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.

J. Paul Getty began to collect French decorative arts in the 1930s and continued to do so until his death in 1976. The Museum’s collection has continued to grow since then at a rapid pace and contains over three hundred individual pieces at the time this book is published. This volume illustrates fifty of them. The selection represents a cross section of the collection, which covers the period from approximately 1660 to 1800. In the eighteenth century it became fashionable in Parisian society to decorate the interiors of houses with Far Eastern materials such as lacquer and porcelain. This taste was catered to by the marchands-merciers, members of a guild who combined the functions of the modern interior decorator, the antique dealer, and the picture dealer. These men devised highly ingenious settings for Far Eastern porcelains to adapt their exotic character to the French interiors of the period. Information about them and their clientele has been used in cataloguing the Getty Museum’s collection of mounted oriental porcelain, which is large and of high quality. This book is not a catalogue, nor is it a mere picture book or checklist. Each piece has been chosen because it represents a particular aspect of the crafts involved in the production of objects that were made by Parisian craftsmen for the crown, the nobility, and the rich bourgeoisie. The pieces are arranged in chronological order. Translations of the French archival extracts, an index, and a concise bibliography have been provided.

Ever since the Middle Ages it was the practice in Europe to mount exotic objects such as oriental porcelain in settings of precious or semiprecious metal as tribute to their rarity and value. In the seventeenth century, when Chinese and Japanese porcelains began to reach the West in considerable quantities, the practice continued, especially in France. With the opening of the eighteenth century, it became increasingly fashionable in Parisian society to decorate the interiors of houses with Far Eastern materials such as lacquer and mounted porcelain. This taste was catered to by the marchands-merciers, members of a guild who combined the functions of the modern interior decorator, the antique dealer, and the picture dealer. These men devised highly ingenious settings for Far Eastern porcelains to adapt their exotic character to the French interiors of the period. At first these were of silver (occasionally even gold); later, during the Rococo period when gilding was very lavishly used for the decoration of walls, furniture, light fittings, etc., gilt bronze was the material generally adopted. The marchands-merciers not only designed such mounts and employed some of the most skillful craftsmen of the day to execute them but also marketed them. The survival of the account book of one of their number, Lazare Duvaux, whose shop Au Chagrin de Turquie in the rue Saint Honoré was patronized by the most fashionable sections of Parisian society, has provided us with an immense amount of information about mounted oriental porcelain, its makers, its cost, who collected it, and so on. This information has been drawn on in cataloguing the Getty Museum’s collection of mounted oriental porcelain, which is unusually large and of exceptionally high quality.

This volume includes concise, illustrated entries on the more than 450 examples of furniture, porcelain, and silver from the Museum's collection. New to this expanded edition are sections devoted to maiolica and glass. An index of previous owners and updated bibliographies are of particular help to the scholar.

J. Paul Getty had a passion for the exquisitely made furniture and decorative objects of eighteenth-century France, which he began collecting in the 1930s. Gillian Wilson, curator of decorative arts since 1971, has broadened and strengthened the collection, adding Boulle furniture, mounted oriental porcelain, tapestries, clocks, ceramics, and more. In the 1980s and 1990s the Museum continued to enlarge its decorative arts holdings, creating a European sculpture department in 1984 and adding glass, maiolica, goldsmiths’ work, pietre dure, and furniture from Italy and Northern Europe. This book is a revised and expanded edition of Decorative Arts: An Illustrated Summary Catalogue of the Collection of the J. Paul Getty Museum (1993). In addition to more than forty recent acquisitions—among these four wall sconces from Versailles that once belonged to Marie Antoinette and an elaborate upholstered bed from the collection of Karl Lagerfeld—it includes the results of years of research. Designed for scholars, students, and devotees of the decorative arts, this volume provides a comprehensive look at the Getty's fine collection.

The J. Paul Getty Museum Journal 6/7 is a compendium of articles and notes pertaining to the Museum's permanent collections of antiquities, paintings, sculpture, and works of art. This volume includes an editorial statement by the journal’s editors: Burton B. Fredericksen, curator of Paintings, Jiří Frel, curator of Antiquities, and Gillian Wilson, curator of Decorative Arts. Conservation problems are discussed along with articles written by K. Christiansen, B. B. Fredericksen, S. Holo, G. Wilson, B. L. Shifman, M. Shapiro, J. Frel, D. M. Brinkerhoff, C. C. Vermeule, G. Koch, S. Downey, l. Kilian-Dirlmeier, C. Cardon, F. Brommer, M. A. Del Chiaro, P. Visonà, J. Cody, R. Mellor, D. L. Thompson, E. Langlotz, P. Zazoff, S. Knudsen Morgan, M. Jentoft-Nilsen, and A. Manzoni.