme : the pavilions at the Paris Universal Expositions between 1867 and 1900; the first Japanese living space fitted out in France (1886); the Salle de fêtes on the rue de Babylone (1896), today known as La Pagode cinema; the follies in Albert Kahn’s Japanese garden (1897) (cover image); and the Salle des cigognes, a decorated interior saved by Émile Guimet in 191