Art for Everyone: Japan, French Politics, and Émile Reiber’s Taxonomy of Design

• In Event: The Politics of Ornament: Ideology, Transnationalism, and Modern Design

Abstract

In 1877 the French designer Émile Reiber created a modern manual for the decorative arts. Advertised as a visual encyclopedia of industrial and decorative design, his "Album Reiber" taxonomized ornament according to material, culture, and chronology. Both affordable and portable, Reiber’s hand-held library democratized educational access to international, high-quality design. The result is a publication that maps the global intersection of design production in the later nineteenth century, a cosmopolitan vision of the decorative arts that positions Japan as a primary source of aesthetic innovation.

Punctuating the album from cover to cover, Japan has pride of place in Reiber’s global illustration of decorative design. In many respects, Reiber’s pronounced admiration of Japanese ornament perpetuates a French discourse begun under the Second Empire, which had framed Japan as an exceptional ‘island of decorators.’ Produced during France’s Third Republic, Reiber’s album also adds nuance to this Second-Empire understanding of Japan and makes key distinctions between material intended for a Western market and historic Japanese design. In its form and content, Reiber’s bibliothèque portative creates a sourcebook and access point for French readers to encounter ‘true’ Japanese style. The very production of this album enacted the democratizing principles of Reiber’s own leftist politics, while also presenting French audiences with two distinct, decorative Japans. By using Reiber’s 1877 album as a test-case, this paper explores how such carefully curated visions of Japan contributed to a shifting understanding of politics, globalized trade, decorative design, and cultural ‘authenticity’ in late nineteenth-century France.

Author

• Emily Eastgate Brink, University of Western Australia