East to East: Art and Craft with an Asian Influence

Artists and makers who took part explored how a natural colour palette, handcrafted techniques in glass and ceramics, and structured textiles like weaving have struck a chord with an audience looking for more sustainable, design principles. The contributing artists and makers traced the most recent stage of the long and winding path in the exchange of ideas between eastern and western art and craft. The work featured encompassed sculpture and handmade objects, as well as paintings on canvas, wooden panel, paper or fabric, ceramics – with expertise in Japanese and Chinese techniques like Raku, porcelain, decorative glaze and lacquer work, folded and cut paper and woodblock prints.

EXHIBITORS

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Exhibitors in East to East proposed a bridge between art from the east and what is happening here, now, in East Anglia. We hope that it has helped lay to rest assumptions about the UK being a more isolated place post Brexit, resistant to cultural exchange. Historically, this was not the case. Early global connections like the silk road were established long before the growth of maritime trade during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries allowed goods and customs to spread incrementally between east and west.

A burgeoning network of merchants developed supplying markets with imported silk, porcelain, tea, spices, and lacquerware in quantity as demand grew throughout Europe. In France the Impressionist and post-Impressionist movement, including artists like Vincent van Gogh, Paul Gauguin and a little later, Henri Matisse, were heavily influenced by Japanese art, particularly Ukiyo-e, or colour woodblock prints as well as ceramics mimicking traditional Chinese designs.

Western contact with China introduced new styles in painting, decor, ceramics, and garden and landscape design, during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, which flourished in the eighteenth. Europe’s infatuation with all things Japanese only took hold in the latter half of the nineteenth century upon the reopening of Japan to diplomacy and trade in 1853.

As Europe grew wealthy through its economic expansion from industrialisation and colonialism, naval merchants began importing Japanese artwork and objects in regular consignments. Within twenty years the birth of the English Aesthetic Movement cemented interest in Japanese culture. Their design principles, including approaches to subject choice, perspective, and colour, became distinctive features in European art and craft. The cultural significance of art from the east has travelled on throughout the twentieth century championed by figures like the potter Bernard Leach and, designer and silversmith Christopher Dresser, becoming part of modernism’s lingua franca, which has meant the influence has remained a feature in the arts and crafts to this day.

East to East: The Stables, Houghton Hall, Norfolk, PE31 6UE, from 23rd April to 1 October 2023

East to East accompanied an exhibition of sculpture and paintings by Sean Scully at Houghton Hall – Smaller Than The Sky, which was from 23 April until 29 October 2023, (12 days more than East to East, which closed on 1 October). Scully’s outdoor sculptures and a few paintings were displayed in the house, grounds and parkland.

The Sean Scully exhibition was curated by art historian and museum director, Sean Rainbird, formerly director of the National Gallery of Ireland 2012-2022.