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The Getty Museum’s large and exceptional collection of oriental porcelain embellished with Parisian gilt bronze or silver is comprehensively illustrated in this revised catalogue. The European practice of mounting exotic objects such as oriental porcelain dates from the Middle Ages and found its height of expression during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, when Chinese and Japanese porcelains reached the West in considerable quantities. To meet the growing taste for such objects in fashionable Parisian society, marchands-merciers—guild members who combined the functions of the modern interior decorator, antique dealer, and picture dealer—devised ingenious settings in silver and gilt bronze for oriental porcelains, adapting their exotic character to the French interiors of the period. With the publication of this catalogue, the beauty and rarity with which buyers of these pieces were so enamored is vividly brought to life.
Our object in producing this book is to supply information about Chinese art that is at once authoritative and introductory. To many it may seem curious that no previous volume of the kind exists ; but to those who know the extreme difficulty of a detailed study of even one part of Chinese art, with its enormous periods and its close relationship to Eastern ideas, it may rather seem curious that anyone should attempt such a summary. We should not have given way to the desire to make such a book had we not known how valuable it would be if properly produced, and had we not felt that we had hit upon the right plan. -- Preface.