If collecting the rare and valuable is an entirely normal trait of human behaviour, amassing objects from far-away places has also long played a role in the history of collecting. “East” and “West”, or “North” and “South”, for that matter, are of course entirely relative to one’s particular geographical position. Therefore, it is interesting that collecting exotic objects is an endeavour that unites humanity over millennia and round the globe. The ancient Assyrians did so as assiduously as eighteenth-century collectors in Paris or London; Chinese emperors collected Western art and artefacts at a time when Western collectors started to gather ceramics, lacquered furniture, or South-East Asian prints. Key factors were, of course, increasingly frequent contact and an ever growing knowledge about the “other” and about the other’s artistic production. Of particular interest to the mission of this working group is the fact that the building of collections was only part of the endeavour but that, in many cases, the objects imported at huge cost and logistic effort were meant to be displayed in surroundings reminiscent of their original habitat, even though their exact original context may have been open to debate and their final exhibition surroundings may have been unrecognisable to anyone from their former home. Western collectors built Chinese cabinets for their exotic treasures, often complemented by depictions of Oriental tea parties. Less familiar is perhaps the fact that, from the seventeenth century onwards, Chinese emperors displayed their European collectibles in palaces built for them for this purpose in Western architectural style. The essays in the present volume, therefore, attempt to connect the collections of exotic objects with the forms of display adopted by collectors and institutions and thus chart the levels of increasingly informed and intimate encounters between East and West, scholars and collectors, art lovers and institutions from the early first millennium BC to the early twentieth century and from South-East Asia to North-Western Europe.

This stunning book focuses on four centuries of magnificent jewelry that resulted from the cultural exchange between India and Europe. From the dawn of the Mughal Empire through the end of the British Raj, exquisite pieces of jewelry from or inspired by India traveled between Europe and Asia. This book features more than 150 objects, including jewel-encrusted jades, famous gemstones, enameled gold, and other precious works of art that range in date from the 17th century to the 1930s, along with exquisite contemporary examples by JAR and Baghat that draw from earlier motifs. Between the 16th and 19th centuries, Indian jewelry and works of art developed Persian and Muslim influences brought over by the Mughal Empire while European styles and craftsmanship traveled to India via the British Raj. As illustrated in this elegant book, 20th-century influences flowed in the opposite direction when Indian jewelry inspired European designers to make pieces in the Indian style. East Meets West also showcases the significant role that gender played, as Indian men adorned themselves with treasures worn exclusively by women in Europe. With fascinating essays and beautiful photographs, this book illustrates the cultural and artistic conversations that resulted in some of the most gorgeous jewelry ever created. Copublished by the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco and DelMonico Books

From the Booker Prize-winning, bestselling author of Midnight's Children and The Satanic Verses comes nine stories that reveal the oceanic distances and the unexpected intimacies between East and West. Daring, extravagant, comical and humane, this book renews Rushdie's stature as a storyteller who can enthrall and instruct us with the same sentence. "Richly nuanced, full or humor, bitter anger, an embracing tenderness, and a buyancy of language." —Boston Globe

In East and West Guénon diagnoses the fundamental 'abnormality' of Western civilization vis-à-vis the traditional civilizations of the East, suggests avenues by which the West might be 're-oriented' toward the fundamental metaphysical principles it has largely abandoned, and outlines the possible role of a restoration of true intellectuality in this task. Of course, East and West are no longer what they were in Guenon's time. The aggressive rationalism and materialism of post-Christian Western culture has become a worldwide phenomenon, and no longer corrodes the philosophical and cultural underpinnings of the West only: it has infiltrated distorted forms of Eastern spirituality and metaphysics, incited fundamentalist reactions the world over, and, thanks to the pervasive internet, wields previously unheard of influence. And so today we have an East largely inflamed with a desire to surpass the West in materialism, and a West sodden with moral and spiritual degeneracy. Nonetheless, fruitful exchanges between traditional Christianity and Eastern religions have also taken place on an unprecedented scale, though marred by an ongoing temptation to ill-informed syncretism. In such a milieu, Guénon's East and West, read with an eye to events of recent decades, delivers a stunning intellectual punch. But the East is always the East: the place where the sun rises, the point of recollection and return to the Source. And the West is always the West: the place of the full manifestation of possibilities (including the most degenerate), of the tendency to dissipation and dissolution; the point where the sun sets. In postmodern, global culture, we are all more or less forced to be 'Westerners' outwardly; our only recourse under these circumstances may be to become 'Easterners' within.

The Silk Road and Cultural Exchanges Between East and West, originally written in Chinese by Rong Xinjiang and now translated into English, provides insights into previously unresolved issues concerning the interactions among the societies, economies, religions and cultures of the “Western Regions”, and beyond, during the first millennium.