The Chinese House, which sits in beautiful Park Sanssouci, Potsdam, is known to my daughter as the "pretty house".I'm afraid I don't share her opinion. It's a striking structure, I admit (all that gold does catch the eye), but I find this example of 18th century Prussian chinoiserie... well, baffling.
The statues of "Chinese" musicians surrounding the pavilion are obviously modelled on Europeans playing dress-up in whatever vaguely oriental-looking clothes they could find. And I'd be very impressed if anyone could explain how the architecture of the building itself resembled any authentic Chinese structure.
If something like this was built today, it would be considered incredibly ignorant and embarrassing, at best. But, hey, I'll cut the poor old park-and-palace building Prussians some slack... except for the general bad taste/ugliness, which I'm afraid is evident in all sorts of "theme" rooms in Potsdam's palaces. (Seen the shell-covered grotto room in the Neues Palais, anyone? Ghastly! No photograph does justice to its hideousness. It's so ugly, it's worth a visit.)
The tent room (Zeltzimmer) in the Charlottenhof Palace, designed to give its inhabitants the impression of being on a far-away expedition, is definitely more tent-like than the Chinese House is Chinese, so it scores higher on accuracy. But still, full points to both for imagination, I suppose! Let's give credit where credit's due... while reserving the right to shriek: "UGLY!"
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