Chinese picture papers were imported into France by Dutch traders and used to decorate screens, desks, chimney-pieces, etc., as early as the end of the seventeenth century. By the middle of the eighteenth, they were an important ornament of elegant interiors. In the list of the furniture given to Mlle. Desmares by Mlle. Damours, September 25, 1746, is a fire-screen of China paper, mounted on wood, very simple. On July 25, 1755, Lazare Duvaux delivered to Mme. de Brancas, to be sent to the Dauphiness, a sheet of China paper with very beautiful vases and flowers, for making which he charged thirty livres. April 6, 1756, he sold to the Countess of Valentinois, for one hundred and forty-four livres, six sheets of China paper, painted on gauze with landscapes and figures. May 8, 1770, M. Marin advertised for sale in a Paris newspaper twenty-four sheets of China paper, with figures and gilt ornaments, ten feet high and three and one-half feet wide, at twenty-four livres a sheet; to be sold all together, or in lots of eight sheets each. By this time whole rooms were papered. July 15, 1779, an apartment in Paris was advertised to let, having a pretty boudoir with China paper in small figures representing arts and crafts, thirteen sheets, with a length of thirty-seven feet (horizontally) and height of eight feet ten inches, with gilt beaded moulding. Dec. 31, 1781, "For sale, at M. Nicholas's, China wall-paper, glazed, blue ground, made for a room eighteen feet square, with gilt moulding." Mr. Aumonier says: "Notwithstanding the Chinese reputation for printing from wooden blocks from time immemorial, no specimens of their work produced by that process have ever come under the notice of the author, in public museums or elsewhere, and it is far more probable that early Chinese works imported into Europe were painted by hand, in imitation of the wondrous needlework, for which, through unknown ages, the Eastern peoples have been famous. A most perfect and beautiful example of this work, of Japanese origin, may be seen in the "Queen's palace at the Hague," called the _Huis-ten-Bosch_--the House-in-the-Wood. This is a magnificent composition of foliage and flowers, birds and butterflies, perfect in form and beauty of tint, worked in silks on a ground of _écru_ satin. It is composed of many breadths forming one picture, starting from the ground with rock-work, and finishing at the top of the wall with light sprays of flowers, birds, butterflies and sky; the colouring of the whole so judiciously harmonized as to be an object lesson of great value to any decorator, and worth traveling many miles to study."