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This article examines design books replicating Asian and Asian-inspired imagery in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century England and France. Often created to provide craftsmen with new sets of decorative patterns, the designs compiled in these books served to imitate a range of new manufactured products imported from Asia, for which local demand was growing at a steady pace. Design books provide a particularly fruitful entry point into the European conception of the ‘orient’ by synthesising exotic images from a variety of pictorial sources into convenient formats. The present discussion focuses on two specific books: A Treatise of Japaning and Varnishing, by John Stalker and George Parker, published in London and Oxford in 1688, and Livre de desseins chinois, tirés d’après des originaux de Perse, des Indes, de la Chine et du Japon by Jean-Antoine Fraisse, which appeared in Paris in 1735. Using these case studies, I argue that not all patterns found in design books were intended to be replicated on real objects; some also circulated independently as images available to a broader consumer base than previously thought. I examine the books’ contents, publishing history and the marketing strategies employed for reaching wide audiences and generating a desire for the ‘orient’. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Le Dessinateur pour les étoffes d'or, d'argent et de soie was published in Paris in 1765 despite the reservations of the silk-weaving guild of Lyons, receiving a good response in the Enlightenment press. As the first description in French of the trade of silk designer to appear in the public domain, it has become an important work on which much subsequent history has been based, often rather uncritically. This article delves into the representation of design offered by this text, evaluating it against the personal experience of its author, the literary and manufacturing heritage on which he drew, and the readership for whom it was intended. The analysis is based on the form and content of the book, the structure, vocabulary and illustrations. Comparative data are drown from two other important publications on silk manufacture, the relevant sections of Denis Diderot's Encyclopédie and Jean Paulet's L'Art du fabriquant. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]