The Anglo-Japanese style developed in the United Kingdom through the Victorian era and early Edwardian era from approximately 1851 to the 1910s, when a new appreciation for Japanese design and culture influenced how designers and craftspeople made British art, especially the decorative arts and architecture of England, covering a vast array of art objects including ceramics, furniture and interior design.Edwardian London Through Japanese Eyes : The Art and Writings of Yoshio Markino, 1897–1915, William S. Rodner, John T. Carpenter, 2011, p. 17, Brill Important centres for design included London and Glasgow. The style was part of the wider European movement known as Japonisme.
The first use of the term "Anglo-Japanese" occurs in 1851,Christopher Dresser, Widar Halen, 1990, p. 33 and developed due to the keen interest in Japan, which due to Japanese state policy until the 1860s, had been closed to the Western markets. The style was popularised by Edward William Godwin in the 1870s in England, with many artisans working in the style drawing upon Japan as a source of inspiration and designing pieces based on Japanese Art, whilst some favoured Japan simply for its commercial viability, particularly true after the 1880s when the British interest in Eastern design and culture is regarded as a characteristic of the Aesthetic Movement. By the 1890s–1910s further education occurred, and with the advent of bilateral trade and diplomatic relations, two-way channels between the UK and Japan occurred and the style morphed into one of cultural exchange and early modernism, diverging into the Modern Style,Art Nouveau, Robert Schmutzler, 1978, p. 14 Liberty style and anticipated the minimalism of 20th-century modern design principles.
Notable British designers working in the Anglo-Japanese style include Christopher Dresser, Edward William Godwin, James Lamb, Philip Webb and the decorative arts wall painting of James Abbott McNeill Whistler. Further influence can be found in works from the Arts and Crafts movement; and in British designs in Scotland, seen in the works of Charles Rennie Mackintosh.
Design principles Design features such as fukinsei (, 'asymmetry') and wabi-sabi (, 'imperfection') and simplification of layout prominently feature as aesthetical importation and adaptation in many Anglo-Japanese designers works and pieces. Christopher Dresser, who was the first European designer to visit Japan in 1876, brought back and popularised many influential Japanese aesthetics in his books, Japan: Its Architecture, Art, and Art Manufactures (1882). The design principle shifted from one of first directly copying (practiced in Japonisme by figures like Van Gogh or Lautrec), to understanding the aesthetic principal behind Japanese art (practiced by Dresser and later Godwin), leading penultimately creating the new Anglo Japanese style.The Influence of Japanese Art on Design, Hannah Sigur, 2008, p. 84, Gibbs Smith The impact of the shift in how design should be approached can be in seen in C. F. A. Voysey for his wallpaper at Liberty's, who felt that the underlying aesthetic of Japanese workmanship must first be understood to create an independent Anglo-Japanese work, and that to try to reproduce it when solely aesthetical purpose and outside tradition would pragmatically create superficial work. Speaking in 1917, comparing his abhorrence of the many poor contemporaneous imitations and 'traditional Japanese' works to 18th century English Chinoiserie Japanning furniture, he noted that although "we may fitly imitate in an object of our own, the finish we find in Japanese workmanship, but the imitation of its traditional thought and feeling is absurd, Chippendale exhibited this kind of [visual] absurdity when he produced his Chinese furniture".Tradition in Relation to Modern Art. In Problems of Reconstruction : Lectures and Addresses Delivered at the Summer Meeting at the Hampstead Garden Suburb August, 1917, C F A Voysey, 1918, pp225–232, London: T Fisher Unwin, see
Interior design
In the design of furniture, the most common and characteristic features are refined lines and nature motifs such as 'Mons', and most particularly an ebonized finish (or even ebony) echoing the well-known 'japanned' finish. Halen (p. 69) proposes an ebonized chair exhibited at the 1862 International Exhibition by A.F. Bornemann & Co of Bath, and described (and possibly designed) by Christopher Dresser as the quaint and unique Japanese character, to be the first documented piece of furniture in the Anglo-Japanese style. The types of furniture required in England such as wardrobes, sideboards and even dining-tables and easy-chairs did not have a Japanese precedent therefore Japanese principles and motifs had to be adapted to existing types in order to meet English requirements.
Dresser noted that the 'Mons' of Japanese Art also have their similarities in Celtic 'rudimentary art'.The British Architect and Northern Engineer: A Record of Accessory Arts and Summary of Mining News, Volume XI Jan-June 1879, April 18, 1879, p. 161, see
Architecture
Many British designers of the Victorian period were taught the Neo-Gothic design principles of John Ruskin and Owen Jones, principally the Grammar of Ornament (1856), which did not include Japan. 'Ornament' referring to an important aspect of English architectural decorative design for the period, deriving from the popular ornamentation at the time found on the exterior of European churches, and placing this beside nature. Yet by 1879, it was reported that ornamental gothic 'natural forms [had] all the nature flattened out of them, [being] arbitrarily and mechanically arranged', and thus for satisfactorily replacing the Ornament of Owen Jones, Japanese art had 'taught [the British architect] the lesson we wanted, in teaching us how to adapt natural forms without taking the nature out of them. Gothic art showed us something of this; but it did not show it so clearly, nor in so many ways, as Japanese [art has done]';The British Architect and Northern Engineer: A Record of Accessory Arts and Summary of Mining News., Volume XI Jan-June 1879, January 17, 1879, p. 25, see 'for even their copies are not slavishly mechanical but free ... [shown in] how the Japanese can introduce into a panel something of pictorial expression without loss of decorative simplicity.'The British Architect and Northern Engineer: A Record of Accessory Arts and Summary of Mining News, Volume XI Jan-June 1879, April 25, 1879, pp. 172–173, see
Pottery and porcelain When designing pottery and ceramics, early influences on the style came from 'japonaiserie' influence and early influences show how Dresser working with Minton's incorporated the superficial exterior of Japanese pottery techniques and colour in porcelain, but not its design principles or aesthetical practices. Dresser turned to designing a number of direct Japanese-influenced pieces such as his wave ceramic (pictured in gallery), and later drew from the direct influence of Japanese aesthetics, which he took from his time learning from artisans in his visit to the country in the 1870s. This in turn became in the 1880–1889 period known as 'Art Pottery', under the Aesthetic branch of the style, and was practiced by a number of other potters and ceramicists, particularly stoneware pots. Common motifs included prunus blossom, pine branches, storks and roundels.
Metalwork
Metalwork in the 1880s also drew from a blend of 'Gothic Revival, naturalism and a Western interpretation of the arts of Japan'.
Furniture Many Anglo-Japanese pieces of furniture were made, but the furniture designed by Godwin for William Watt is the most definitive of its kind. Godwin never travelled to Japan, but collected Japanese art objects circa 1863, and designed his furniture based on replicating adapted forms from these objects, creating a distinctive English style of Japanese inspired furniture in the 1870s, dubbing it the 'Anglo-Japanese Style'. Japanese illustration, woodblock prints, Japanese family crests and the Manga series inspired many of his furniture designs 'curved lintels and geometric grille patterns'.The Influence of Japanese Art on Design, Hannah Sigur, 2008, p. 85, Gibbs Smith Furniture in Godwin's image was refined, sparse of ornament and asymmetrical in its design, often in ebonized woods with simple decoration using Japanese paper or minute wood carved detailing. In the White House in Chelsea, he organised the furniture to be distributed asymmetrically, and the walls to covered in gold leaf inspired by Japanese design and interiors.Art Nouveau, Robert Schmutzler, 1978, p. 25
England Whilst Japanese trade with England had first commenced in 1613–1623, under the policy of Sakoku the import and export market of Japan had been limited to smuggled contraband and was only available once again 150 years later when the Ansei Treaties opened Japan to British trade once more, after the opening of Japan in 1853.
1850–1859: Early exchange The Museum of Ornamental Art, later the Victoria and Albert Museum, bought Japanese lacquer and porcelain in 1852, and again in 1854 with the purchase of 37 items from the exhibition at the Old Water-Colour Society, London. Japanese art was exhibited in London in 1851, Dublin in 1853; Edinburgh 1856 and 1857; Manchester in 1857, and Bristol in 1861.
In 1858, a 'series of roller printed cottons' with direct Japanese influence were made by Daniel Lee of Manchester.Liberty's : a biography of a shop, Alison Adburgham, 1975, p. 14
1860–1869: Import influx With Rutherford Alcock also organising the unofficial Japan Booth, the 1862 International Exhibition in London displayed a number of everyday objects; the impact of which has been considered 'one of the most influential events in the history of Japanese art in the West', introducing people such as Christopher Dresser to Japanese Art.Christopher Dresser, Widar Halen, 1990, p. 34 Early examples of Japanese influence and inspiration in ceramics were noted by Dresser in his reviews of the International Exhibition, London 1862, where he remarked on Minton's 'vases enriched with Chinese or Japanese ornament',Christopher Dresser, Widar Halen, 1990, p. 119 and in his purchasing and sketching of the goods at the exhibition.
Alcock noted that of the 1862 exhibition: "I occupied myself in collecting, for the gratification of the cultured and the instruction of the working and industrial classes of England, evidence of what Art had done for the Japanese and their industries".Art and Art Industries in Japan, Rutherford Alcock, 1878, p. 10, London
When the exhibit closed, interest began around Japanese objects and Japan itself, and collectors, artists and merchants such as Arthur Lasenby Liberty and Farmers and Rogers Oriental Warehouse began to collect Japanese art and objects.Art nouveau, Robert Schmutzler, 1978, p. 21 With the opening of the treaty ports in Japan, four Japanese cities began exporting goods to the United Kingdom. Most of these items eventually began to influence the art of British artisans and enter the home of British elites.Japantastic: Japanese-inspired patterns for British homes, 1880–1930, Zoë Hendon, 2010, p. 4, Middlesex University London, Museum of Domestic Design & Architecture A number of artists from the Pre-Raphaelite circle such as Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Ford Madox Brown (Rossetti's friendFORD MADOX BROWN: WORKS ON PAPER AND ARCHIVE MATERIAL AT BIRMINGHAM MUSEUMS AND ART GALLERY VOLUME ONE: TEXT, Laura MacCulloch, 2009, pp. 188–189, University of Birmingham, see ), Edward Burne-Jones and Simeon Solomon also was beginning to use Oriental influences in their works; Albert Joseph Moore and James McNeill Whistler also began to frequent the warehouse importing these goods in London. Architect Edward William Godwin also designed his home and bought ukiyo-e in 1862 to decorate his home; William Eden Nesfield also designed early pieces in the style.