If collecting the rare and valuable is an entirely normal trait of human behaviour, amassing objects from far-away places has also long played a role in the history of collecting. "East" and "West", or "North" and "South", for that matter, are of course entirely relative to one's particular geographical position. Therefore, it is interesting that collecting exotic objects is an endeavour that unites humanity over millennia and round the globe. The ancient Assyrians did so as assiduously as eighteenth-century collectors in Paris or London; Chinese emperors collected Western art and artefacts at a time when Western collectors started to gather ceramics, lacquered furniture, or South-East Asian prints. Key factors were, of course, increasingly frequent contact and an ever growing knowledge about the "other" and about the other's artistic production. Of particular interest to the mission of this working group is the fact that the building of collections was only part of the endeavour but that, in many cases, the objects imported at huge cost and logistic effort were meant to be displayed in surroundings reminiscent of their original habitat, even though their exact original context may have been open to debate and their final exhibition surroundings may have been unrecognisable to anyone from their former home. Western collectors built Chinese cabinets for their exotic treasures, often complemented by depictions of Oriental tea parties. Less familiar is perhaps the fact that, from the seventeenth century onwards, Chinese emperors displayed their European collectibles in palaces built for them for this purpose in Western architectural style. The essays in the present volume, therefore, attempt to connect the collections of exotic objects with the forms of display adopted by collectors and institutions and thus chart the levels of increasingly informed and intimate encounters between East and West, scholars and collectors, art lovers and institutions from the early first millennium BC to the early twentieth century and from South-East Asia to North-Western Europe.

如果说收集稀有和有价值的东西是人类行为的一个完全正常的特征，那么从遥远的地方收集物品在收藏史上也长期发挥着作用。当然，"东方 "和 "西方"，或 "北方 "和 "南方"，完全是相对于个人的特定地理位置而言的。因此，有趣的是，收集异国物品是一项凝聚人类几千年来和全球各地的努力。古代亚述人这样做，就像十八世纪巴黎或伦敦的收藏家一样勤奋；当西方收藏家开始收集陶瓷、漆器家具或东南亚版画的时候，中国的皇帝也收集了西方的艺术和工艺品。当然，关键因素是日益频繁的接触，以及对 "他者 "和他者的艺术作品不断增长的知识。对本工作组的任务特别感兴趣的是，建立收藏品只是努力的一部分，在许多情况下，以巨大的成本和物流努力进口的物品是为了在让人联想到其原始栖息地的环境中展示，尽管其确切的原始环境可能还有待商榷，其最终的展览环境可能对任何来自其以前家园的人来说都是无法辨认的。西方收藏家为他们的异国珍宝建造了中国柜子，经常辅以东方茶会的描述。不太为人所知的是，从十七世纪开始，中国皇帝在西方建筑风格的宫殿中展示他们的欧洲收藏品。因此，本卷中的文章试图将异国物品的收藏与收藏家和机构采用的展示形式联系起来，从而描绘出从公元前一千年早期到二十世纪早期，从东南亚到西北欧，东方与西方、学者与收藏家、艺术爱好者与机构之间日益知情和亲密的接触程度。