"Antick"
In 1688 John Stalker and George Parker published a treatise on "japanning," the English practice of layering gesso and varnish on furniture to imitate genuine Asian lacquer. Their influential design book featured engravings offered as templates for other London artisans to copy. Stalker and Parker proclaimed to have exactly replicated the exotic imagery found on imported lacquerware:

In the Cutts or Patterns at the end of the Book, we have exactly imitated their Buildings, Towers and Steeples, Figures, Rocks, and the like, according to the Patterns which the best workmen amongst them have afforded us on the Cabinets, Screens, Boxes, etc.

But they also acknowledged that they modified the original designs to make them more palatable to English tastes:

Perhaps we have helpt them a little in their proportions, where they were lame or defective, and made them more pleasant yet altogether as Antick.

Stalker and Parker’s use of the term "antick" describes imagery that was amusingly bizarre or arranged with fantastic incongruity, key attributes of the Chinoiserie style.