"Inspired Design: Asian Decorative Arts and their Adaptations" now on view at Historic Deerfield
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Deerfield, Mass. (May 13, 2019) ---
“Inspired Design: Asian Decorative Arts and their Adaptations” is Historic Deerfield’s featured exhibition in 2019. The show looks at 17th-, 18th-, and early 19th - century Asian export art, and the inspired imitations that enterprising Western craftspeople produced both in America and abroad. To decorate these inspired goods, artisans employed certain visual quotations to create a new design vocabulary and inspire new purchases. Often these novel designs served as shorthand communication to evoke disparate, faraway lands and cultures, creating a style generically known as
chinoiserie
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Seen from today’s perspective, efforts to imitate or evoke various Eastern cultures ignored regional differences among peoples who inhabited diverse regions around the Indian and Pacific Oceans, as well as portions of the Mediterranean Sea. Using Historic Deerfield’s extensive collection of decorative arts and library holdings, this exhibition explores the creative, cultural, and aesthetic principles surrounding goods inspired by, or made in imitation of, Asian decorative arts.
"Inspired Design: Asian Decorative Arts and Their Adaptations," officially opened on Friday, May 3, in the Flynt Center of Early New England Life. The exhibition will be on view through February 9, 2020. Admission to the museum, which includes access to all exhibitions at the Flynt Center, tours of museum houses and demonstrations, is $18 for adults (18+), $5 for children (6-17) and free for children under 5, members, and residents of Deerfield. The museum is open daily from 9:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.
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Items on view in the exhibition include:
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Side chair, Boston, Massachusetts. 1740-1760, japanning added 1800-1820. Walnut, maple, paint, gesso, gilding; polychrome, supplementary weft-patterned (brocade) silk. HD 55.035.2.
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Plate, Staffordshire, England, c. 1830. Lead-glazed, refined white earthenware (pearlware) with underglaze cobalt blue printed enamel. Partial gift of Julia Snow, HD 64.291.
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Punch pot, Staffordshire, England, c. 1765. Red stoneware. Underside impressed with pseudo-Chinese seal mark. Museum Collections Fund, HD 2007.1.
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Petticoat, probably England, 1725-1750. Polychrome silk embroidery, white plain weave linen ground. HD F. 597.
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About Historic Deerfield, Inc.
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Historic Deerfield is an authentic 18
th-century New England village in the Connecticut River Valley of Massachusetts. Its historic houses and world-famous collection of early American decorative arts open doors to new perspectives that inspire people to seek a deeper understanding of themselves, their communities, and the world.
Media Contact:
Laurie Nivison
Director of Marketing
(413) 775-7127
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