Before the Far East had consistent trade networks with the Western world, each part of Asia developed its own unique style of furniture relying on local traditions and materials. In Japan, interiors typically included minimal furniture that was low to the ground to accommodate the custom of sitting on the floor, with lacquer sometimes used for surface decor. Modular rooms were often divided using paper screens embellished with painted landscape scenes. Most Indian homes were also sparsely furnished, commonly including a charpoy or low bed frame strung with a woven mat, a storage chest, and dressing table. The most ornate objects were typically made from intricately carved woods like teak or sandalwood, sometimes with ivory or bone inlays. In China, woodworking, cabinetry, and lacquer finishing—whereby several layers of natural sumac resin are applied—were well-established artforms before Europeans intruded into the region with their colonial outposts. Antique Chinese furniture typically took rectilinear forms; the most expensive pieces were crafted from hardwoods like huali, a type of rosewood, that were intricately carved into dense, layered designs. Traditional Chinese lacquer techniques included cinnabar, with its distinctive rich vermilion-color, and miaojin, in which gilded figures were layered over a dark background. During the late 18th century, as Chinese objects became increasingly accessible to wealthy Europeans and Americans, a new hybrid style of furniture and decorative objects became popular in the West: Often called Chinoiserie, or sometimes Oriental furniture, these items were constructed to reflect vague stereotypes of Chinese aesthetics, as well as those borrowed from other Eastern cultures. Chinoiserie often emphasized exotic motifs such as pagoda-style pavilions and wild animals like tigers or cranes, though applied on familiar Western forms. By this time, Indian artisans were also being encouraged to craft furniture for export markets, imitating popular Portuguese, Dutch, and British forms with decorative Indian flourishes. In turn, European furniture makers adopted the use of an opaque varnish to imitate Asian lacquer techniques, which became known as “japanning,” as well as the use of bamboo materials (or wood painted and shaped to imitate bamboo) in furniture construction. In the mid-19th century, Japan finally began opening up to foreign trade, developing furniture specifically aimed at Western audiences with heavy decoration in gold, ivory, and mother of pearl, a sharp contrast from the sleek, austere designs popular among the Japanese. Demand from foreign markets also gave the Japanese woodworking industry a boost, allowing artists to experiment with complex intarsia work known as ran yosegi, or “random parquetry,” which featured mosaics of different types of wood. By the late 19th century, as European craftsmen borrowed heavily from Japanese design, their blended aesthetic became known as Japonisme.