Abstract: Chinese treaty ports of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were hotbeds of political intrigue, ethnic animosities, rampant commercialism, and new cultural forms. The “Chinese deco” carpet was a product of cultural intermixing in the treaty port of Tientsin (Tianjin).

By the late 19th century, foreigners had discovered the enormous stocks of sheep’s wool available in Mongolia, Tibet, and the semi-nomadic borderlands of China.A brisk wool trade had developed, centered in Tientsin.Chinese merchants brokered the deals, and American, British, German and Japanese firms were the primary buyers.

Chinese carpets were known in the West in and before the nineteenth century, but foreign pillaging of Chinese homes in the wake of the Boxer Rebellion introduced a small flood of classical Chinese carpets to the Western market.

When World War I closed the shipping lanes from Europe to the Middle East, the Islamic rug supply was lost to the West.That provided a singular opportunity for the wool merchants of Tientsin to try their hand at rug-making.The results ranged from the nightmarish to the sublime as the rug manufacturers learned how to use the new chemical dyes on the market, practiced with rug construction, and tried to assimilate the design currents of the early twentieth century.

Chinese art students studying abroad brought back their impressions of what was new in Paris, London and Tokyo. Japanese art schools at the time were modeled on the French salon, so many Chinese students learned about impressionism, Fauvism, and all the other –isms via Japanese art schools.In addition, Japanese teachers helped to set up China’s new educational system after the fall of the Qing.

It should not be surprising, therefore, that the Tientsin carpet designs showed the influence of Japanese and French techniques and motifs.Japan’s rich textile and block print traditions were in the air in France and Tokyo, and therefore in Tientsin.Most of the Tientsin rugs were designed by Chinese designers from other media, such as embroidery.The designers probably did not know the sources of the styles and colors with which they were playing, but currents in the Western and Japanese art worlds influenced the direction in which they would go.

A slide presentation accompanies this paper, showing Tientsin rug designs, Tientsin rugs now in the United States, and Japanese motifs from which the Tientsin designers may have drawn inspiration.The relationships among French, Japanese and Chinese expressions of the 1920s’ “deco” aesthetic are suggested.