Exotic Taste

Book excerpt: Exuberant Chinese-inspired drawing rooms, Persian-style boudoirs, bulbous Mogul domes, and Turkish smoking rooms were once the rage in avant-garde circles and are undergoing a resurgence in popularity today as the global economy brings attention to the styles of the Far East, India, and the Islamic world. Emmanuelle Gaillard and Marc Walter’s lavish new book traces the Asian sources of this fashion, and its transformation in late 19th- and early 20th-century Western settings. Illustrated with extraordinary vintage and contemporary interior photography, fabrics, wallpapers, patterns, decorative objects, and costumes, this volume tours the houses of writers, thinkers, business tycoons, princesses, and even the Russian empress Catherine the Great.Exotic Tasteis a rich treat for anyone drawn to the fantastic, elaborate style of Orientalism. Praise forExotic Taste: "Beginning in the 18th century, European tastemakers, chafing under the constraints of classicism, turned to the exotic East, swooning over the intricate patterns and scenes and lush, sensual colors found in the arts of China, Japan, India, and the Arabic world.Exotic Taste: Orientalist Interiors examines the craze for all things Eastern that resulted in such anomalies as English country houses with onion domes and the tiled fantasia, complete with trickling fountain and pool, that the Victorian painter Lord Leighton build in his London home." –Elle Décor "The lengths that collectors will go to, the money and legwork they will sink into exotic antiques completely unrelated to their daily lives, can make for transporting reading. [One of] the year’s five best books in the genre, Exotic Taste makes particularly good holiday reading because of Ms. Gaillard’s descriptions of jolly multicultural parties and intense shopping sprees." --The New York Times From Chinese-inspired drawing rooms and Persian-style boudoirs to graceful Mogul domes and Turkish smoking rooms, stylistic influences from the Far East, India and the Islamic world have inspired Western architects, artists and designers for nearly 400 years. Dripping with exotic colors and tiles, this sumptuous tome is a history lesson and design book packed into one." --Detroit News "In 'Exotic Taste,' Emmanuelle Gaillard and Marc Walter appeal to those interested in collecting, design, architecture and art history and take readers on an artistically historical journey by illustrating, through more than 200 images, the development of Orientalism through the 19th and 20th centuries." --Newsday "Exotic Taste: Orientalist Interiors[is] a sumptuous look at how decorative styles from the Far East, India and the Islamic world found their way to the west." -Houston Chronicle