The volume examines the mutually constitutive relationship between the materiality of objects and their aesthetic meanings. Its approach connects material culture with art history, curation, technologies and practices of making. A central dimension of the case studies collected here is the mobility of objects between Europe and China and the transformations that unfold as a result of their transcultural lives. Many of the objects studied here are relatively unknown or understudied. The stories they recount suggest new ways of thinking about space, cultural geographies and the complex and often contradictory association of power and culture. These studies of transcultural objects can suggest pathways for museum experts by uncovering the multi-layered identities and temporalities of objects that can no longer be labelled as located in single regions. It is also addressed to students of art history, of European and Chinese studies and scholars of consumer culture.

« This eagerly awaited volume offers deep and extensive insights into the fast-growing field of material culture studies. Its fresh approach to Eurasian objects and materialities will serve as useful reading for all scholars interested in transcultural and global studies. A very helpful introductory essay. »

Sabine du Crest, University of Bordeaux Montaigne, Former Fellow, The Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies.

Inhalt

I Introduction.- EurAsian Matters: An Introduction.- II Objects Easily Forgotten.- Around the Globe: The Material Culture of Cantonese Round Tables in High-Qing China.- Unknown Transcultural Objects: Turned Ivory Works by the European Rose Engine Lathe in the Eighteenth-Century Qing Court.- Transcultural Lenses: Wrapping the Foreignness for Sale in the History of Lenses.- III Transcultural Objectifications of Nature.- From La Flèche to Beijing: The Transcultural Moment of Jesuit Garden Spaces.- Domesticating the Global and Materializing the Unknown: A Study of the Album of Beasts at the Qianlong Court.- IV Ceramic Matters.- Delftware and the Domestication of Chinese Porcelain.- A Global Crayfish: The Transcultural Travels of a Chinese Ming Dynasty Ceramic Ewer.- The Reception and Value of Chinese Porcelain in Habsburg Spain.- V Postscripts.- Transcultural Objects, Movements, and Bodies.- Looking INTO the Transcultural Object.