Susan Eberhard “The list of the King’s presents is complete;if you are not satisfied, that is your problem.”[1]—Abbé de Choisy, Ayutthaya, November 11, 1685 Introduction: A Silver Chocolatière with a Bamboo Spout Studies in early modern diplomatic history have focused on the role of gifts in navigating cultural difference and…
James Middleton The Denver Art Museum recently acquired an eighteenth-century Mexican portrait miniature painted on silver (Fig. 1). Datable to about 1770 by the sitter’s accessories and hairstyle, it represents a young woman wearing her era’s most formal garment, a court gown.[1] Why was she painted on such a luxurious…
José Andrés De Leo Martínez Entre 1718 y mediados del mismo siglo, en los talleres de Puebla de los Ángeles de la Nueva España, se realizaron una serie de cálices de plata con formas y elementos decorativos comunes que la bibliografía ha marcado como exponentes característicos de la platería angelopolitana…
Christina Clarke As a gold- and silversmith, the material knowledge I’ve gained through practice makes metal artifacts as legible as documents: the technical processes used to fabricate them can be read in their forms and textures and the marks over their surfaces. Examining the fabrication of decorative arts gives us…
Blue Lewoz, Mariane Ibrahim Gallery, Paris, France, June 10 – July 23, 2022. Visitors to Raphaël Barontini’s show Blue Lewoz at Mariane Ibrahim’s Paris gallery this past summer were greeted by the imposing figure of Creole Dancer (Fig. 1). The 9 feet by 6 feet collage of an archival photo…
Editor’s Note: Published in three installments, this intervention by L’nu interdisciplinary artist, poet, and scholar Michelle Sylliboy offers an Indigenous perspective on the colonial archive. In Part I: Reclaiming Komqwejwi’kasikl, Sylliboy presented the poetic gift she received from her ancestors that launched her creative journey reclaiming the komqwejwi’kasikl writing system…
Editor’s Note: Published in three installments, this intervention by L’nu interdisciplinary artist, poet, and scholar Michelle Sylliboy offers an Indigenous perspective on the colonial archive. Sylliboy responds to the dehumanizing accounts of her ancestors in Nouvelle Relation de la Gaspésie (Paris, 1691) and reclaims the komqwejwi’kasikl language from its author,…
Crafting Enlightenment: Artisanal Histories and Transnational Networks, ed. by Lauren R. Cannady and Jennifer Ferng (Oxford: Oxford University Studies in the Enlightenment, 2021). 418 pp.; 76 ills. $100 This edited collection started life as a colloquium. The arrangement of the published papers (dedicated to the late and greatly missed eighteenth-century…
Neil Jeffares, Dictionary of Pastellists Before 1800: Maurice-Quentin de La Tour (1704–1788) website, 2021 edition, http://www.pastellists.com/LaTour.htm. French pastellist Maurice-Quentin de La Tour (1704-1788), whose sitters included Madame de Pompadour, Jean Le Rond d’Alembert, and Voltaire, is often and justifiably lauded as a “tour de force.”[1] Neil Jeffares, the author of…
Marika Takanishi Knowles Josiah Wedgwood’s anti-slavery medallion, “Am I Not a Man and a Brother?” (1787), is widely known as an example of the fraught representation of enslaved persons during the eighteenth century. In its effort to promote the abolition of slavery through the design of a fashionable accessory, the…