At the height of the Victorian era a contradictory confluence of social and stylistic preferences intermingled in Australia. We started to resist Asian migration in an extremely forceful way at the same time as we began, a still ongoing, passion for Asian culture. The Broached East Commission responds to Australia's relationship to Asia in the mid to late nineteenth century - a period that saw a massive influx of Chinese migrant workers to the goldfields in the 1850s and, in the later part of the century, an influx of Japanese handicrafts after the Meiji Restoration. This period opened up Japan for the first time in over two hundred years. Although other significant intercontinental relationships existed in Australia during this period, in particular to India, we decided to focus on Australia's relationship to China and Japan. The gold rush enlarged the Australian population enormously, and shifted the colony from a penal settlement to a participant in global trade. This growth was extremely sudden and must have seemed startling to the pre-gold rush residents, particularly those of Melbourne, which grew most rapidly. The gold rush was a catalyst for a massive wave of Chinese migration - it was this new population that became a scapegoat for fears of rapid globalisation. From 1850 to 1930, over one hundred million people migrated globally. This remains the greatest volume of human migration. Australia was thrust into what is now known as the Anglosphere, and kept Asia as a trading partner and the place from which exotic delights are imported. Not allowing Asian people to migrate here, while purchasing their design and art in huge volumes, was an irony lost on most Australians. A new consumer class was born: one that was always disassociating the consumed object from its actual meaning; spiritual icons became cute sculptures, totems became coat-stands. |||IS|||The problems of the Pacific are different. What Great Britain calls the Far East is to us the near north.|||IE||| |||CA|||73 Broadcast Speech by R.G. Menzies, Prime Minister, 26 April 1939|||CE||| The fear of globalisation, and the industrialisation that was fueling it, provoked a number of reactions, not all xenophobic in nature. The arts and crafts movement offered a solution to the perceived dilution of unique cultures at the hands of a ubiquitous industrial system, by promoting the idea of making pieces locally that endure for life. However, products made to last were and remain expensive. Consequently, the arts and crafts movement remained creator of products for the wealthy - the goal of widespread purchase of locally artisan made product was overwhelmed by cheap mass-produced products. For late nineteenth century designers and aesthetes, the pared back simplicity of Japanese craft and design was an antidote to the decorative verbosity of Victorian interiors. Little was known about the culture and people of Japan, but designers loved the clean lines, lightness of space and use of asymmetry common in Japanese art and design.

Japan, having just emerged from centuries of isolation, developed a formal capacity to create an impression of a uniquely singular Japanese design and cultural vision. Then and now, better than any other Asian nation, Japan defined itself as exotic in a meticulously consumable way. Australians were keen collectors of Japanese artifacts. The Broached East collection looks at this newly globalised world. The result is a collection focusing on the construction of exotic beauty and on nightly rewards for hard work in frontier lands. With a few exceptions this collection is about the twilight hours; hours when we strive to reconnect to our non-mechanical, philosophical and holistic sense of place. Azuma Makoto's Wardian case inspired frame to simultaneously entomb and sustain a plant, and the Chen Lu dressing table, create a space for organisation of singular perfection. This perfection are in a suspended state in both instances: Makoto's plant is constrained by the volume of the biosphere that gives it life; the dressing of the face reflected in Lu's mirrors is equally boxed and gestural. In both Makoto and Lu's pieces, the mechanisms for looking and framing remain consistent. The plant may die, the make up will need to be reapplied, but the machines for beauty remain intact. Naihan Li's whiskey bar, modeled after armillary spheres, is on one level a reminder of our small place in the universe, while the plum blossom motif emphasises the importance of individual achievement. We loved the idea of a whiskey bar from the moment Naihan Li suggested it, for the pure reason that it shifts the focus away from Chinese peasant prospectors to another narrative - one of celebration of substantial achievement in the harshest of conditions. |||IS|||All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone.|||IE||| |||CA|||Blaise Pascal, Pensees|||CE||| Trent Jansen's rocking chair relates to the dominant experience of Chinese migrant workers: twenty-five day walks to arrive at the gold fields, living in cramped living conditions, entirely deprived of female company. The rocking chair is a simulation of being walked to sleep strapped to your mother's back by a sling; a proxy for a maternal embrace in a context that provides no such opportunity. The aesthetic is intentionally rustic and of a scale that invites two people to recline in the wide seat. The Adam Goodrum cabinet is a space in which precious objects are hidden and then, like a flower blooming, revealed. The slender cabinet started as a simple take on the now largely antiquated need of secure personal storage spaces for treasure. But then we decided to extend the timeframe and shift the hiding from something physical to an identity. The cabinet is a man, possibly a Chinese prospector, who came from humble origins and made it rich on the Australian goldfields. The exterior of the cabinet represents the many years acquiring distinction through elevated social status. The hidden interior reveals the raw ambition and simplicity of his origins. Keiji Ashizawa has designed a chandelier that is so light and simple it straddles the typology of mobile and light. Dialogues between Ashizawa and the Broached team focused on the longstanding pattern of Australia exporting raw materials and Japan sending back complex manufactured goods. Keiji decided to make a modernist light shade that takes a singular material and enlarges a simple form to the point where it droops under the weight of gravity. The gravity-causing curve in the materials is a lovely, simultaneous, expression of the history, weight and unsustainable nature of this use of natural resources. Beginning with the Meiji Restoration, western modernism began a dovetail into the Japanese love of simple clean forms and capability for incremental improvement - traits that continue to be refined today in Japanese design. We saw Ashizawa's existing practice as this beautiful fusion between everything that is peculiar about Japanese design and what is ubiquitous about international modernism. The nineteenth century is the period that saw mechanically reproducible art and decorative objects begin to flood the world. Industrial design started to emerge as a practice and the best at it delivered highly considered works for production. This is the transition moment when decorative artists are experimenting with new industrial technologies or rejecting them outright - we still live with such ideological polarities today: industrial designers and mass production versus artisans and handmade pieces. Many of the Broached East pieces cleverly intermingle these two seemingly disparate approaches to design. If Broached Colonial was about the necessity of making do with scarce resources, Broached East points to the need for a private life, afforded by wealth, earned in an open and thriving crass global market. This collection is all about finding space for intimacy and having those special objects, the tools and vessels, which trigger a shift from a work and public persona to a private one. It is also about a country, an outpost of Empire, taking a really seriously long time to understand its place in the world is inevitably deeply connected to Asia. Written by Lou Weis, 2013

|||SH|||The East is near|||SE||| Australia straddles the divide between the Indian Ocean, explored by European sailors as early as the 15th century, and the Pacific. For Europeans Australia remained a mysterious and uncharted land not explored until the late 18th century. However, Australia was familiar to its Asian neighbours. There are claims that the famous Chinese Admiral Zheng He may have discovered Australia during one of the seven voyages he made between 1405 and 1433 when exploring South East Asia, South Asia, the Middle East and East Africa. More certainly Macassan fishermen from Sulawesi in search of trepang, a valuable commodity throughout South East Asia, are known to have established seasonal settlements on the coast of Arnhem Land which may be as old as the 15th century. European settlement did not occur until the British established a convict settlement at Port Jackson in 1788. With little understanding of geography, some convicts believed that China lay beyond the Blue Mountains, or a few days sailing north of the settlement. Some set out in search of China and freedom, most of those disappeared. Although several administrators and successful merchants and pastoralists employed Indian and Chinese servants in the early 19th century, there were few Asians living in the settlement until after the Gold Rush in 1851. The wave of Asian immigrants to Australia that began in the 1850s awakened a fear of different cultures and racism that influenced social, cultural and political attitudes throughout the 19th and into the 20th century. Aspects of these suspicions and racism linger today. In the late 19th century Asian culture was most often seen through English fashion, but increasingly, especially in the late 20th century, Australian travellers, historians, architects, and artists visited Asian countries and have been inspired by their experience. A greater understanding and appreciation of Asian culture has become part of many Australian's lives, however, much of the mystery and misunderstanding still remains. The East is near but not familiar.

Several rock art galleries in northern Australia feature painted praus and are an indication of the presence of Indonesian fishermen in northern waters. More recently sites indicating long-term habitation and plantings of tamarind trees have been discovered suggesting a more complex relationship between the fishermen and the Aboriginal people. |||SH|||Trade with Asia|||SE||| The Silk Road between China and the Middle East and Europe developed during the Han Dynasty 206-220 AD, and porcelain was exported to the Islamic world as early as the Tang Dynasty, 618-907 AD. Trading companies, such as the British East India Company, founded in 1600, and the Dutch East India Company, founded in 1602, held monopolies on trade from Indian, South East Asian and Chinese ports, and brought vast amounts of trade goods, including porcelain, silks, spices, and tea, to Europe. The later British presence in India and the settlement in Australia undermined the exclusive access some companies had to this lucrative trade. Although there were official attempts to prevent direct trade with the East, and limit it through Britain, traders made use of Sydney as both a base from which to set out to Asian ports and as a new market for their wares.

The southern Chinese trade ports had for several centuries been supplying European traders with porcelain. Aristocratic families often had huge services especially commissioned and featuring their coats of arms. The aspiring commissioned services with their initials.

Many of the earliest houses built in Australia include architectural features learned from Indian architecture demonstrating how the military and colonial settlers in India coped with the heat and tropical climate. Verandahs surrounding a house or just along a single side, were a popular way in which to create a cool place adjacent to the principal rooms. Full-length windows and French doors allowed air to circulate and the use of punkahs were further ways in which colonists accommodated their houses for the climate.

Noufflard was a French wool merchant who traded between Australia and Europe, but also probably brought goods in from the southern Chinese trade ports. ST Gill's watercolours of his house show many examples of Asian trade goods, including large pieces of lacquer furniture, ceramics, and fans, the kind of goods he would have been selling to the Sydney merchants.

Inexpensive, light-weight bamboo furniture was imported in large quantities from India and China. Easily moved, especially around verandahs, it also found favour in less formal interiors for its practical nature. The light open construction allowed air to circulate in contrast to more formal full-upholstered furniture. Before the great changes that occurred in Australia following the Gold Rush in 1851, a range of furniture, silver and ceramics from India and China could have been found in the most established homes. Since the 18th century Chinese potteries had been making tablewares to order for European households. Several pioneer settlers in Australia had armorial tableware made for them, and an unidentified person commissioned an impressive punchbowl with a panoramic view of Sydney from a Cantonese pottery in the first decades of the 19th century. In 1857 S. T. Gill painted a series of views of the French wool merchant, Monsieur Noufflard’s house in Bligh Street, Sydney, in which a range of Oriental, mostly Chinese, objects is depicted. These include several large pieces of lacquered furniture, ceramics, fans, and even a seated Buddha on the chimneypiece in the office. In Tasmania Captain Bayley brought bamboo and cane chairs back from China in the mid-19th century. These were in use at his house, Runnymede, and most probably served as light-weight and easily moved furniture in informal rooms of the house or on the verandah, which was an architectural innovation from India. Made for a hot and humid climate cane furniture such as this would have been a welcome addition to an Australian home. Although a few, such as the tableware and cane furniture had a practical purpose, most Asian items in houses of the early 19th century were curiosities. Seldom considered, but a considerable trade, was that in botanical specimens. From early in the 19th century botanists and cultivated amateurs, such as William Macarthur at Camden Park, in New South Wales, were importing useful and decorative plants as part of an extensive acclimatization scheme. A number of fruits, trees, and many flowering plants from India and China in particular, were imported and distributed around the country to see if they would prove suitable for cultivation. Decorative flowering plants such as rhododendrons, azaleas and a variety of lilies came from India, China, and later Japan. Trade with India and China through the southern Chinese trading ports developed quickly in the 19th century. After the Gold Rush and following the opening up of Japanese ports for trade with the West in 1854, a quickly developing and increasingly affluent population eagerly sought to buy from Asia. Imported were goods not produced in Australia, or those of better quality or more economically produced in Asia. Livestock, especially horses, came from India as well as timber, cottons, a variety of food, including sugar and spices, rum, silver tableware, and a wide variety of furniture and floor coverings. From China came fine porcelain, silver tableware, cane furniture, carpets, silks and wallpapers, rice, and, of course, tea. From both came an enormous quantity of ephemeral goods, including toys, fans, paper lanterns, fireworks, ribbons and dress trimmings, many of which found their way into remote and less affluent houses as necessities and curiosities. |||SH|||The Chinese on the Goldfields|||SE||| In 1851 the Australian population was 437,655, of which 77,345 were Victorians. During the Gold Rush the population increased rapidly to 1,151,947 of which 538,628, or about 47% were in Victoria. People came from Britain, Europe, and America seeking their fortune on the gold fields as diggers, or merchants hoping to make money from those who were attempting to or had made a fortune prospecting. Chinese prospectors arrived in the early 1850s as conflict and a famine in southern China encouraged them to seek their fortune overseas. Soon there were as many as 40,000 Chinese on the goldfields and by 1861 Chinese immigrants constituted 3.3% of the Australian population [the highest it has ever been]. Most of these immigrants were men. [One account claims there were only 11 women!]. In 1859 40,000 Chinese men in Victoria constituted nearly 20% of the adult male population of the colony. Many Chinese came under contract to Chinese and foreign businessmen, and worked on the goldfields until their fare and debt was paid off. Money, and gold, was regularly sent to their families and most returned to China late in the 19th century. [Between 1852 and 1889 there were 40,721 arrivals from China and 36,049 departures.]

In the late 1850s large processions of Chinese immigrants heading off to the Victorian goldfields became a feature of Melbourne's street life. As many as 700 men, walking in single file, with pig tails, wearing wide-brimmed straw hats and dressed in traditional clothing, each carrying his possessions in two baskets suspended from a pole carried across their shoulder astounded the locals. The Chinese presence on the goldfields caused anxiety among western miners. Inherent racism, different methods of mining, dress, social and religious custom, all caused problems in these predominantly male communities. A tax on Chinese arrivals in the port of Melbourne ensured others landed at Adelaide and Robe in South Australia and walked overland to the goldfields, a trip of 25 or 13 days. By 1855 there were regular processions of Chinese immigrants, as many as 700, dressed traditionally and wearing a wide straw hat, walking in single file, each carrying a pole over their shoulder with their possessions in two baskets. There were riots protesting against the Chinese on the gold fields in the late 1850s and 1860s and further restrictions on their entry into Australia were enforced. In 1857 at Beechworth in Victoria an Anti-Chinese League was formed. However, concern about cheap Asian labour can be traced back as far as 1841 when the New South Wales Immigration Committee opposed pastoralists' importation of coolie labour. The Chinese presence on the goldfields further developed the mistrust of Asians and the belief that cheap labour might lower living standards. Combined with growing nationalism this antagonism towards non-white immigration laid the foundation for a number of policies which contributed towards the idea of a White Australia Policy. Most significant was the Victorian 1896 Factories and Shops Act which stipulated that all Chinese-made furniture had to be identified, resulting in stamps proclaiming 'European Labour Only'. At the run of the century the popular nationalist newspaper, The Bulletin, ran a masthead which included the slogan, 'Australia for the White Man'. |||SH|||Racism|||SE||| European, racism, mistrust and cultural misunderstanding long defined the Australian attitude towards Asia and the 'Yellow Peril' or 'Hoards'. Whether during the Gold Rush, the late 19th century years of boom and bust when cheap labour was perceived as lowering living standards, during the Second World War when Japanese militarism threatened Australia, or in the late 20th century when refugees from Vietnam and other south-east Asian countries sought political and economic refuge in Australia, Asians have often presented a threat, real or imaginary to European Australians. Diplomatic relations were re-established with China in 1972. Since then China, and increasingly Vietnam, Thailand and Indonesia, have become popular tourist destinations for large numbers of Australians. Asians living in Australia have had an extraordinary impact on the lifestyle of European Australians who regularly eat in wide variety of Asian restaurants, cook Asian-style food at home and accept traditional Asian medicine.

Chinese gold diggers and vegetable gardeners on the gold fields encroached as much as European diggers on Aboriginal land. Tommy McRae's drawing records an Aboriginal chasing a Chinese man, presumably away from his traditional land.

The nationalistic newspaper, The Bulletin, famous for publishing the proudly Australian work of authors such as Henry Lawson and A.B. 'Banjo' Patterson, used a masthead in the early 20th century that featured the slogan, 'Australia for the White Man'. However, amusingly, the typeface chosen for the title reflected a calligraphic style reflecting the British Aesthetic Movement taste for Japanese style. |||SH|||Making it on their own! Assimilation.|||SE||| Many Chinese immigrants abandoned prospecting and established other businesses, including restaurants, general stores, herbal and traditional medicine supplies, and market gardens. Some married local women, settled and had families and Chinese communities were established on the goldfields towns, especially in Ballarat, Bendigo and Castlemaine in Victoria. They built temples of which fine examples survive in Melbourne, Sydney, and Bendigo, and established clubs and societies for fellowship, to support business and to assist immigrants. Many maintained aspects of their customs and lifestyle and the 'Chinatowns' of Melbourne and Sydney quickly became, and remain, vital business districts.

John Alloo is believed to have arrived in Australia in about 1844 as a contract worker. In 1854 he opened a restaurant in Ballarat, serving European food including soups, roast and boiled meats, vegetables, jam tarts and plum pudding. In 1856 he married a Scottish woman, Margaret Peacock, and his business flourished. His restaurant was the booking office for coaches to Melbourne and Geelong and he staged popular entertainments. He acted as an interpreter and go-between for the Chinese population and became known as the Christian Missionary to the Chinese. In about 1868 he moved to New Zealand and in 1877 became the first Chinese Police District Commissioner.

Quong Tart (1850-1903) was a prominent Chinese tea merchant and restaurateur, opening a series of popular teahouses in Sydney between 1881-1898. A Chinese community leader, he was awarded the title of Mandarin of the Fourth rank by China's Emperor Kuang Hsu in 1894 for his efforts towards Chinese-Australian relations. He successfully bridged both worlds and was the first Chinese public figure to be fully accepted by the wider community of NSW. This was a remarkable feat given the anti-Chinese sentiments of the day. |||SH|||Chinese craftsmen in Australia|||SE||| By the late 19th century many Chinese, having originally been furniture makers in southern China, turned to cabinetmaking as a profession. While traditional Chinese style furniture for temples and households was made, little has been identified or survived. While some Chinese cabinetmakers established their own firms, most worked to supply the furniture emporiums specializing in the currently fashionable styles of western interiors. The large firms, such as Cullis Hill and Co. in Melbourne, selling fashionable furniture and interior decoration in the boom years of the late 19th century, employed numerous Chinese furniture makers and imported a wide variety of decorative items, including wallpapers and textiles, from China and Japan.

While Chinese furniture makers working in Australia certainly made traditional Chinese furniture, few examples have been identified. This chair made in the Western District of Victoria is a rare example and is thought to have been made by a Chinese worker on the property. |||SH|||The fascination with Japan|||SE||| After the 1854 trade treaty between Japan and the United States Japanese goods became available in Europe and the United States. The West's fascination with the nation which had for centuries cut itself off from the rest of the world ensured a curiosity and then a taste for Japanese goods and decoration. This interest was excited by the followers of William Morris's Arts and Crafts Movement who encouraged a return to pre-industrial design in preference to the over-decorated machine-made objects that proliferated in the mid-19th century. Japan was perceived as a medieval society unspoiled by mechanization. European artists, architects, and designers of interiors, furniture, silver and ceramic objects, textiles and clothing, were all influenced by the art and domestic objects that began arriving in Europe. Interiors furnished as tastemakers such as Oscar Wilde advocated owed much to the influence of Japanese aesthetics, but more to the dictates of the Aesthetic Movement. Ebonized furniture and blue and white ceramics were made in England and Europe. Bamboo and lacquer and coromandel panels were incorporated into furniture for western needs. A wide variety of decorative items, including Japanese ceramics, screens, artfully draped silk hangings, fans, and paper lanterns became features of the most modern interiors. However, the result was always Japan or China seen through western eyes and needs. By the 1880s there was a wide variety of British decorative arts in the Oriental style, especially ceramics decorated with Chinese and Japanese motifs, from the Wedgwood, Minton and Doulton factories. Although closer to the source, in Australia most of these fashionable objects were imported from Britain and filtered through the taste and style of the English Aesthetic Movement.

This rare example of an ebonized drawing room suite exemplifies the way in which European cabinetmakers incorporated aspects of Asian design into furniture. Of especial interest is the asymmetrical decoration which imitates that found in Asian furniture and decoration.

By the 1880s the Western world's fashion for things Japanese ensured extraordinary Japanese exhibits in every international exhibition. Illustrations of the Japan Court at the Sydney Exhibition in 1879 show huge amounts of ceramics and bronzes and a variety of furniture and decorative objects, such as paper lanterns and umbrellas, on show for sale to visitors and for merchants who might wish to place orders for imports. The fascination for things Japanese reached a peak and saw its most extreme manifestation in the Japanese Village. In the early 1880s exhibitions in the nature of a traditional Japanese village with entertainers and craftsmen and women had begun to tour England, Europe and the United States. These 'villages' proved to be extraordinarily popular and the one set-up in Knightsbridge, London, from January 1885 until June 1887 attracted over a million visitors. The fascination was for men and women in traditional dress, entertaining, providing tea and demonstrating traditional crafts as well as the opportunity to buy an example of an exotic craft. In Australia, an entrepreneur, Pemberton W. Willard, brought a Japanese village into Sydney in 1886. The village opened at the Exhibition Building, Prince Alfred Park, in April 1886. It went on to tour Melbourne, Bendigo, Ballarat, Geelong, Albury, Hobart, Sydney again, Brisbane, Adelaide, Wilcannia, and finished its tour in Sydney in 1888. At each venue the village was laid out like a street in Japan hung with lanterns and set-up to allow visitors to make purchases. The village featured traditional entertainment, such as jugglers and acrobats, musicians and singers, and craftworkers, who made and decorated ceramics, ivory and wood carvers, cabinetmakers, enamel and lacquer workers, fan, umbrella, basket, lantern and screen makers, silk workers and embroiderers. There were also performers who acted out Japanese dramas and a Buddhist temple at which regular ceremonies were performed. For refreshment there was also a tea house hosted by traditionally dressed women, who provided much amusement.

By the late 1880s the Western world was experiencing an extraordinary fascination with Japan which permeated every layer of the culture. At its most sophisticated the devotees of the Aesthetic Movement in England created some of the most beautiful interiors of the time. However, the influence reached far beyond the Movement's few followers, and Japanese culture, especially utilitarian and decorative household items such as ceramics, fans and lanterns, made their way into the lives of many people far from the centres of fashion. In 1885 Gilbert and Sullivan's The Mikado, was the first musical theatre manifestation of this fascination with Japanese costume and culture. The 672 performances in London made it one of the longest running plays to that time. By the end of the year it is estimated that there were 150 companies performing the musical in Great Britain and the United States. It was first performed in Australia in 1886 and the first of many theatrical performances inspired by Japanese culture.

As well as the touring Japanese Village, a variety of merchants offered fashionable decorative items such as fans and silk scarves, often used as hangings and draperies in interiors. Through the efforts of travelling hawkers and haberdashers women in the outback could also acquire Asian, especially Japanese, decorative items for the home as well as fashion.

Mrs Abrahams was the wife Louis Abrahams a Melbourne cigar manufacturer. In this famous painting by their friend, Tom Roberts, Mrs Abrahams is depicted in a corner of the artist's studio. The studio is carefully decorated with numerous items from Asia, including cane and lacquer furniture, ceramics, a silk hanging and a paper lantern. It is perhaps the most sophisticated example of an Australian attempt at an Aesthetic Movement interior.

The Australian Impressionists admired the asymmetrical arrangement of space and the use of large 'empty' areas which are typical of Asian art. In small paintings, quickly painted out of doors in front of the subject, they attempted to capture an 'impression' of the effects of light and colour that they saw as peculiar to Australia.

The catalogue for the 9 x 5 Impression Exhibition was designed by Charles Conder. It featured a combination of Aesthetic motifs inspired by Japanese art, including asymmetrical motifs, a rising sun and blossom, and a the sinuous lines associated with the new art nouveau movement of the last decade of the 19th century. When the young artists, most notably Roberts, Arthur Streeton, and Charles Conder, who became known as the Australian Impressionists, held their famous 9 x 5 Impression Exhibition in 1889, the Grosvenor Chambers, an art centre at the top end of Collins Street, Melbourne, was furnished with decor from the fashionable emporium of Cullis Hill and Co. The Sydney Mail of 31August 1889 described the appearance of the rooms, |||QS|||Soft scarves and draperies of Liberty silk of the reds that Millais has popularised, and the greens and yellows beloved of the aesthete, were hung and knotted and looped among the sketches in such a way as to harmonise with the colouring of the frames and the pictures. Japanese screens and parasols, quaintly carved jardinières and cabinets, and great Japanese vases of japonica and daphne, violets and ferns and roses, gave the room that ‘quite Japanese’ appearance which is considered so desirable nowadays.|||QE||| The exhibition announcement and catalogue featured an etching by Conder in which the influence of the new art nouveau style was complemented by Japanese decorative motifs. The paintings occasionally showed the influence of Asian art experienced through the work of European artists, most significantly James Abbott McNeill Whistler, whose experience had been gained from the Japanese woodcuts and decorative art objects, such as screens, which had influenced the French Impressionists. Undoubtedly the most successful interiors in the fashionable Japonisme style were the studios of a few young artists, including Tom Roberts and G.P. Nerli.

Most fashionable Australian interiors of the late 19th century show the result of the period's love of a mixture of styles, objects, and clutter, rather than the Aesthetic Movement's refinement. The introduction of fashionable Asian elements, such as embroidered screens and painted fans, is more usually an additional item to an already crowded interior, rather than a commitment to a style. An examination of photographs and paintings of Australian domestic interiors after 1880 shows the presence of numerous examples of mostly ephemeral Chinese and Japanese decorative items, especially fans, screens and silk drapery. Added to the eclectic interiors of the late 19th century they introduced a note of the exotic and the fashion for Asian decorations. Most of these interiors belonged to the middle and upper-middle class but it can be expected that the ownership of fans and less expensive items found favour in less grand homes as the fascination for the East was universal. These items were usually placed into rooms that displayed the fully developed Victorian taste for a cluttered mish-mash of styles. There were few, if any, Australian interiors in which the sophistication of the English Aesthetic Movement could be observed. By the mid-19th century, a plethora of design manuals for architecture, furniture and all manner of decorative art objects, and the promulgation of individual theories and the fashion for novelty which encompassed the thoughtless revival and imitation of historical styles, were readily available. In Australia 'Marvellous Melbourne' was an extraordinarily wealthy city. There were numerous emporiums, such as Cullis Hill and Co, and W.H. Rocke and Co., selling furniture and every kind of interior decoration necessary to furnish a house, and endless architects and advisors to assist those newly rich with no previous experience in establishing or furnishing a house. That British design had lost its way was so apparent at the 1851 Crystal Palace Exhibition the exhibitions initiator Prince Albert saw the need to establish a museum, the Victoria and Albert Museum, devoted to educating and improving the taste of the British, especially its designers and artist craftsmen. For similar reasons William Morris had begun his crusade to revive, without the aid of mechanization, traditional British crafts. These enthusiasms found their supporters in Australia, and the Barr Smith family in Adelaide were great patrons of Morris's business. However, most Australian squattocracy and those newly rich from the gold fields or the benefits of the gold rush, wanted to impress and refinement of taste and tasteful interiors were not necessarily required. Many, like the Chirnside brothers who in 1874-77 built Werribee Park on their extensive grazing property north-west of Melbourne, took pleasure in commissioning the entire contents of their newly built mansion from John Taylor and Son of Edinburgh, the most fashionable emporium of their hometown. The Chirnside's example and that of many others, along with return visits to 'Home' of enormously prosperous colonials who often indiscriminately bought rooms of furniture and galleries of paintings and sculpture, reminds us that the purpose of these interiors was to impress their fellow colonials with their wealth, not their taste or awareness of current fashion.

A unique example of this fascination with Japan survives in Queensland. In 1887 Judge Paul, a Brisbane citizen who had vacationed in the East, decided to determine whether a Japanese house would be suitable for the tropical climate. He imported a Japanese house which was as the magazine Boomerang reported 24 December 1887, 'designed by a Japanese architect, erected by Japanese workmen out of Japanese material, and, above all, decorated by Japanese artists in the Japanese fashion'. Boomerang went on to describe the house, with its sliding paper screen, asymmetrical disposition of windows, doors, cupboards, and decorative shelving, and its use of rustic timbers, unpolished and in natural forms. In the rooms the Judge had displayed his collection of porcelain, bronzes and Japanese sculptures. He was among the first European Australians to appreciate and collect Asian ceramics, but one of few to realize the practicality of Asian architecture. |||SH|||The lasting influence of Asian art in Australia|||SE||| The National Gallery of Victoria was the first Australian gallery to collect Asian art and by the early 20th century had a significant collection of Asian ceramics. This collection has been influential in inspiring collectors, as well as awakening an interest in Asian culture among the wider community. Of especial significance is the architect William Hardy Wilson whose love of Chinese and Japanese art and architecture informed much of his work. Of particular importance is Eryldene, his house in Gordon built for the University of Sydney aesthete, linguist and camellia expert, Professor E. G. Waterhouse in 1913. The house which features a verandah with rooms opening onto it owes much to Indian architecture. Its Chinese inspired teahouse by the tennis court is one of the most remarkable buildings in Australia. His belief in a fusion of Asian and Greek architecture is an extraordinary expression of his belief in the possibility of creating a new architecture for a new age in which all nations would live at peace.

Hardy Wilson's enthusiasm for Asian culture grew out of his pantheism and belief in world peace through an understanding of different cultures, religions and art. He was undoubtedly one of Australia's great Orientalists.

Written by John McPhee

Private collection The decoration on Amelia Burrows' painted screen imitates aspects of Japanese art, especially woodcuts, which she experienced through the fashionable style of illustration featuring vignettes and asymmetrical arrangement. In their illustrated children's book Rede and Teague's woodcuts demonstrate a deeper understanding of Asian art. Hughan's celadon glazed jar was inspired by the Asian ceramics he saw in the National Gallery of Victoria, while Levy's sang de boeuf glazed porcelain vase is the result of years working in Japan and developing a deep understanding of the traditions of Japanese potteries.

Public and private collections of Asian art have long inspired Australian artists. Many sought knowledge and understanding through books and reproductions, as well as by examining woodcuts, furniture and ceramics that were accessible to them. Some, especially potters, travelled, studied and worked in Japan. Late in the 19th century the artists who demonstrated a fascination for Asian art were most familiar with examples seen and experienced through the English Aesthetic Movement. A more sophisticated understanding of Asian art, especially its asymmetry and appreciation of 'empty' space, can be discerned in the work of a few artists, especially printmakers, such as Violet Teague and Geraldine Rede, who were familiar with original Japanese woodcuts and traditional Asian scroll painting. 20th century artists such as the modernists Margaret Preston and Ian Fairweather admired Asian art. Fairweather in particular studied Chinese art and calligraphy and his expressionist paintings owe much to his understanding of Chinese painting. Mid-20th century potters, such as Harold Hughan, admired and imitated the glazes they saw on Asian ceramics in public collections. Later in the 20th century potters, such as Col Levy, travelled to Japan and worked with master potters. On their return to Australia, like some others, he devoted himself to creating a lifestyle around the way in which a traditional pottery was run and pots produced. While created in admiration of Asian ceramics the work of these potters also demonstrates peculiarly Australian qualities. |||SH|||The East is near|||SE||| Contact with Asia, and Asian influence in Australia, predates European settlement. Although the influence of Asia has most often been experienced through British culture Australia's proximity to Asia has always had an impact and at times a profound effect, upon Australian society, culture, and way of life. Trade in goods, immigration, and ideas, from Asia have changed how Australians see themselves. While Australia still sees itself as Anglo-Celtic and an outpost of British culture, there is an increasing awareness of the conflict, both political and cultural, between its Anglo-Celtic heritage and the significance its place in Asia may hold for the future. John McPhee February 2012 |||SH|||Suggested reading|||SE||| James Broadbent, Suzanne Rickard, Margaret Steven, India, China, Australia: trade and society 1788-1850, Sydney, 2003 Zeny Edwards, William Hardy Wilson: artist, architect, Orientalist, visionary, Sydney, 2001 Clay Lancaster, The Japanese influence in America, New York, 1983 Terence Lane and Jessie Serle, Australians at home: a documentary history of Australian domestic interiors from 1788 to 1914, Melbourne, 1990 Metropolitan Museum of Art, In pursuit of beauty: Americans and the Aesthetic Movement, New York, 1987, exhibition catalogue Andrew Montana, The Art Movement in Australia: design, taste and society 1875-1900, Melbourne, 2000 Eric Rolls, Sojourners: The Epic Story of China's Centuries-Old Relationship with Australia, St Lucia, Queensland, 1992 Jessie Serle, Asian and Pacific influences in Australian domestic interiors, 1788-1914, in Fabrications 4, June 1993, pp56-107