The decorative style inspired by Chinese art that became popular in Rococo interiors was chinoiserie.
Chinoiserie was a European style that imagined and adapted Chinese and broader East Asian forms for Western decoration. Its name comes from the French word chinois, meaning Chinese. Rather than reproducing Chinese art exactly, it often combined European craftsmanship with pagodas, exotic landscapes, fanciful figures, dragons, birds, flowers, lacquer effects, and asymmetrical compositions.
The style entered European art and interiors during the seventeenth century and reached peak popularity around the middle of the eighteenth century, when it blended naturally with Rococo’s love of lightness, fantasy, irregular curves, and ornamental variety. Chinoiserie appeared in painted rooms, wallpaper, porcelain, furniture, lacquer imitations, tapestries, and garden pavilions.
Louis XV’s France helped popularize the fashion, while artists including François Boucher contributed designs associated with an idealized “Chinese taste.” It was also adopted in German, Russian, English, and other European courts. Chinoiserie is not the same as Japonism, which developed later from interest in Japanese art, or trompe-l’œil, which describes an illusionistic technique rather than an East Asian-inspired style.