The V&A’s major autumn exhibition, Encounters: The Meeting of Asia and Europe, will bring together a range of fascinating objects from Asia and Europe from the period 1500 –1800 after Europeans first discovered the sea route to the Indies and with it the enduring appeal of the exotic.

On show will be more than 200 objects including rare porcelain and spectacular jewel-encrusted caskets made for European princes and collectors along with exquisite miniature paintings. These will be shown together with luxury goods made for the European market such as lacquer, silks, wallpapers and cashmere.

Uniquely, the exhibition will look at how East and West perceived and represented each other in a period of intense cultural, commercial and technological exchange. It will examine how each saw the other as ‘exotic’ and how the appeal of the exotic shaped both cultures. It will show how Asians were influenced by Westerners, assimilating aspects of European culture from dressing in European clothing to acquiring new technologies such as clocks, mirrors and western-style perspective in painting. The human dimension of the story as Asians and Europeans experienced their first encounters forms a central section of the exhibition.

Europe has long been fascinated by the East, prizing its artistic treasures and exotic materials while absorbing its culture, from drinking tea out of a porcelain cup to wearing printed cotton and acquiring spices, ivory, wood, silk and precious stones.

When Europeans arrived in Asia they were overwhelmed by the magnificence of the courts they visited, the wealth of the cities and the sophisticated goods for sale. The exhibition will reveal the personalities, objects and stories behind this important period of international interaction which ushered in a new age of globalisation.

The exhibition will include objects drawn from the V&A’s collections and those of private individuals and leading museums worldwide such as the Royal Collection, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Louvre, the Forbidden City and the Japanese Imperial Collection. Many of these objects have never before been exhibited in Britain.

DISCOVERIES

The first section of the exhibition, Discoveries, will explore the western fascination for the exotic materials and technologies of Asia. Even before direct contact was established Europeans sought out strange and marvellous products such as coconuts, mother-of-pearl, ivory and porcelain. Princes and collectors competed with one another to possess such rarities which they often richly embellished with mounts and proudly displayed in their cabinets of curiosities. Among the treasures to be exhibited will be an Indian mother-of-pearl casket owned by Francois I and reputedly given to Henry VIII; and the Fonthill Vase, the earliest recorded Chinese porcelain in Europe.

The human dimension of the story will be told in the second section of the exhibition, Encounters. This examines the social and cultural interaction between Europeans and Asians in different spheres. How Europeans negotiated the intricacies of Asian court etiquette will be examined through representations of their meetings with Asian princes and the gifts exchanged, such as the suit of samurai armour sent by the shogun to James I. Religious encounters will tell the story of the introduction, absorption and in some cases rejection of Christianity with a display of liturgical objects made by Asian craftsmen. These include an extraordinary Ceylonese rock-crystal figure of the Child Jesus set in gold, sapphires and rubies.

The close personal friendships and relationships that developed between Europeans and Asians will be examined through touching and sometimes humorous paintings such as that of Japanese courtesans flirting with two Dutchmen. The Asian depiction of Europeans forms the final encounter which explores how the exotic visitors from the West were perceived in different Asian cultures.

The wealth of luxury goods such as lacquer, porcelain, silks and cashmere made for the European market will be displayed in Exchanges, the third part of the exhibition. Furniture made of lacquered wood and ivory, garments made from chintz, painted silks and muslin, elaborate porcelains and an entire room of Chinese wallpapers will reflect the talents of Asian craftsmen at producing western-style goods using traditional decorative techniques.

Looking back to the East, this section will also examine those European goods that were exported to Asia and the local copies they inspired. Western technological goods such as guns, clocks, mirrors and lenses were much admired in the East, as were oil paintings, which introduced western-style perspective to Asian artists.

Finally, the exhibition will close with beguiling fantasies of ‘the other’ in both West and East. While the Prince Regent built an extravagant oriental-style palace at Brighton, the Qianlong Emperor of China commissioned a Baroque palace complex with elaborate waterworks and a maze for the Summer Palace outside Beijing. The exhibition culminates by revealing how Europeans and Asians created such fantastic spaces of excitement, entertainment and exoticism.

Encounters: The Meeting of Asia and Europe 1500-1800 is sponsored by Nomura.