Author Description

"This book describes how Chinese and Japanese culture and imagery found their way to Dutch tiles. An important role in this respect was played by Martin van Straaten, a tile merchant based in London, who initially bought porcelain tiles in China. When Chinese supplies stalled in 1927, the Tichelaar tile works in Makkum were requested to take the Chinese designs into production. The Tichelaar tiles form a core element of this publication. Each of the 55 tiles is introduced with a brief description of the depicted figure; the traditional Chinese characters of the inscriptions have been transcribed and translated. In addition, the book contains convenient tables of all series with Chinese images produced by the well-known tile works in Utrecht, Harlingen, and Makkum from 1900, as well as discussions of Chinese and Japanese imagery used by producers of earthenware in Utrecht, Maastricht, and Gouda. Finally, much attention is given to the many depictions of Daoist and Buddhist symbols, and objects of everyday life of ancient China and Japan"--Page 4 of cover