Book excerpt: A major book about Japonisme in Danish art, design and architecture. At the end of the 19th century Danish artists were among the first in the Western world to engage with Japanese art and adopt elements of it in their work, creating an independent Danish form of expression.And that tradition has been maintained ever since. Mirjam Gelfer-Jørgensen's book about Japanese influences in Danish art, design and architecture analyses and traces this development over nearly one and a half centuries, from 1870 to 2010. Inspiration from Japanese art became a catalyst with wide-ranging and lasting effects. The impact of Japonisme was so extensive that it became an essential element in the preconditions for Danish Modernism in the 20th century and for the status as a "Design Nation" that Denmark can be proud of right up to the present day. Who knew, for example, that Danish national treasures such as the Seagull service and Bindesbøll's ceramics sprang in part from Japanese inspiration?