Author: David Porter

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Publication Date: 2014-3

ISBN: 9781107662377

The book analyses the processes by which Chinese aesthetic ideas were assimilated within English culture. Through case studies of individual figures, including William Hogarth and Horace Walpole, and broader reflections on cross-cultural interaction, Porter’s readings develop interpretations of eighteenth-century ideas of luxury, consumption,gender, taste and aesthetic nationalism. Illustrated with 26 examples of Chinese and Chinese-inspired objects and art，the book offers a new approach to material culture to explain the cultural contexts of decorative arts and the history of contact and exchange between China and the West.