The Getty Museum’s large and exceptional collection of oriental porcelain embellished with Parisian gilt bronze or silver is comprehensively illustrated in this revised catalogue.

The European practice of mounting exotic objects such as oriental porcelain dates from the Middle Ages and found its height of expression during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, when Chinese and Japanese porcelains reached the West in considerable quantities. To meet the growing taste for such objects in fashionable Parisian society, marchands-merciers—guild members who combined the functions of the modern interior decorator, antique dealer, and picture dealer—devised ingenious settings in silver and gilt bronze for oriental porcelains, adapting their exotic character to the French interiors of the period. With the publication of this catalogue, the beauty and rarity with which buyers of these pieces were so enamored is vividly brought to life.

• Foreword by Deborah Gribbon
• Acknowledgments
• List of Abbreviations
• Introduction
• Catalogue: Mounted Oriental Porcelain
• Appendix: Chinese Dynastic and Imperial Reign Dates
• Glossary
• Select Bibliography
• Index

Gillian Wilson is curator of Decorative Arts at the J. Paul Getty Museum.

The late Sir Francis Watson was director of the Wallace Collection, London, and surveyor of the Queen�s works of art.