What's in a Chinese Room? 20th Century Chinoiserie, Modernity and Femininity

The first three decades of the twentieth century saw a resurgence in chinoiserie in the West. This chapter uses primary sources to provide an original exploration of the ways in which 'Chinese' styles of interior design, furniture and fashion were used in Britain to communicate modern feminine identities. Marked out as an indulgent, fanciful, and hence feminine and irrational style choice, early 20th century British chinoiserie drew heavily on its previous incarnations, such as 18th century wallpapers and Chippendale chinoiserie chairs, and yet fitted well with the colour and exoticism of modern art and design. Both old and new, elite yet commonplace, the fantastical but reassuringly familiar nature of 'Chinese' design made chinoiserie a potent vehicle for the expression of modern British femininities. The chapter forms the culmination of an edited collection produced as the catalogue for the exhibition 'Chinese Whispers: Chinoiserie in Britain 1650-1930', Brighton Museum and the Royal Pavilion, 3 May- 2 November 2008, of which Sarah Cheang curated the 20th century section. The exhibition received extensive and highly positive national press coverage and was awarded Best Temporary Exhibition at the Museum and Heritage Awards 2009. The catalogue was praised as ‘insightful’ and the ‘What’s in a Chinese Room’ essay was singled out as ‘excellent’ (Burlington Magazine October 2008) and widely quoted. The production of the catalogue was supported by a Paul Mellon grant

‘“Our Missionary Wembley”: China, Local Community and The British Missionary Empire, 1901-1924.’

Western overseas missionaries have been significant conduits of knowledge about non-Western cultures. British Christian missions in China in the late nineteenth and early-twentieth century created a wealth of written and photographic sources on Chinese society. They also sent a range of Chinese material culture to Britain in order to educate and engage British congregations and thus raise money and support for the missions. This article develops debates in the history working and middle class global networks and British education history, in an exploration of missionary education and fund raising. Through cross-cultural exchanges of material goods, through the exhibiting of Chinese things and even people in Britain, and through the promotion of named individuals and institutions in China, local communities in Britain and China became intertwined. Close examination of a wealth of detail held in UK missionary archives and parish records reveals how local parish boundaries were stretched to the provinces of China, and China was condensed within the missionary empire and read through a web of British cultural values and a myriad of local allegiances. The publication of this journal was delayed until November 2008, hence its inclusion in the 2008-2013 publication period

Cornrow Culture

If hairdressing is the simultaneous cultivation of hair, self and society, then cornrows are a bumper crop. This article was commissioned by MacGuffin magazine for a special issue on 'rope' to explore some social and personal meanings of the cornrow hairstyle in contemporary fashion

Ethnicity

This chapter explores ethnicity and fashion in the nineteenth century for the new multivolume collection on the cultural history of fashion. The chapter is a significant contribution to an area that is very under-researched. By focussing on the key themes of slavery and freedom, colonialism and postcolonialism, industrialisation and indigenous craft traditions, the chapter gives an overview of the essential debates within dress history and fashion studies as they relate to issues of race. It argues for a less Eurocentric and more multidirectional understanding of the globalisation of fashion, and propose that the most crucial factors were the cultural and political mechanisms that mediated fashion exchanges across cultural boundaries

Dragons in the Drawing Room: Chinese Embroideries in British Homes

Chinese embroideries have featured in British domestic interiors since at least the seventeenth century. However, Western imperial interests in China during the mid-nineteenth and early twentieth century created a particular set of meanings around Chinese material culture, especially a colonial form of nostalgia for pre-nineteenth century China, with its emperors and 'exotic' court etiquette. This article examines the use of Chinese satin-stitch embroideries in British homes between 1860 and 1949, and explores how a range of British identities was constructed through the ownership, manipulation and display of these luxury Chinese textiles

Rethinking fashion globalization

Rethinking Fashion Globalization is a welcome call to rewrite the fashion system and push back against Eurocentric dominance within fashion histories by presenting new models, approaches and understandings of fashion from critical thinkers at the forefront of decolonial fashion discourse. This edited collection draws together richly reflective, original and diverse critiques of the fashion system from both established and emerging fashion scholars, researchers and creative practitioners. Chapters straddle current calls for decolonization and inclusion, as well as reflections on de-westernization, post-colonialism, sustainability, transnationalism, national identities, social activism, global fashion narratives, diversity and more. The volume is divided into three key themes, 'Disruptions in Time and Space', 'Nationalism and Transnationalism' and 'Global Design Practices'. These theme re-map fashion's origins, practices and futures, to present alternatives for reclaiming and rethinking fashion globalization in the 21st century

Being Chiang Yee: Feeling difference and storytelling

Chiang Yee was a Chinese writer, poet and painter who lived in England during the 1930s and 1940s. In his writing and drawings, there are many observations on the attention that his Chinese appearance provoked, all enabling him to tell stories about both Chinese and English cultures. The autobiographical persona of Silent Traveller, created by Chiang Yee in his writing, steered clear of controversial remarks, although he had strong feelings about Chinese politics, racism, and how Chinese people were regarded in Britain and America. This chapter explores how emotions, whether difficult or joyous, do not fit smoothly into linear narratives, and make personal memory an unreliable witness to history. Historians also may have a personal and emotional interest in the subjects they study. Indeed, I cannot think about Chiang Yee without resonances of my own family history, and experiences of being or embodying something of the Chinese in Britain. In a new analysis of The Silent Traveller in London (1945) and The Silent Traveller in Oxford (1946), the chapter explores what happens if we deepen rather than deny the historian’s role as storyteller, and pay closer attention to the differences and overlaps between Chiang Yee the author and Chiang Yee the Silent Traveller. Embracing the fragmented, the personal, the emotional, and the miss-remembered reveals a series of moments that speak about a Chinese physical presence in Oxford and London. These bring us closer to what it felt like to be a Chinese man in England during the 1940s, between the stories that were silenced and the things that could be said

Chinese robes in Western interiors: transitionality and transformation

Cheang’s essay is a contribution to a peer-reviewed collection of essays exploring the relationship between interior design and fashion, the body, fabric, and space since the 18th century. An authority on Asian fashion who has shaped new critical approaches to dress and colonial subjectivities, Cheang first conducted the research for this paper for ‘Fashioning Diaspora Space’, an international AHRC-funded research project conference at the V&A Museum (2009). Cheang researched the fashion of chinoiserie in late 19th-century Britain and, in particular, the ‘biographies’ of Chinese robes and sleeve bands in their journey to Britain in a period which saw the escalation of imperialist attitudes towards China. Incorporated into the lives of British women as clothing and interior design, these garments were drawn into powerful discourses of femininity, sexuality and race. Cheang’s original research materials included various forms of representation, including painted portraits and documentary photographs, trade and retail catalogues, and contemporary reports in the press. Cheang’s approach to the consumption and representation of these garments is to understand them within a moral economy of style and aesthetics, class and gender, race and imperialism, sexuality and the body, and the contradictory individualist ethic of the phenomenon of fashion. In this way, her essay advances an original argument which extends far beyond the conventional stylistic analysis of these garments in previous histories of the decorative arts or their understanding as ‘souvenirs’ of imperial China. Published reviews of this work have drawn attention to the centrality of her examples and the breadth of her analysis, one identifying it as a thought-provoking model for the writing of textile history within a volume that pays particular attention to concepts of transformation, translation and transition (Textile History, May 2012)

RECENSION DE LA TRADUCTION DE LA VIE DE TOURGUÉNIEV DE BORIS ZAITSEV, TRADUCTION RÉALISÉE PAR ANNE KICHILOV (PARIS : YMCA-PRESS, 2018)

The review examines the French translation of the book “The Life of Turgenev” by Boris Zaytsev, published in the spring of 2018. That variant of Ivan Turgenev biography was originally published in Russian in Paris, in 1949. However, it took more than half a century to give the French public a chance to get to know the life of the Russian writer better, thanks to the French translation of the book by Boris Zaytsev. The study of Turgenev’s life is relevant, on the one hand, due to the fact that his works have French roots and the year of 2018 marks the 200th anniversary of his birth. On the other hand, the resurgence of interest in the personality of the Russian writer was brought about by the publication of the French translation of his biography written by Boris Zaytsev. The method of comparative analysis applied in the review made it possible to compare the biography written by Zaytsev to previous biographies of Ivan Turgenev in French. It should be noted that Boris Zaytsev is still little known to the French readers. However, the biography of Ivan Turgenev written by him has a special artistic value, as there is a definite and very deep spiritual relationship between him and the writer himself. The objective of this review is to assess the quality of the translation made by the French translator Anna Kishilov. It is necessary to pay tribute to the work of the translator, who successfully managed to convey not only the richness of Boris Zaytsev’s Russian language, but also preserve the originality of his style, as well as many nuances and details in Ivan Turgenev’s life description. The conclusion is made that thanks to this translation of the biography of Ivan Turgenev, the French readers will discover the impressionistic style of the original text, sometimes ironic, sometimes slightly melancholic. Miraculously enough, Anna Kishilov has managed to convey the unique style of Boris Zaytsev

The generic intertext of psalms in the poetry of Marina Tsvetaeva (1892-1941)

This study investigates the presence of the genre of psalms in Tsvetaeva's poetry by means of Alastaire Fowler's theory of the historical persistence of literary genres throughout history. The main argument is that in her intertextual use of psalms Tsvetaeva develops further some of their typical features such as the expression of bafflement at God's passivity or an over-familiarity in addressing God; although these features are already present in psalms, they are not given a full-blown realisation because of the religious restrictions reigning at the time and context in which they were written. Chapter One presents the theoretical tools used in this research, namely the concomitant concepts of intertextuality and genre: intertextuality focuses on how texts differ from one another, while genre theory highlights the resemblance existing between a set of texts. Taken together these concepts offer a balanced and multisided approach. Chapter Two presents the psalms and outlines its importance in Russian poetry. It also discusses Tsvetaeva's spiritual outlook. Chapter Three demonstrates that the integration of the generic intertext of psalms into Tsvetaeva's poetry results in the modification of their praying function: Tsvetaeva's psalm-like praises to God contain a veiled expression of doubt that is absent from the Psalter; another change of the praying function of psalms performed in Tsvetaeva's poetry consists in the implicit denunciation of the absence of a feminine voice. Chapter Four shows that Tsvetaeva's mixture of the psalmic intertext with the genre of diary-writing, epistolary writing and folk songs create a fruitful interaction between the universal tone of the psalmist and the private concerns voiced in diary, letters or folk laments. Chapter Five shows that in her poetry Tsvetaeva develops further some typical features of psalms such as the theme of the sacred land and that of God's passivity