A New Book of Chinese Designs 1754

This book of Chinese designs was etched by Matthew Darly in the 1750s, offering a window into the 18th-century fascination with Chinoiserie. Darly, a printmaker, took painstaking care to translate a vision of Chinese aesthetics to a British audience. The fine lines of the etching emphasize the geometric lattice of the fence, and the delicate foliage of the tree. This would have been a laborious process of manually engraving an image onto a copper plate, in reverse, before printing many impressions. Considered through the lens of labor, this book reveals the intensive handcraft involved in replicating designs for a growing market, as well as the cultural context of trade and appropriation that fueled the fashion for Chinese-inspired motifs. Darly was canny enough to appeal to popular taste, and he was also advertising his own availability to execute designs in the Chinese taste for houses and furniture. The book embodies a moment where the distinctions between art, craft, and commerce blurred, creating a unique aesthetic landscape.