Expanding the Ceramic Field in the Long 19th Century
Association for Art History Annual Conference, University of Brighton, April 4 – 06, 2019
Deadline: Nov 5, 2018
This session calls for papers that expand the field of ceramics in the long 19th century to explore alternative narratives within art, decorative art and design histories and material culture and thus move beyond the tradition of connoisseurship and the cycles of production and consumption. We maintain that ceramics in the 19th century had a profound and pervasive presence: a rare Kangxi vase or a Chelsea gurine, a popular blue transferware plate or a humble china cup spoke to multiple actants – collector, dealer, consumer, designer, for example – and thereby contributed to the 19th-century’s tangled and often fraught social and intellectual networks. This period also bore witness to an increase in scholarly publications relating to the cultural history of ceramics, intensified by museum exhibitions and the rising art market for these objects, and culminating in a second Chinamania.
We invite topics on all types of pottery and porcelain from all periods that touch upon 19th-century issues, including but not limited to: Chinamania, colonialism, collecting, display, domesticity, gender, identity, and transnationalism. Building upon Cavanaugh and Yonan’s seminal publication on 18th- century porcelain (2010), we ask: How did pottery and porcelain operate as agents of culture, conveying social, psychological and symbolical meanings in the 19th century?
Please send a title and abstract (250 words maximum) for a 25-minute paper, your name and institutional affiliation (if any) to the panel organisers:
Caroline McCaffrey-Howarth, University of Leeds
c.mccaffrey-howarth@leeds.ac.uk
Anne Anderson, V&A Course Director and Tutor anne.anderson99@talk21.com
Rachel Gotlieb, Gardiner Museum, Toronto rachel@gardinermuseum.on.ca