This is a catalog of a highly unique collection of antique Chinese and Japanese art, including porcelain, pottery, enamel, bronze, jade, agate, crystal, sword-guards, netsukes, kakemonos, old fabrics, and many other beautiful and rare items. The catalog provides detailed descriptions and photographs of each item, along with historical and cultural background information. A great reference for art collectors, historians, and anyone interested in Asian art and culture. This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the "public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. To ensure a quality reading experience, this work has been proofread and republished using a format that seamlessly blends the original graphical elements with text in an easy-to-read typeface. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.

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.