01
October 2025

THE FASHION FOR JAPAN IN EUROPE

Greater London Area
Wednesday, October 1, 2025 - 10:45 to 15:30
Linnaean Society
Burlington House London W1J 0BF

The study day will explore the impact in Europe of more than three centuries of commercial and cultural encounters between Japan and the West. With Lecturer, Anne Haworth

The study day will explore the impact in Europe of more than three centuries of commercial and cultural encounters between Japan and the West. The Mazarin chest is a prized and unique Japanese work of art made of black lacquer with gold decoration and other works of art were highly prized objects of desire sought after by wealthy European collectors. Commercial exchanges expanded in the late 19th Century, with a profusion of art objects destined for fashionable Victorian aesthetic interiors. Together with kimonos and woodblock prints, these finely crafted exotic objects were variously reinterpreted in Royal Worcester and Minton porcelain wares, in paintings by Whistler and in the tragic operatic story of Madame Butterfly.

THE ARTS SOCIETY ACCREDITED LECTURER

Ms Anne Haworth

Anne is a lecturer at the Victoria and Albert Museum, the British Museum and the Queen’s Gallery. She is a visiting lecturer for Regent's University, Sotheby's Institute and SOAS. Since 2008, she has been a member of the London faculty of Eckerd College, Florida, teaching Art History and is also an accredited Arts Society lecturer. For ten years she guided private evening tours of the State Rooms at Buckingham Palace. She lectures extensively for private groups, guides museum tours in London and has lectured on William Morris for the British Council and British Higher School of Art and Design in Moscow.  

After studying Modern History at Durham University, she trained and became a senior specialist in ceramics at the head offices in London of Bonhams (1981-1986) and Christie's (1987-1995). From 1995 to 2002, she was resident in Shanghai, China and gave lectures on the history of the China trade and European Chinoiserie to the international community of diplomats and expatriates in Shanghai and Beijing. On returning to London in 2002, she worked on a short project cataloguing Chinese ceramics at Kensington Palace and became Hon Membership Secretary and Treasurer of the French Porcelain Society.