Admiral Matthew C. Perry’s forced opening of Japan to trade in 1854 led to a craze for Eastern design in Europe and the United States. As Asian goods flowed into the West, designers soon began adapting motifs for their own wares. Japonisme became an influential branch of Aesthetic design which valued the exotic, non-Western designs as morally superior, free from the corrupting influences of European industrialism and capitalism. This Royal Worcester vase was designed in 1876, not long after French art critic Philippe Burty coined the term “japonisme” in 1872. The visual vocabulary of japonisme, if not the word itself, must have been present in the artist’s consciousness. The influence of Aesthetic Movement japonisme is obvious in this petite object.