Created in February 2010 for the Smithsonian-Corcoran M.A. Program in the History of Decorative Arts, this lecture shows how wallpaper design in England and the United States in the late 19th century was transformed by ideas from Japan. Comparisons with Japanese material and Aesthetic and Arts and Crafts designs illustrate what attracted the most influential innovators, and shows how the assimilation process ultimately shed specifically Japanese references, leaving in place the principles now recognized as the basis for modern taste.

1. I jumped when asked for this lecture. Though my book, The Influence of Japanese Art
on Design, only touched upon wallpaper, I knew it was a topic reflecting every
concern about domesticity in the Gilded Age. My mind flew to home as nurturing
refuge and wellspring of moral uplift, beauty and aesthetics in the age of
industrialization, new commercialism, internationalism, visions of “modern, etc., etc.
—all brought into sharp relief by the unique and very variable role that Japan played
in these things. An immensely fascinating story. Putting it all together is the
proverbial Gordian Knot—I realized, another book! In two hours, I can only shut my
eyes, dive in and keep my goals a lot more modest: a little context, a few important
points, a fairly organized sense of a process that lacked a single straight sequence
anywhere, and hopefully to hone your eye in a way that will prime your later
encounters, and to see and think out of the box.
To begin: Japanese influence on wallpapers originates in an extended moment of
international frenzy that began in the late 1850’s, peaked in 1872, when it was
simultaneously dubbed “Japonisme” in France and the “Japan Craze” in England,
crested in Europe by the 1880’s, but burned brightly in the US for another two
decades. What does a “craze” look like?
1

2. It meant ordinary girls, prostitutes and artists’ models, America’s society daughters,
Monet’s French wife, Whistler’s English girlfriend, women everywhere delighting in
geisha fantasies, for portraits, tea parties and even church sociables. It meant that
few saw as odd British Actress Lily Langtree advertising American Eagle Tobacco in
Japanese garb. Langtry was portraying not just any Japanese lady, but a make‐believe
princess: YumYum, heroine of the Mikado, the daffy operetta that took England and
America by storm in 1883 and ran continuously for a century. When you get that kind
of ad hoc mixing, you are seeing a process of assimilation.
2

3. “Japan Craze” meant that creative and not‐so creative minds sought that “Japanese
effect.” The nonsense of the Mikado, the scores of now‐forgotten musicals, dramas
and shows it inspired—in which real Japanese themselves as often as not participated
—was only the entertainment side of a fascination that appeared equally
nonsensically throughout society
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4. “Japan” could make your coffee and marshmallows tastier, your toiletries smell
better, your skin softer, your make‐up more perfect, your walls prettier and even your
pet fish happier. It was all unreal. But did that matter??? So on the one hand, the
wallpapers we are about to see are at home in just such a world of budding
commercialism, graphic experimentation and fantasy.
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5. One person—only one—truly understood this phenomenon: the era’s most astute
commentator and muse of the Japan Craze whose flamboyant person bespoke the
age, The Apostle of Aestheticism: Oscar Wilde. with typical flair he captured the spirit
of Japanese art—and what the most imaginative Westerners did with it:
No great artist ever sees things as they really are. If he did, he would cease to
be an artist… do you really imagine that the Japanese people as they are presented to
us in art have any existence? If you do, you have never understood Japanese art at all.
They are the deliberate self conscious creation of certain individual artists. If you see
a picture by any of the great native painters beside a real Japanese gentleman or lady,
you will see there is not the slightest resemblance between them. The actual people of
Japan are not unlike the general run of English, that is to say, they are extremely
commonplace and have nothing curious or extraordinary about them. In fact, the
whole of Japan is a pure invention. There is no such country, there are no such
people…the Japanese people are…simply a mode of style, an exquisite fancy of art.
And so, if you desire to see a Japanese effect, you will not behave like a tourist and go
to Tokyo…you will stay home and steep yourself in the work of certain Japanese
artists, and then, when you have absorbed the spirit of their style and caught their
imaginative manner of vision, you will go some afternoon and sit in the park or stroll
down Piccadilly, and if you cannot see an absolutely Japanese effect there, you will
not see it anywhere.
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6. That, in a nutshell is the standard way of viewing wallpapers like this unidentified
frieze—its “Japanese effect” of random pinwheels tumbling through floral sprigs
against a flat ground. But, Craze notwithstanding, it is too glib to emphasize, as is
typical, that this look was merely vogue. Rather, as Wilde’s words hint, it reflects a
pervasive experimentation underway, spawned by the conviction of the most
influential and thoughtful of the Victorian creative world, that Japanese design
offered resolutions to their most major dilemmas. This is a profound kind of
borrowing. It introduced design principles we still follow, so what made Japonesque
designs “Japonesque” is best understood as an early groping toward a modern
language of design appropriate for a modern world. Japanese influence has had long
reach, and its apparent invisibility now is a measure of its importance. Wallpapers are
telling examples of this. These are the issues I want to frame this presentation today,
to leave you poised to reconsider the design movements that succeeded the
apparent end of the Craze itself.
Firstly, there are factors to consider about Japan, the nature of its links to the west
and avenues of influence:
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7. “Japonesque” is nothing “Japanese.” More nuanced with their walls than in the
Victorian West, Japan linked their decoration with interior function and even personal
roles. The ivied walls of this 17th century imperial retreat evoke literary associations
and princely contemplation; Seated beneath the arching pine in a golden landscape
transformed a shogun into a man endowed by the forces of nature—the pictorial
trope of Confucian superiority
In the era of the Japan Craze, Japan was extricating itself from these traditions to
transform itself into a modern nation. It did not want to emphasize its defunct recent
past. Even if enthralled by their romance, few of the very few Westerners who might
have seen such interiors comprehended them. It would have made little difference
anyway, for the values they represented were too alien despite the adaptability of
their wall designs. For all its borrowings, Japanese influence is distinct to itself, a child
of Western fantasy on one hand, and Western aesthetic sophistication and innovation
on the other—as Wilde noted. In many ways, more important than Japan in the
transformation of wallpaper design, is what happened to Japanese motifs and
principles in the hands of E.W. Pugin, Owen Jones, E.W. Godwin, Christopher Dresser,
and the American Arthur Wesley Dow, among others.
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8. What people were seeing that was making them so crazy with inspiration were in part
objects from this world, and in part objects designed entirely with us in mind. A
trickle in the mid‐1850’s by the 1870’s had become a flood of prints, paintings,
lacquers, bronzes, silver, ceramics, souvenirs, old and new, cheap and expensive,
traditional and modern—and all of it completely upending standard ideas of beauty,
of design, of material, and let’s face it, as Wilde noted, of attitude. the first impact
was felt in France.
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9. There, ideas garnered from Japanese item and images found their way not only into
radical experiments of painting, but also in such things as dish design, often by some
of the same artists. These early efforts were quintessential Japonesque; such objects
retained all of their essential, traditional characteristics, but in ornament replicated
precisely an exoticism found fascinating, including certain decorative principles—such
as the extension of motif to the edges of the plate, rather than confining it to the
center, as was conventional. The Parisian avant garde was international one; some of
the figures important to us were among those who mingled and shared ideas
But for an art inspiration to be truly pervasive, for a craze to occur, it has to be
embraced by the broadest public. We can actually point to a specific date on which
Japan exploded into Western consciousness, and for wallpaper design it was not the
“Japonisme” of France, but the Japan Craze ignited in England.
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10. It is to the International expositions that we owe the Japan Craze. The first explosive
effect was at the London exposition of 1862: Sir Rutherford Alcock’s Japanese Court
transfixed millions— among them E.W. Pugin, Owen Jones, Christopher Dresser, EW
Godwin, and other reformers in the art and design world. Convinced that Western
society, sullied by the Industrial Revolution, needed new solutions, newly‐opened
feudal Japan was a highlight of the “orientalism” they considered ”a fresh well of art”
at a time when “art” was thought the distillation of all that was good or bad about a
society. In addition to millions of visitors, journalistic and critical commentary fanned
awareness from this point onward.
Japan, in the death throes of its feudal era—had nothing to do with this event. Those
few Japanese who even saw it found everything inauthentic and aesthetically
beneath contempt. Even an embarrassment. But its dramatic success inspired those
behind the Meiji restoration only 6 years later, resulting in a huge official presence at
subsequent fairs, largely defined by Western tastes and expectations. As the era
progressed, everything from export goods—wallpapers, ceramics, textiles, bronzes,
fans—to the leftover detritus of objects from the old regime—found their way to the
fairs where people encountered them in a grand oleo.
10

11. But as I said, there are no straight lines in this story. Japan’s breakneck modernization
was built on manufacturing. Some of the most impactful influences on Western
wallpaper designs were Japanese export wall coverings so exquisitely pegged to
Western tastes that by 1912 Japan was the world’s largest exporter of mass‐produced
textiles and wall treatments, with ads in every home magazine, newspaper and
design publication. The thousands of patterns were a spectrum from “oriental”—to
not.
Western scholars have been perplexed as to how to consider these products, due to
their clinging to a persistent myth of “authenticity.” This elevates the arts of Japan’s
dead past and rejects its mass‐produced, hybrid, non‐traditional production. This
myth is hardly new. It arose with the 19th century’s most influential design reformer
John Ruskin and was embraced by many of the innovators in wallpaper design: Pugin,
Morris, and Dow, to name a few. To them mass‐produced wall coverings failed the
test of “authenticity,” not only in terms of what they deemed “real” Japanese, but
also as imitation anything. The longevity of this myth is a measure of the influence of
these reformers in our standards of taste today. Understanding Japanese influence
demands that we drop this bias and give export papers their due for having brought
new motifs, color combinations, formal relationships and concepts of taste to middle
class homes and sensibilities.
11

12. Besides, Westerners were, frankly, flagrantly inaccurate and expedient in where they found inspiration,
and how they used it. The supreme example is also one of the earliest and finest examples of wall
treatments, if not wall paper: the so‐called Peacock Room of James McNeal Whistler. The owner railed
over the unasked‐for alteration of his dining room, especially when presented the bill—but this
audacious extravaganza was an unqualified critical triumph of décor.
described by Wilde as “like a great peacock tail spread out” when lit, The Peacock room typifies
Japonesque as a pastiche veneer of Asian references over an entirely Western space. Peacocks were
considered the requisite exotic complement to blue and white Chinese porcelains, called by the
misnomer, “hawthorne jars.” The rage for them sent prices to fantastic highs, assuring indispensability
to the wealthy who displayed them on an elaborate “Japonesque” shelving constructed of spindles, as
here.
12

13. But mostly Whistler looked to Japan, whose every art form for him exemplified the
“rarified ideal of beauty” at the heart of the Aesthetic philosophy to which he
adhered. He sought the effect of a lacquer box—objects of great appeal to Victorians
for the richness of pattern and technique on a single object. He replicated those
effects by building up surfaces beneath the gold and silver and including metallic
dust. From Japanese screens, he borrowed the square patterns of their large
expanses of gold and their dimensional effects for the hinged shutters. Paintings and
prints of peacocks were immensely popular imports. Whistler owned a print very
similar to this, which tantalizingly resembles the bird on the left shutter. A bag of
mixed references, the Peacock Room walls are the finest examples of the early spirit
of Japonesque wallpaper. Few were so sophisticated.
13

14. Because of their “authenticity”, and also because of their portability, and adaptability
to Western spaces, the traditional folding screen was a popular export item from
Japan, and a logical and potent model for Western wall treatments. But in Western
hands, they were understood more as “paintings” than the portable walls as they
actually were.
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15. Moreover, Westerners encountered them in a very “inauthentic” and jumbled way,
usually displayed in the familiar Western manner of miscellaneous agglomeration—as
often as not by Japanese exhibitors at International Expositions, which is where these
photos came from. I think that such displays themselves encouraged
misunderstanding about authenticity, and some of the first experiments in wall
treatments.
15

16. As in one of the earliest known in the US, a 1879 New York bedroom: A frieze of
ukiyo‐e prints, fan‐bedecked walls, boldly asymmetrical ceiling motifs, and miniature
parasols—the cheapest of souvenirs—serving as lamp shades. I’ve tried to replicate
its flamboyant barrage of color and pattern, and whimsical exoticism. It is a florid
misinterpretation of a style that originated with a close friend of Wilde’s and Whistler,
the influential British architect designer E.W. Godwin whose advocacy of creative
adaptation of things Japanese included the concept of restraint. Godwin named this
style, with which many of you are probably already quite familiar, “Anglo Japanese”
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17. Godwin never went to Japan. He knew it from the few books available, the crowded
displays of Alcock’s Japanese Court in 1862, the imports of Liberty & Co and Parisian
galleries, and the then‐small collection in the South Kensington Museum, now the
Victoria & Albert. His concept included a Western mantra of good design: harmony.
As this engraving of his own foyer shows, “harmony” meant that “Japanese” walls
called for “Japanese” textiles, lampshades, wood trim, vases, and plank floors.
Moreover, you can also see in both rooms another convention of “Japanese” taste—
mixing of miscellaneous patterns—which we will see again.
His Anglo‐Japanese concept a long reach. This illustration was the frontispiece of the
influential Art Furniture, a manufacturer’s catalog of Godwin’s designs. Available in
the US and pirated in major American publications such as Decorator and Furnisher,
where I discovered it; his designs and wallpapers both purchased by wealthy
Americans, and viewable to the general public at one of America’s seminal events of
the late 19th century:
17

18. the 1876 Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia, where along with Anglo‐Japanese
style, Japan itself arrived in a tidal wave of art goods and the first Japanese buildings
in the US. The critical impact was, again, explosive.
Anglo‐Japanese style revealed to Americans a way to adapt these exotic inspirations.
Godwin’s furniture featured in British displays. And, in person the recognized design
genius, mass production pioneer and charismatically charming Christopher Dresser,
lectured at the fair and signed contracts with wallpaper companies. Dresser, in the
thrall of Japan, was en route on his first trip there. Though the visit would completely
transform his vision, his wallpapers reflected his earlier Aesthetic/Anglo‐Japanese
perspective.
Unlike those who condemned mechanization on artistic and moral grounds—Dresser,
like Owen Jones, embraced it, and recognized in the economical formalism of
Japanese design an excellent model for mass production that could bring the moral
uplift of good design to the masses. So far, I have yet to see his wallpaper designs, yet
his pre‐Japan trip designs in other media are quintessential Japonesque, and his
influence is such that his ideas are present even if we cannot precisely see them. So
with that, I want to explore this process of adaption, beginning with work by his
friend, E.W. Godwin.
18

19. One common fascination was for Japan’s traditional heraldic symbols, Mon. Godwin’s
sketchbooks include studies of them—and creative revisionings of familiar motifs into
mon‐like designs. Mon became the basis for elegant wallpapers that are great
examples of the two sides to the attraction of Japanese motifs.
mon illustrate the era’s linking of design and social philosophy. Many romanticized
these clan symbols as vestiges of a lost feudal era whose moral purity was manifest in
the “honesty” of its arts, makers perceived as members of guilds‐‐cooperatives of
high standards, hand work, and pure creative spirit. Ruskin, Morris, E.W. Pugin
(expanding upon the ideas of his father, A.W.) and others bemoaned as a kind of
moral sell out every aspect of Japan’s modernization (like its inexpensive mass
produced wallpapers). To assimilate mon into a British domestic environment though
wallpapers or any other medium was to bring the moral uplift they held into the
home. Godwin no doubt ascribed to this idealism at least in part.
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20. But Godwin was more than romantic dreamer and slavish imitator. He proselytized
“assimilation” and sought to reject superficial exoticism. His are among the earliest
attempts to adapt Japanese design principles independent of “Japaneseness” itself, to
create designs appropriate for the modern times he lived in. In specific, the graphic
power of such economical, two‐dimensional pattern drew his eye. Thus, it is likely no
accident of a resemblance between his reinterpretation of the peacock as a mon with
familiar forms, and with adapting motifs to distinctly un‐Japanese purposes—
wallpaper being but one.
The laurel wreath motif of this early 19th c paper makes clear that very similar effects
are readily found on European pre‐industrial wall treatments. In a conventional era,
such formal parallels made exotic Japanese motifs comprehensible and acceptable,
while the graphic economy and 2‐D elegance of Japanese designs validated
theoretical rationales for the superiority of certain approaches over others in early
mass production.
.
20

21. In addition to despairing over quality, Western “socio‐aesthetic” theorists detested the new mass
production’s delight in imitation effects. These they cast in a moral dimension as “dishonest.” Tromp
l’oeile, of which the French were major proponents, they considered a travesty that did not respect the
flat, solid essence of walls. Reading the shrill condemnation of a wallpaper exhibit that featured a giant
speeding train bearing down a room’s occupants, one could argue that they had a point.. (An irony, as
the Japanese were masters of tromp l’oeil in many media) “Problems” such as this led to the idea that
ornament should not be left to develop unguided, but needed corrective principles.
Japan offered a powerful “moral” alternative to French dominance of interior design. Godwin, Pugin
and Jones—perhaps because they also were practicing architects and designers as well as theorists—
found in Japanese design the perfect antidotes to this scourge. Qualities attributed to recently feudal
Japan also included the elevation of nature as the true source of all good ornament. The screen above
is both realistically botanical and frankly 2‐D; the textile stencil is inspired by the patterns of cracked
ice..
21

22. One can see these conventions in elegant stylizations by designers of the day. These
show that what was revered by Victorians as “Japanese” really could be described as
a kind of a language of “taste.
Jones and Pugin were among the first to link Japanese design dynamism to its
conforming of ornament to function and material. This met their criteria that form
should be appropriate to purpose, and that decoration should reveal form. Designs
like mon, and the random blossoms pattern on textile stencils, have many formal
qualities compatible with wallpaper, namely that flatness was embraced as an
essential quality. This “Daisy Diaper” design Jones frankly attributed to Japanese
precedents. The pattern on the right of random daisies against a trellis by an
unknown designer of the same period very likely drew its inspiration from Jones’
theories.
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23. Japanese design also conformed to Owen Jones’ 36 general principles in the
Arrangement of Form & Color in Architecture and the Decorative Arts—his concept of
true beauty arising from the experience of repose obtained from fitness, proportion
and harmony, absence of all inessentials, and underlying geometrical order. These
precepts are to be found in his wallpaper of 1860, which resembles patterns in his
landmark 'The Grammar of Ornament (1856), in which he encouraged designers to
look beyond the traditional plants of the classical repertoire. These typical Japanese
stencils show how Japanese design conventions happen to conform exactly Jone’s
views, and are very suggestive of the designs by Godwin—unsurprising in light of the
fact that all of these design reformers were well‐acquainted with each‐others work,
and often friends.
There are also conventions that blur the line between “motif” and “compositional
structure,”
23

24. Lattices entwined with garden vines, appealing for their Informality, randomness
anchored by geometry, were among the most popular of of the many motifs inspired
by Japan. We often don’t link Wm. Morris with Japan‐derived ideas, but some of his
designs were, including this famous one that was produced in several delicate
Japanese‐inspired color combinations: depicted in situ by Godwin for one of his grand
home designs—lest you doubt the lattice pattern to be inspired by Japan, note his
depiction of the lady in kimono.
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25. Japanese design also managed to simultaneously meet what would appear to be
mutually exclusive Victorian attractions: a bizarre counterpoint to the elevation of
“structure and geometry” was equal love for “randomness” and horror vaccui.
Japanese designs such as cracked ice, miscellanies of textile patterns and floating fan
cartouches met these penchants, their crisply‐outlined asymmetry creating a kind of
order to chaos that was as reassuring as it was daring and novel. Victorian patterns
that attempt to replicate that effect of “structured randomness” are among the most
common of Japonesque designs—the textile by Godwin may actually copy a Japanese
design directly.
25

26. While innovative design reformers such as Godwin, Dresser, Jones and Pugin
attempted to discern the underlying design principles, or “grammar” of “Japanese”—
as Jones himself would have put it, the Craze meant that the “vocabulary” of
Japanese motifs was adapted willy‐nilly by everyone else. Wallpapers share imagery
and organizational schemes with all sorts of other objects. In interior décor, this
allowed for the equally important Victorian penchant for harmony—your walls,
upholstery, curtains, furniture, lamps, vases, windows and all decorative accents
down to the doorknobs all could be “Japanese.”
26

27. One of my favorite motifs, the Spider web, was also a Victorian favorite that appears
in every conceivable context. I think it met the Victorian penchant for “honesty”,
hominess, informality—and also geometry. Another—highly ironic given the noise
about “honesty” is the common Japanese visual trick of projecting elements past a
defined border, denying 2‐d. Also, this wallpaper, with its windblown poppies, pinks,
daisies and other flowers in shades of pink and pea greens, adapts both naturalism
and subtle tertiary color combinations inspired by Ukiyo‐e prints. Some
commentators considered such schemes “barbaric” in contrast to the conventional
for bold red, blue and gold. The preference for complex colors would be among the
most long‐lasting of Japanese effects, extending well into the era of Arts & Crafts, and
therefore becomes one of the most ubiquitous, and invisible, of conventions adapted
from Japan.
27

28. By the 1880’s In addition to thousands of exported furniture, lacquers, carvings,
paintings, prints and ceramics to be seen in shops everywhere, mass‐produced
textiles and wall coverings, Japanese patterns came to the public filtered through
many un‐Japanese sources: design journals such as Decorator and Furnisher, Art
Amateur, Siegfried Bing’s Artistic Japan, and others, their very presentation
suggesting ideas to be replicated.
28

29. It is suggested that LC Tiffany used actual Japanese papers for the walls of his library
in the now‐lost Bella Apartments. This room, created around the time of those design
journals’ patchwork‐like samplers of Japanese pattern, tempts the idea that this is
perhaps a replication with actual Japanese paper on a large scale. It shares more with
those samplers, or perhaps displays at expositions than it does with any sort of
authentic Japanese wall treatment. It’s clutter is purely Victorian; the miscellany we
also saw in E.W. Godwin’s foyer. In short, it is really wholly Western. It is unlikely that
Tiffany had any interest in being authentic, instead using Japanese aesthetics as he
understood them as a springboard for his own ideas.
Although their personal aesthetics were poles apart—Godwin austere and Tiffany
opulent, they have in common important roles as early assimilators—the initial steps
in a process in which ultimately overtly exotic surface elements disappear, leaving
their underlying principles as a formal design apparatus.
29

30. Assimilation is the key element of the progression from Japanese to modernism, and
Japonesque is the key transitional step. The process is easy to see in the adaptation of
the Japanese “miscellany” of cartouches and pattern. From around the same time as
the designs with consciously Japanese elements that we’ve already seen, there were
also many examples of these same formal arrangements applied to other exotic
motifs and locales, and also very familiar ones—as here, with its pictures of Niagara
Falls and other famous North American sights. The exotic Persian‐inspired motifs of
the one to its right distract from what is essentially a Japonesque underlying structure
of overlapping cartouches in a variety of shapes, and an emphatic two‐
dimensionality.
30

31. This assimilative process catalyzed many media—Wallpapers share a quintessential
Victorian era design trend that is simply a reorganization of Western pictorial
“vocabulary” to Japanese “grammar.” The ukiyo‐e print—in addition to raising the
sophistication of wall treatments, contributed its schemes of color and motif,
composition, use of symbols, edited imagery, and cropping, to the new profession of
advertising design. In other cases, we see a kind of neutralized exoticism—the
structural grammar applied to all sorts of “foreign” motifs, and the result given a
suitably distant name—as in this plate, from a series called “Cairo.” “Melbourne” was
another. We see such designs as quaint. However, they not only were modern in their
day, they set the stage for the absorption to the point of invisibility—and at the point
where Western designers and artists are working with these principles completely
free of Japan itself, we have the earliest examples of truly modern design.
31

32. A major step came through an American. This magazine cover shares key elements
promoted by Pugin, Jones, and others—a nature motif edited to basics, two‐
dimensionality, geometric structure, compositional balance. The exotic flower and
title make clear the link to Japan. Indeed, the designer—like his English counterparts
—openly espoused Japanese principles. This was Arthur Wesley Dow—universally
recognized as single‐handedly changing art education in America. Even more than his
lectures nationwide and eminence at the top schools of the day, the heart of his
stunningly successful campaign to uplift art at a time when it was considered a
centerpiece of learning lay in his 1899 book, Composition. Composition went into 13
editions, for decades the most influential art ed book in the United States. Virtually
every serious artist or designer encountered it, so that it’s impact is felt even when it
is not openly acknowledged or recognized. If you think you feel a kinship between
the work of Georgia O’Keefe and other robustly powerful works through the 1930’s
and some of the wallpapers we are about to see, you are correct. She was one of
Dow’s most famous students.
32

33. Dow’s theories were catalyzed by Japanese ukiyo‐e prints at the Boston Museum of
Fine Arts. He distilled what they inspired into a methodology that he gave the
Japanese name: “nōtan” essentially meaning Balance. By notan he meant a kind of
psychological sense of poise, achieved by an exquisitely calibrated interrelationship of
line, form, and shadow. What inspired him is readily apparent when we compare
Dow’s painting on the left with the print on the right by the 19th century Japanese
artist Kuniyoshi. As an aesthetic standard, Dow’s notan closely resembles Owen
Jones’ 36 Principles, with their assertion of true beauty in the harmony achieved by
proportion, geometric structure and the subtraction of all but the essential. But Dow
generalized this to all the arts, not just industrial and decorative arts, which led him to
re‐envision his own work into the recognizably modern directions.
33

34. Notan theory was intrinsically compatible with the American Arts & Crafts Movement
—which though born in the ideas of Ruskin (who evidently regarded Japan
suspiciously) also looked to Pugin, Jones and Morris, and like them took inspiration
from Japan. American A&C likewise relied heavily on its own interpretations of
Japanese concepts of color, material, form, and the “personal character” these could
generate. The ubiquity of Dow’s notan concept I believe accounts for the aesthetic
unity of Arts & Crafts designs, many of which have been specifically linked to his
aesthetic. Grueby Art Pottery of Boston is frequently cited as representative of Dow’s
ideas as expressed in craft, and the link between this tile from the famous “Trees”
series and the Japanese print is obvious in the flat cells of color in tertiary graded
hues, thin outlines, abstraction of forms to geometric suggestion, and asymmetrical
compositions.. We find the same qualities‐‐flat cells of color, simple, abstracted forms
bounded by thin outline, organized in a dynamic balance in these wallpaper friezes.
Neither the tile nor the friezes have anything overtly Japanese about them but Nōtan
defines them:. So, four decades from the first introduction of Japanese concepts in
the 1860’s, late Victorian experimentation had left “Japaneseness” behind
With this, everything is in place for the future:
34

35. Fast forward to our lifetimes—what is the relationship between Japan and such papers? Notan—at
least as originally conceived‐‐does not come into play at all. There is nothing Japonesque about any of
these, either. But I would consider Japanese design as essential to the process that brought us to this
point.
First, being representative of the theories of the likes of Jones, Dresser, Godwin, Pugin and others
embedded Japanese aesthetics in the ideas of the cutting edge progressives of the early Machine Age
—not so much for specific motifs, but at a time of transformational technologies, as a standard of
color, line, and composition. Distilled to their most basic essence, we wind up with designs like these—
that celebrate “hand qualities” on one hand, and machine perfection on the other.—and all, note,
resolutly 2‐D
But even more important, for many, many in the art and design world pre‐WWI, the overriding impact
of their encounter with Japanese art and design was that, in the words of several, it freed us. In an era
strangling itself on the challenges of industrialization and mass production, on the one hand it showed
that technology was not incompatible with aesthetic quality, and in a time of extreme conventionality
on the other, Japanese design offered a way out—new ways of color, of material, of motif and of
design. it allowed the unconventional people of that time a way to think out of the straightjacket of
their era. Without that unleashing, these designs could never have been.
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