Japonisme and architecture in France

Is Japonisme also a history of architecture?
In this book, the authors trace
the evolution of taste for Japanese
architecture in the West. Born long
before what nineteenth-century art
critics called Japonisme, this taste can
be detected in a wealth of objects:
screens, porcelain, lacquer-work, woodcuts,
photographs, interior decoration,
or garden pavilions…
With more than 400 illustrations in
colour, this handsome book presents
noteworthy historical and archaeological
studies of the best-known buildings from
the heyday of Japonisme: the pavilions
at the Paris Universal Expositions
between 1867 and 1900; the first Japanese
living space fitted out in France (1886);
the Salle de fêtes on the rue de Babylone
(1896), today known as La Pagode cinema;
the follies in Albert Kahn’s Japanese
garden (1897) (cover image); and the
Salle des cigognes, a decorated interior
saved by Émile Guimet in 1911.
This survey lays bare the workings of a
crossbreeding in artistic output between
Japan and France and shows how
essential they are to an understanding of
those Japanese spaces held in such high
regard by Westerners.
Leafing through the book, the reader
is left in no doubt that one stately
expression of Japonisme is to be found
in architecture.