Imperial Coral: The transformation of a natural material to a Qing Imperial Treasure (original) (raw)
Related papers
Coral: Something Rich and Strange
2013
Coral: ?Something Rich and Strange? examines the enduring fascination with coral as a material, symbol and inspiration for artists, cultures and societies across the centuries. Published to coincide with the eponymous exhibition at Manchester Museum, but exceeding it in scope and content, this richly illustrated book assembles essays and concrete object stories by art historians, artists, biologists and historians of science, who provide a comprehensive exploration of coral's mythical and metamorphic qualities; its longstanding resistance to classification; its geological and architectural significance; its religious iconography; its magical and medical properties; its decorative appeal; and its sensitivity to climate change and pollution.
2002
This research investigates the roots of Chinese export watercolours - produced at Canton for Western customers, in the 18th-19th centuries - in the local tradition of painting and illustration, attributing a 'Chinese identity' to these authentic works of art, often considered as a semi-foreign piecework derivative and inferior to literati and court painting. Furthermore, their historical and anthropological importance is also vigorously stressed: these particular paintings are presented as documents that provide an insight into Chinese traditions, customs and daily life, and reflect the evolution of the diplomatic, commercial and cultural relationships between China and the West. The discussion gradually develops through the analysis of the albums in the British Museum's collection, which, despite being one of the most comprehensive of this sort, had not been specifically examined by any scholar before. The watercolour sets, described from various angles, and compared wi...
“Treasures of the Sea: Art Before Craft,” Espacio. Tiempo y Forma 5 (2017), 15-34
Abstract: The sea, like an embryo or a foetus, seems to represent “a sort of first stage in the advancement of superior life forms.” Its fluid character suggests an early age of our world’s foundation, before fluid turns to stone. It appears as an archaic cosmos into which one descends in order to find hidden treasures in its depths. How did artisans work, shape, and integrate the varied materials of the sea into an artistic oeuvre? Which meanings were attached to these materials? When, how and why were the materials’ fluid origin remembered? The sea can be considered the great global depot of the world, which includes objects of both great and ordinary character, illustrating ambitious and innocent aspirations to an equal extent. Moreover, the particular shininess of the oceanic materials, like pearls, shells or animals’ skins, was usually associated with cosmic elements and thus emphasizes the pure and primal characters of these substances. The treasures of the sea were therefore beyond national. They were global. And their aquatic identity made them universal. Metaphorically speaking, the sea, as an object, has body, shape and even face, and is demarcated by earth and air. This amorphous entity has a solid bottom, its upper surface, namely face, touches the air, and its walls constantly struggle against solid substances such as rock and stone. In addition, its depths are unknown. There, in the heart of darkness, unconsciousness resides. This introductory essay aims at opening the so-called ’Pandora Box’ of the fluid realm of the seas. It presents this space’s great potential in providing us with vast amounts of historical information, usually ‘lying concealed`, as if under the water.
Dutch Crossing. Journal of Low Countries Studies , 2019
Many seventeenth-century Antwerp collections contained coral, both natural and crafted. Also, coral was a pictorial motif depicted by Antwerp artists on mythological scenes, still lifes, gallery pictures, and allegories. Coral was many things at the same time: a commodity crafted into jewellery and objets d’art, a popular collectable in its natural shape, a motif for Antwerp painters, an essential commodity in the European-Indian trade network, a naturalia associated with classical mythology as well as with the Blood of Christ, and a problematic naturalia that raised questions about classification, origins and natural processes. This paper provides an itinerary of coral in early seventeenth-century Antwerp. It is argued that collecting in general and collected coral in particular were related to new understandings of matter and material transformation. Coral functioned in the collection as: first, a place of appreciation for artisanal work - or ‘process appreciation’; second, as a conversation piece; and third, as a visual motif related to the understanding of matter and material transformation, the process of petrifaction in particular. Added up, this explains the value attached to this ‘unusual excrescence of nature’. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/03096564.2017.1299931