Asian design is a broad term for the decorative arts and design traditions of East, South and South-East Asia, including China, Japan, Korea, India and neighbouring countries. In the antiques world it covers porcelain, lacquer, bronze, jade, textiles, furniture, screens and works of art, as well as their influence on Western taste.
Trade with Asia, largely through the East India companies, brought porcelain, silk, lacquer and tea wares to Europe from the seventeenth century, inspiring the fashion for chinoiserie in furniture, wallpaper and ceramics. The opening of Japan in the 1850s led to Japonisme and the Anglo-Japanese style championed by designers such as E. W. Godwin and Christopher Dresser, and Asian ideas later fed into Art Nouveau and modernism. Collectors of Asian works of art pay close attention to period, materials, marks and provenance, as later copies and reign marks applied to later pieces are common, particularly with Chinese porcelain. In interiors, a single fine Chinese vase, Japanese screen or lacquer cabinet can provide a striking focal point alongside English country-house furniture, a combination with a long history in British homes.
