Agenda
GULBENKIAN.PT
  • Conference

The Global Table in the 18th Century 

From Silver and Glass to Lacquer and Porcelain

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The Gulbenkian Conference in Art History is a new biannual initiative by the Calouste Gulbenkian Museum, stemming from the desire to bring together innovative themes and methodologies related to the study of its collection.

 

The first edition, entitled The Global Table in the 18th Century: from Silver and Glass to Lacquer and Porcelain, seeks to emphasise exchanges and understand the web of relationships, now known as foodways, related to the production, preparation and presentation of food in the Early Modern world.

Adopting a transcultural approach, the conference takes the recently published catalogue of the Museum’s Silverware collection as its point of departure to explore the wide geographical space of Calouste Sarkis Gulbenkian’s collection, from Europe to Japan, and from Africa to the Americas.

The panel is composed of ten scholars representing disciplines as diverse as Art History, Social and Economic Studies and Anthropology applied to the study of food in the past. These experts examine how the global circulation of foodstuffs, objects, materials, techniques and people during the 18th century affected customs and practices connected with the table and dining.

Speakers

Programme

09:30 / Welcome

10:00 / Opening

Guilherme d’Oliveira Martins – Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, LisbonAntónio Filipe Pimentel – Calouste Gulbenkian Museum, Lisbon

Part I. The Local Table in the Global World

Moderator:
Rui Xavier – Calouste Gulbenkian Museum
10:20 / French 18th-century Silver in the Collection of Calouste Gulbenkian: from Table Services to Collector’s Trophies
The research necessary for the preparation of the catalogue of the French silver in the collection of Calouste Gulbenkian has produced a wealth of information concerning the works, their makers, patrons, usage, provenance, and the collector’s interests. However prestigious the princely, royal, or imperial commissions of dinner services, their dismantling knows a long history and often started when the patron died. Sometimes a chain of successions delayed the coming on the market of major pieces of silver. For instance, the decision of the Soviet government to sell historic pieces from the national collection proved to be a unique opportunity for Gulbenkian to acquire many silver trophies. The presence of this major group of works changed profoundly the character of his collection, carefully displayed in his Parisian residence with the doors closed for all those interested. The trophy status of the silver, prolonged almost by definition by their display in the museum, has contributed to a lack of interest in their makers, their artistic accomplishments, and the role silverware had in eighteenth century high society dining in Europe.Peter Fuhring – Paris
10:45 / Across the Table, Around the World: The Spectacle of Dining in 18th-century Europe
In the first chapter of his ‘Tableau de Paris’ (1783), Louis Sébastien Mercier invites his readers on a trans-continental trip without leaving the tea table: ‘China and Japan have supplied the porcelain in which the fragrant tea from Asia bubbles; with a spoon dug from the mines of Peru, one takes sugar which unfortunate Negroes, transplanted from Africa, have grown in America’. This paper examines 18th-century written sources such as recipe books, letters, and travellers’ accounts, to consider the impact foodstuffs from beyond Europe had on the design and decoration of European tableware, and on the spectacle of dining itself.Kirstin Kennedy – Victoria and Albert Museum, London— INTERMISSION 20 min. —
11:30 / Dining and Drinking in China during the 18th Century
The history of new western crops in China started in the late Ming dynasty (the 16th-17th centuries) but it was in the 18th century that their revolutionary effect was felt. They gave greater variety to the diets of rich and poor, and enabled a population that had reached the limits of its traditional resources to expand anew. Maize, sweet potatoes, Irish potatoes and peanuts all became basic crops in China. The presentation will not concentrate on the diet of the poor, but on that of the prosperous gentry, and of the imperial household, especially during the powerful reigns of the Kangxi, Yongzheng and Qianlong emperors in the 18th century. Textual records and artefactual evidence will be used to illustrate vessels used in the consumption of food, alcohol and tea, including pieces in the Calouste Gulbenkian Museum. Rose Kerr – London
11:55 / From Baghdad to the Talavera of Puebla. How an Islamic Art Form became a Mexican Icon
This presentation takes an historical look at how the tin-glaze industry came into being in Mexico, thousands of miles away from its roots. The question of why the industry survived and then thrived is intriguing, because in the countries where it first developed – Iraq, Iran, Egypt, Syria and even Spain - the industry has almost completely disappeared or has been superseded by cheaper machine-made products. Mexico’s unique history established the core tensions in perceptions giving rise to both its survival and continuation – tin-glaze, known in Mexico as ‘Talavera’, reflects the history in full. To look closely at one piece of Talavera – its design, shape, and production – is to peer into a history that has crossed cultural divides and continents.Farzaneh Moussavi – Oxford University

12:20 / Debate

— INTERMISSION 75 min. —

Part II. Circulation of Food and People

Moderators:
Inês Brandão – Calouste Gulbenkian Museum, Lisbon
14:00 / In the Realm of Pomona. Sugar Delights and Sweet Vanities on Portuguese Tables in the 18th Century
William Beckford, in 1793, wrote that Portuguese desserts were so extravagant that Pomona, goddess of abundance, wouldn’t feel ashamed of carrying her fruits before such sumptuousness. An image that portrays a unique characteristic of Early Modern Portuguese foodways, the fascination for sugar and sweets. With a prominent position in the global market of sugar since the 15th century, Portugal developed an exacerbated social valorisation and a voluptuous taste for sweets. In consequence, a multifarious universe of producers and consumers grew over the centuries, where kings, nuns, confectioners and servants became tangled in a world of sweet vanities that reached its peak in the ‘golden’ 18th century. Paradoxically, the culinary formulas used were associated with traditional centenary recipes, reluctant to novelty and international trends, centred in the use of a restricted group of ingredients manipulated with an outstanding creativity and art, and used to astonish the consumers by a multisensorial experience. João Pedro Gomes – Universidade de Coimbra and Escola de Hotelaria e Turismo de Coimbra
14:25 / The Evolving Identity of Chocolate, Tea and Coffee in 18th-century Europe: Appropriation, Sociability and Social Geography of their Circulation
Although more than 1300 varieties of cocoa beans have been discovered so far around the world, today, the Forastero cocoa makes up over 80% of world production and is mainly grown in Africa, Ecuador and Brazil. Yet, this was not the case in the 18th century, when this cocoa’s variety was grown mainly in Guayaquil and its circulation was limited to the Novohispanic market. How did this geography of production came to be and how did the Forastero takeover the world? This talk will deepen the mechanisms of diffusion of chocolate within the Spanish Empire and beyond, taking into consideration how Atlantic trade politics, forms of cultural appropriation and sociability, as well social segmentation, all intertwined through boomerang effects that indeed fueled the demand for chocolate on both sides of the ocean and chocolate’s passage from Atlantic to global commodity in the following century.Irene Fattacciu – Università di Torino
14:50 / Table of Wood | Table of Silver: Slavery, Hunger and Abundance
Isabel Castro Henriques – LisbonThe 18-century global table not only comprised silver, glass, lacquer and porcelain, but was also the product of a collision of opposing realities: on the one hand, the abundance, wealth and high social status of the European players in 18-century society, and on the other, the hunger, poverty and violence experienced by the African slaves behind Europe’s economic and social success at the time. ‘Wooden Table | Silver Table’ both symbolises and expresses this tension: while silver symbolises the wealth and profit of the European slavers and colonisers of the Americas, wood symbolises the starvation diet of the slaves (‘farinha de pau’ or manioc flour), as well as the punishments and daily violence they were subjected to (‘pau’ also means ‘stick’ in Portuguese) as part of the work and dehumanisation that marked their short lives. By eating this ‘farinha de pau’, the slaves simultaneously fuelled lavish, silver-laden feasts.
15:15 / Debate
— INTERMISSION 20 min. —

Part III. Meals and Space: the Dining Room

Moderators:
Clara Serra and Jessica Hallett – Calouste Gulbenkian Museum, Lisbon
16:00 / The World on a Miniature Plate. The Material Culture of Food in Dutch Doll Houses
The Rijksmuseum owns two late 17-century doll houses, assembled by Petronella Dunois and Petronella Oortman. A third one, the doll house of Petronella de la Court, is now in the Centraal Museum in Utrecht. They were collectors’ cabinets rather than children’s toys, showing entire homes on scale, from reception rooms to servants’ spaces and, in the latter case, even the garden. All these women collectors seem to have indulged especially in setting up their miniature kitchens, cellars, and pantries. Of all the objects in doll houses, most are related to food. We find a wide array of simple everyday objects like pots and pans for cooking or wooden barrels and glazed earthenware pots to store a wide array of dry staple foods, but also imported luxuries like lacquerware and porcelain from China and Japan, not to mention the foodstuffs themselves, from local cheeses to foreign candied fruits. While many full-sized equivalents of these objects have come down to us, whether through excavations or because they were collected, they have lost their original context. The doll houses are a unique source to study the relation between the material culture of eating and drinking, foodstuffs, and space. Moreover, like real interiors, doll houses were not static. Women continued to expand their collection of miniature objects and changed their tiny interiors according to the latest fashions, as did later owners in the eighteenth century. Some of these women kept notebooks and combined with inventories of the doll houses and descriptions by visitors we even get an impression of changes happening over time.Sara van Dij – Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam
16:10 / Dining in Damascus: Setting the Table in an 18th-century Reception Room
In 2014, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art acquired a relatively complete interior of a reception room from Damascus, dated 1180 AH/1766-67. Known as a ‘qa‘a’, it would have been the centerpiece of the home, its opulent materials demonstrating the family’s wealth and social status. Such well-preserved interiors help to document contemporaneous dining traditions and the role such spaces played not only in hospitality and feasting but in the display of the related tableware. Here, the room’s cornices incorporate detailed depictions of platters of fruit, nuts, and even perhaps baklava, which must have served to whet the appetites of visitors as they awaited similar refreshments, while the ample storage shelves suggest that prized ceramics and other dining paraphernalia stored there were part of the spectacle of entertaining guests. This paper will therefore focus on the specific information to be gleaned from the LACMA interior in terms of its related culinary and dining context.Linda Komoroff – Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA)
16:35 / From Artichokes to Gruyère Cheese. Calouste Gulbenkian's Table
In 1935, upon seeing the table set for Calouste Gulbenkian's breakfast in his room at 51 Avenue d'Iéna, Kenneth Clark marvelled at the ‘douceur de vivre’ of the scene. Two eggs in a silver gilt ‘tazza’, designed by Charles Percier, stood out among the main components of the meal. The Parisian residence, visited by the Director of the National Gallery on that occasion, had been acquired by the collector in 1922 with the aim of realising a lifelong goal: to bring the collection together under one roof. With the Gulbenkian mansion as a backdrop, this talk reveals, on the one hand, the kitchen and the settings where meals were usually taken; on the other, it explores the collector's gastronomic habits and predilections. As in other contexts, Calouste Gulbenkian's table reflects the cultural and geographical crossovers in which he was born and lived, as well as the exacting standards and quality that invariably guided his actions in both his personal and professional life.Vera Mariz – University of Lisbon and Calouste Gulbenkian Museum, Lisbon
16:50 / Debate and Conclusions
João Carvalho Dias – Calouste Gulbenkian Museum
17:00 / Workshop - Reconstructing a Global Refreshment
João Pedro Gomes – Universidade de Coimbra and Escola de Hotelaria e Turismo de Coimbra

Credits

Organization

Jessica Hallett – Coordinator of Research, Calouste Gulbenkian Museum
André Afonso – Silverware Curator, Calouste Gulbenkian Museum

The Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation reserves the right to collect and keep records of images, sounds and voice for the diffusion and preservation of the memory of its cultural and artistic activity. For further information, please contact us through the Information Request form.

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