In Japanese Export Lacquer, 1580–1850, Oliver Impey and Christiaan Jörg quote English collector William Beckford writing in April of 1781, “I fear I shall never be . . . good for anything in this world, but composing airs, building towers, forming gardens, [and] collecting old Japan” (296). Beckford’s idea of “collecting old Japan” is a reflection of the importance that the black-lacquer and gilt-decorated furnishings, caskets, and assorted decorative objects made for the European market came to occupy by the mid-eighteenth century. That the collection of these objects should command a place in this short list of a gentleman’s aspirations is testament both to the Japanese lacquerers’ skills and to the power of the Dutch trade that controlled the flow of lacquer goods from Japan to the West. In Beckford’s day Japanese lacquer had been a known rarity for more than two centuries and was still available only through a rigidly controlled and restricted trade relationship. Its cost was high, and desire for it in the great houses of Holland, France, Denmark, and England was seemingly limitless. Although we may still marvel at the refined surfaces and meticulously created imagery that adorns pieces made for the European trade, a systematic...