Japonisme and architecture in France

Is Japonisme also a history ofarchitecture? In this book, theauthors lay bare the origins of thetaste for Japanese architecture in theWest. Born long before what Frenchnineteenth-century art critics calledJaponisme, this taste can be detectedin a wealth of objects: screens,porcelain, lacquer-work, woodcuts,photographs, as well as in interiordecoration and garden pavilions.With more than 500 illustrationsin colour, this handsome bookpresents noteworthy historical andarchaeological studies of the bestknownbuildings from the heyday ofJaponisme: the pavilions at the ParisUniversal Exhibitions between 1867and 1900; the first Japanese house builtin France (1886); the Salle de fêtes, afunction room on the rue de Babylonein Paris known today as the cinémaLa Pagode (1896); the follies in AlbertKahn’s Japanese garden at Boulogne-Billancourt (1897); and the StorkChamber, an exhibition set salvagedby Émile Guimet in 1911.These investigations reveal aninterplay in artistic output betweenJapan and France that is essential toan understanding of those Japanesespaces held in such high regard byWesterners. Leafing through the book,the reader is left in no doubt about theemergence in architecture of a statelyexpression of Japonisme.