| Abstract |
This project will explore the hidden histories behind a set of early modern objects belonging to the Museum of the Home, including but not limited to a costly Flemish tapestry, a rare Japanese Arita vase, a tea caddy with rosewood bands, several pieces of Chinese porcelain and many Delftware tiles. These diverse objects all share one quality: a relationship to the Netherlandish maritime trading networks (‘Netherlandish’ here refers to the profoundly entwined economies and cultures of what is now roughly Belgium and Holland). In turn, these networks are central to understanding the many histories of early modern immigration into London, and more broadly into England, including those pertaining to colonialism and slavery. Netherlandish networks spanned the globe, from Pernambuco and Paramaribo in South America to Macau, Manila, Nagasaki and Batavia (now Jakarta) in Asia. At the centre of these networks lay the cities of Amsterdam and Antwerp, not least because their Sephardic Jewish communities facilitated otherwise difficult trading connections between Northern Europe and the extensive Spanish and Portuguese Empires. London and the emerging British Empire relied heavily on these Netherlandish networks, especially across the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Crucially, these extensive networks allowed for the circulation of merchants, skilled craftworkers, enslaved people, specific materials like tropical hardwoods, actual artworks, domestic objects and types of design that were then copied locally. The central aim of the project is to explore how these Netherlandish networks enabled the many and complex journeys resulting in the interior fittings and furnishings that increasingly formed part of home-making in early modern England as it became part of the emerging global economy. To a large extent this economy rested on colonialism and enslavement; what was homely and perhaps comforting was simultaneously imported, exotic and sometimes the product of exploitative violence. A further aim is therefore to consider how hidden stories of such violence can be told effectively yet sensitively in a museum environment. One specific concern is what homely objects might be and mean in diasporic communities, where daily lives were sometimes framed by temporary lodgings like boarding-houses as well as by religious institutions like churches and synagogues. Particular attention will be paid to relevant ritual behaviour, for example the Jewish festival of Sukkot, which is about the very notion of diasporic home-making. On a less formal level, colonial foodstuffs such as chocolate, tea and sugar may play an important role together with relevant dishes and utensils. This project is resolutely centred on object-based research but with a view to reflect on and refine this methodology by exploring the various social histories behind the early modern holdings of the Museum of the Home. In effect, the aim is to uncover the hidden histories, including those pertaining to colonialism and enslavement, behind luxury objects such as the Flemish tapestry, the Arita vase and the tea caddy with rosewood bands but also behind the well-nigh ubiquitous Delftware tiles used, for example, along skirtings and around fireplaces (the first such tiles made in northern European were from Antwerp). |
