AS ONE OF THE EARLIEST EXPONENTS of japanning in the Midlands, Baskerville helped lay the foundations of an industry which would become, for almost 200 years, one of the staple trades of Birmingham and nearby Wolverhampton and Bilston. He was as important a japanner as he was a printer; indeed, it was japanning that financed his printing. And yet this aspect of Baskerville's trade has, until recently, been largely overlooked. The reason is twofold: first, records of Baskerville's japanning workshop are scant in relation to those covering his printing interests, and second, perhaps more significant, none of Baskerville's japanned ware has been identified.

This chapter raises as many questions as it answers but, by so doing, it may trigger the discovery of further records, or well-documented examples of Baskerville's japanned ware. In the meantime, evidence from contemporary diaries, journals and letters help form an understanding of the scale of his japanning workshops and the goods he produced. The objects illustrated, while they cannot be said to have been made by Baskerville, are sufficiently close to descriptions left by himself and by visitors to his manufactory to serve as reliable indicators of how his products may have looked.

First, it will be helpful to explain why a Midlands industry took its name from the East and to define the term ‘japanning’ as applied to Baskerville's trade. When oriental lacquer was first seriously imported into the West by the English East India Company, in the seventeenth century, each shipment was keenly awaited by those who could afford its high cost. In order to compete with this exotic, richly decorated furniture, European cabinet-makers began to make less expensive imitations. But any likeness they achieved was merely superficial for they had to find substitutes for the natural lacquers of the East. With little understanding of how to distinguish between Japanese, Chinese and Indian lacquer, contemporary descriptions in Western inventories were largely whimsical and it became fashionable to believe that Japanese lacquer was superior. This is reflected in both the title of the book, A treatise of japaning[sic] and varnishing(1688), and in its pages where it is explained: ‘My skill and fancy induce me to believe, that Japan is more rich, grave and Majestick, and for that reason ought to be more highly esteemed’.