Luxury Objects Research Articles

Chryselephantine Couches, Feasting, and Imperial Violence in Hellenistic Macedonia

Macedonian chryselephantine couches - exquisitely carved and gleaming with gold, glass, and ivory - offer a particularly illuminating case study of the material ramifications of Alexander the Great’s conquests for Hellenistic art. Well-documented in archaeological remains and written texts, the couches also offer a concrete lens through which to analyze the transfer of cultural knowledge about feasting: an ephemeral activity as significant for Hellenistic kings as for their Persian predecessors. This article examines the couches’ archaeological contexts, the aristocratic tombs in which they were found and the elaborate palaces and elite houses in which they were likely first used. It then analyzes the couches themselves as delicate luxury objects that nonetheless, in their iconography, style, and even their material, highlighted the violence of Macedonian imperialism. And finally, it considers the ephemeral practices through which the couches were activated for their patrons, that is, the feasts and funerals at which the Macedonian aristocracy both emulated and reacted against Persian precedents. This re-evaluation of Macedonian chryselephantine couches illuminates global interconnections during the formative period of Hellenistic art.

Stolen Horses and Scented Garments: Vegetal and Mineral Yellow in Arabic Technical Literature

Mediaeval Arabic technical literature shows a keen interest in yellow dyes, paints, varnishes, inks, and even perfumes. Recipes reveal that yellow was viewed as just one step away from gold, with preparations for these two colours often sharing ingredients and techniques. In the unfolding of procedures and applications to different materials, from skin to textiles, Arabic sources also offer a glimpse into daily life and shared tastes, presenting luxury objects along with their imitations. This paper traces the role played by yellow and gold in inks, cosmetic dyes, and coloured, scented fabrics, exploring the textual dimension of these recipes, their technical features, and their social role between the court and the street. It also presents translations of several important recipes for yellow and gold dyes, which illustrate their diversity of applications, while also addressing such material problems as durability and substitution.

Saint Dymphna by Goossen van der Weyden – An Up-to-date Princess

In 2020, two major exhibitions brought to Tallinn by the PhoebusFoundation, the largest private art collection in Belgium, opened atthe Art Museum of Estonia. While the exhibition at the KadriorgArt Museum exhibited numerous works from the Golden Age of theFlemish painting, the exhibition at the Niguliste Museum made theDymphna altarpiece from the Goossen van der Weyden workshop(ca 1505) its focus. The altarpiece was dismantled in the 19th centuryafter which the panel depicting the decapitation of Dymphna was lost.The exhibition was accompanied by a monograph reflecting on themajor topics connected to the Dymphna altarpiece and presentingthe results of the conservation work carried out between 2017 and2020. One of the aspects the book considers is the material culturerepresented in the Dymphna altarpiece.The clothing and textiles of the protagonists receive special attentionin the monograph, for example when questions such as if the garmentsworn by the princess and the king are fashionable or out of dateare raised. This article explores this question taking the portraitsof Habsburg and Castilian princesses painted in around 1500 andnot used for comparison in the monograph as its point of departure.In this paper I propose, that the clothing and accessories ofprincess Dymphna are modelled on the image of contemporaryHabsburg-Castilian princesses, and that such modelling has politicalimplications. The role of Antwerp as a merchant city must also notbe forgotten in this context, as the appearance of luxury objects in anartwork is in direct correlation with the city’s milieu of merchandise,luxury production, and the marketing of the city.

Mining for Gold in Visigothic Iberia: Archaeological Perspectives on Economy, Landscape, and Labour

ABSTRACT Gold coins and luxury objects together play a prominent role in the presentation of Visigothic culture in museums as well as in discussions of the early medieval economy and political history of the Iberian Peninsula. Despite this, there is little consensus about the processes by which gold was exploited under Visigothic rule. This article assembles the disparate evidence for mining in Atlantic Iberia, where plentiful gold deposits were previously extracted on a large scale under Roman rule in the north-west and along the Tagus River. It discusses the contributions of numismatic and liturgical objects as well as the limited direct evidence for mining. It then integrates this evidence into discussions of rural settlement, arguing ultimately that mining should be seen as part of a diversified economic strategy among rural labourers, likely carried out on a small-scale basis alongside agriculture and other subsistence activities.

“Thrice Precious Tube!”: Negotiating the Visibility and Efficiency of Early Hearing Aids

Abstract In the nineteenth century, acoustic hearing aids (such as ear trumpets or conversation tubes) became ubiquitous attributes of deaf people from polite society. These prostheses were a visible sign of otherwise invisible deafness. Although some deaf people used hearing aids openly and proudly, and constantly attempted to convince others that using them was nothing to be ashamed of, others wanted to hide these stigmatizing devices. Therefore, they were equally (or even more) concerned with their visibility than with their performance when buying these devices. For this reason, manufacturers tried to design instruments to meet the needs of their customers. This article investigates two design strategies that were used by ear trumpet producers to maneuver between the troubling visibility of these instruments and their performance: the first is hypervisibility—designing hearing aids as luxurious objects of conspicuous consumption; the second is invisibility, which was achieved with miniaturization and camouflage. Both these aesthetic strategies are considered in the context of Victorian technophilia and regimes of the body. As hearing aids became more accessible to the middle class, design patterns spread beyond elite consumption.

‘Enrichment’ as a Pragmatist and Structuralist Contribution to Economic Sociology: Perspectives on the Approach of Economics and Sociology of Conventions

The article discusses main contributions and results of the monograph Enrichment: A Critique of Commodities, written by the French sociologists Luc Boltanski and Arnaud Esquerre. Boltanski and Esquerre focus on the strategy to transform ‘the past’ (patrimony, luxury objects, tradition, collections) into new sources of richness. The book focuses on valuation forms and valuation discourses. Enrichment links Boltanski’s work again to the socio-economic movement of the economics and sociology of conventions (in short, EC/SC), which is part of the new French social sciences and regards conventions as logics of valuation and interpretation. This approach of EC/SC is introduced as a frame to evaluate the recombination of pragmatism and structuralism which is proposed by Boltanski and Esquerre. Finally, open questions and desiderata are addressed from the standpoint of EC/SC.

ԿՇՌԱՔԱՐ` ՀԱՅՏՆԱԲԵՐՎԱԾ ԱՐՏԱՇԱՏ ՄԱՅՐԱՔԱՂԱՔԻ ՏԱՐԱԾՔԻՑ (ՀԱՅ.) / SCALE WEIGHT FOUND IN TERRITORY OF ANCIENT CAPITAL ARTASHAT

Scale weights of the ancient period are rare, so every such find can be a new word not only in the Armenia’s history of the economy and culture, but also in antique archaeology of the region. Unfortunately, the scale weight that is the subject of the article was not found during the excavations, but was acquired from a private person. This does not allow a full study of the weight in its archaeological environment, which could have answered more questions. There are almost no data on the discovery of ancient weights from Armenia, including the capital of Artashat. At first glance, it seems strange, especially if we take into account the large number of foreign coins, several thousand sealings and imported luxury objects found in the territory of Artashat, which are evidence of the city as a developed trade center. The bronze weight from in the territory of Artashat has the shape of a scallop seashell and weights 135.89 g, which corresponds to ten shekels according to the Tyrian light weight standard. The weight of the shekel/tetradrachm/stater, the main unit of the monetary system of Phoenician Tyre, varies from 12.5 to 14.5 grams and weighs lighter than the Attic tetradrachm (about 15.5 – 17.5 grams). The standard of the weight, which corresponds to the Jewish-Phoenician weight system, gives reason to assume that it came to Artashat from the Levant region, more precisely from the Jewish-Palestinian world. The coins of Tyre with Melqart/Heracles on the obverse and an eagle on the reverse became money that the Jews paid the temple tax. These coins were issued in Tyrian lighter weight standard used in Jewish-Palestinian world. This weight-monetary system is discussed in Armenian medieval sources detailed in context of Bible metrology. The fact that Artashat had close relations with Judea and, probably, there was a Jewish community here, is evidenced both by written sources and by the Judean coins found during excavations of Armenian ancient capital. The bronze scale weight dates from the 2nd – 1st centuries BC, which can be considered as evidence of trade and economic relations between Hellenistic Armenia and the countries of the Levant.

Visualizing the Emperor’s Pantheon

Abstract In the early 1740s, a set of carved lacquer containers were imperially commissioned in Suzhou to hold Daoist and Buddhist scriptures transcribed by the Qianlong emperor. Decorated with numerous deities in bas-relief, these understudied luxury objects shed new light on Buddhist and Daoist material cultures at the High Qing court and offer a glimpse of the imperial patron’s religious cosmology. Focusing on Qianlong’s two miniature pantheons and tracing the life history of objects in Qing palaces, this article explores the key role played by sacred images in elevating devotional objects of religious significance. As the most important offerings to Daoist and Buddhist deities, the lacquer boxes containing imperially transcribed scriptures were set on altars in different temples in the Forbidden City, even after Qianlong’s death. Characterized by rich religious symbolism, the Daoist and Buddhist icons designed for the containers embody visual efficacy that elevated the concealed scriptures and complemented the sacred spaces where they were enshrined.

Review: Crafting Enlightenment: Artisanal Histories and Transnational Networks

Review: <i>Crafting Enlightenment: Artisanal Histories and Transnational Networks</i>

Flow of Resources in a Changing World

The influx of prestigious foreign objects into Southern Scandinavia throughout the Iron Age and Viking Age is well-documented. For example, Roman or Frankish luxury objects would find their way north via trade or through dynastic gift exchanges as part of a conspicuous elite culture.&#x0D; Access to crucial raw materials has in many ways been formative for both prehistoric and historic societies. The availability – or lack thereof – of specific resources could determine technological developments, and the need for nonlocal raw materials could shape evolving networks. For prehistoric and early historic times in Southern Scandinavia, the written sources and typological studies have limited value in determining the provenance of various raw materials. A typological deduction based on design can indicate the area of production for certain artefacts, but the raw materials used might originate from elsewhere. Based on scientific methods, this study sets out to map and analyse the geography of the available provenances of materials used in archaeological objects. From where did the raw materials found in Southern Scandinavia originate? Was there a connection between the flow of raw materials and the political situation?

Re-arranging dressing practices: The role of objects in spreading ugly luxury

How do ugly luxury objects, in terms of their materials, design, and marketing communication efforts, trigger changes in consumers’ enactments of good taste? This article explores the trend of ugly shoes to understand how consumer practices, under a specific taste regime, change in relation to a luxury object deemed ugly at first sight. Using the lenses of practice theory and extended materiality, we demonstrate that objects, competences, and meanings evolve together and are destabilized and restabilized into new rearrangements as consumers interact with ugly luxury objects. More specifically, we show that every element belonging to an ugly luxury object’s extended materiality (i.e., materials, design, and meanings from marketing communication efforts) works to trigger changes in taste regimes.

A Short History of Feather Fans' Spread and Cultural Connotations: From Bronze Age Africa East to China and West to Europe

As archaeological evidence shows, the earliest feather hand fans were not from China, but spread north from Sudan to New Kingdom Egypt. They reached Greece in the 400s b.c. and Italy a century later. By about a. d. 200, feather fans spread eastward from Africa to China along Indian Ocean trade routes. This spread of feather fans across Afro-Eurasia was accompanied by shifting cultural associations. Early African and Southwest Asian ostrich and peacock feather fans seem to have symbolized rebirth. As imported luxury objects in Greece and Rome (as in the Americas), fans signified wealth and sophistication. But at both ends of the Silk Road, in China and Europe, feather fans also stood in for the suspect foreign immigrant. In Renaissance Europe, fans still represented resurrection and sophistication, but after the Reformation, fans lost their connection to rebirth, and instead developed Orientalist, feminizing connotations that supported powerful colonial and commercial interests.

Luxury and Modernism: Architecture and the Object in Germany 1900–1933

Luxury and Modernism: Architecture and the Object in Germany 1900–1933

Parading Staurothekes in Norman Sicily: Relics, Community, and the Conversion of the Other†

This article explores the liturgical functions of cross‐shaped staurothekes, reliquaries of the True Cross, in twelfth‐century Sicily. These luxurious objects were once at the centre of the devotion of the growing Christian communities on an island undergoing dramatic social changes. This contribution examines the figuration of these crosses and the messages they conveyed to their audiences, focusing on documented processions as displays of public piety. To this end, the contents of two liturgical manuscripts from Palermo, evidence in contemporary pictorial arts and coinage, and the urban layout of the Norman capital will shed light on the reception of the symbol of the cross in the cosmopolitan, yet increasingly intolerant Sicilian kingdom.

O pożyczaniu książek w Hiszpanii Złotego Wieku

One of the least investigated aspects of access to literature in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Spain is the phenomenon of lending and renting books. This is a complex problem not only due to the necessity of co-occurrence of at least two sides of the procedure and the diversity of their motivation, but also the controversy of the act, around which fierce discussions were taking place then. Some of the humanists casted doubt on the purpose of collecting books in libraries if they were not being used to spread knowledge. At the same time, books, although they were still valuable goods, were no longer considered luxurious objects. The act of borrowing (and not paying for them) was seen as a diminution of their value, a testimony of bad reading, which in addition affected the activities of entities related to the book market. Some booksellers tried to adapt to that reality by offering the possibility of renting books for a fee. The documentation of the phenomenon that we have today is rather fragmentary, and the testaments of people who borrowed the book or awaited its return prove to be the richest source of information. In addition, an important source should be the literature of the period, which not only described the phenomenon of borrowing books, but also participated in discussions related to it.

Printing the Bespoke Book

Abstract In 1482, Erhard Ratdolt, a prominent German printer in Venice, issued the editio princeps of Euclid’s Elements. Ratdolt experimented with the new technology of printing to overcome the difficulty in arranging geometric diagrams alongside the text. This article examines the materials and techniques that Ratdolt used in his edition of Elements including his use of vellum, gold printing, and illumination for special copies as well as his use of woodcuts, movable type, and metal-cast diagrams. Significantly, the legacy of Ratdolt’s innovations continued almost one hundred years later in subsequent editions of Elements. In 1572, Camillo Francischini printed Federico Commandino’s Latin translation and commentary, and today, there are at least two surviving copies of this edition printed on blue paper. Both printers, Ratdolt and Francischini, used the printing press to produce unique and bespoke books using material and visual cues from luxury objects like illuminated manuscripts. These case studies of Euclid’s Elements brings together the fields of art history, history of the book, and the history of geometry, and analyzes the myriad ways that printers employed the printing press in the early modern period to elevate and modernize ancient, mathematical texts.

Biography of a Painted Vessel from Starčevo: Discovering Layers of Meaning

Scientific interest in the painted pottery of the Starčevo culture in Serbia dates back to the very beginnings of research and the first works on the relative-chronological systematization of the Early and Middle Neolithic of the central Balkans. This paper presents the deconstruction of our established notion of painted ceramics as the ultimate parameter of relative-chronological dating, the most representative material reflection of the cultural identity of the people of Starčevo culture and the highest achievements of Starčevo culture. The paper discusses circumstances and archaeological practices through which this ingrained view and knowledge of painted pottery was formed. The research is based on the analysis of the biography of a painted vessel from the Starčevo-Grad site, having in mind that a detailed life history of an object can shed light on wider phenomena in the archaeological discipline. The aim of this paper is to remind that objects do not have a single essential meaning, but that their meaning shifts and builds through changes in the historical and social context, as well as through changes of actors gathered around certain practices in which the objects are used. The biography of the painted vessel is therefore viewed as a series of assemblages of relations in two planes, through which its identity and layers of meaning were built. The first plane is the Neolithic, in which the focus is on the practices of painting and use, and the second is her life in the role of an archaeological artifact, during which she moves from the sphere of scientific research and musealization to the sphere of negotiating contemporary cultural identities. By applying a new analytical approach, we discovered that this vessel was not very skilfully and carefully painted, and that as such it does not testify to the highest achievements of Starčevo culture, but to a social practice, learning, apprentices and mastering the skill of pottery painting. Therefore, I believe that by reducing painted pottery to relative-chronological parameters and luxury objects, we lose sight of the possibilities through which we can build much more diverse interpretations of the past.

Book Review

Book Review

Pathos, Eros, and Curiosity

Abstract Miniature ivory anatomical models or manikins were first created in the late 1600s, but their history as props for man-midwives as well as kunstkammer objects has not been fully explored until now. Through an investigation of 180 models and texts surrounding them, their roles as props, playthings, and luxury objects is presented against a background of changes in craftsmanship, women’s medicine, and the art and commodity market starting in the seventeenth century. The manikins are explored in terms of their reception for various owners and audiences as well as differences in their making over time to give a framework for further study on these objects.

Els objectes de la vida quotidiana a les llars barcelonines al començament del segle XIV

À partir de l'étude d'un ensemble d'inventaires des biens des défunts, rédigés à Barcelone pendant la première décennie du XIVeme siècle, la présent travail prétend découvrir les objets quotidiens des barcelonais issus de la classe moyenne de la population. On trouve, d'abord, une grande diversité de caisses qui servaient à contenir des objets. Il y a aussi beaucoup d'étoffes, que ce soient celles qui servaient pour la confection de vêtements ou pour l'usage ménager et, plus particulièrement, celles que l'on utilisait pour la literie. À part les lits -composés de lattes ou de planches, d'une paillasse et d'un matelas-, dans les maisons les tables souvent pliables ne manquaient pas; pour s'asseoir, on utilisait des chaises, mais surtout des bancs et dessièges. On remarque, quoiqu'en nombre plus restreint, des utensiles de cuisine (des grils, des chaudières, des poêles et des broches; des cuillères, des écuelles et des assiettes). Les armes sont toujours présentes et forment tout un éventail qui va des simples lances aux trébuchets. On trouve aussi fréquemment des tables d'observation, pour connaître la position de la lune. Les garrots pour saigner n'étaient pas rares et, chez les gens riches, il y avait même des baignoires. Les objets de luxe étaient cependant beaucoup plus courants, spécialement les bagues en or serties de pierres précieuses ainsi que des cuillères et des coupes en argent. Les instruments de musique étaient, par contre, pratiquement inexistants, tout comme les objets de dévotion. Les livres étaient extrêmement rares, on n'a recensé que quelques livres de compte. Bien au contraire, les gens ne manquaient pas de bougies ni de lanternes, et l'on trouve aussi des ciseaux, des faux ou des tenailles et, surtout, des balances. L'attirail pour les mules, tels que des bâts, des arçons, des mors et parfois même des bastes, était très courant.