Chairs, writing tables, and chests: Indian Ocean forniture and the postures of commercial documentation in coastal Yemen, 1700-40

• Autores: Nancy Um
• Localización: Art history: journal of the Association of Art Historians, ISSN 0141-6790, Vol. 38, Nº. 4, 2015 (Ejemplar dedicado a: Objects in motion in the early modern world / coord. por Daniela Bleichmar, Meredith Martin), págs. 718-731
• Idioma: inglés
• Texto completo no disponible (Saber más ...)
• Resumen

  • The development of the Indian industry of wooden raised and case furniture can be credited to the Europeans, who, since the early sixteenth century, required such items in their newly established Asian outposts. These locally-crafted furnishings were used on board ships and also transported to other Indian Ocean ports or to Europe. Far more than simple markers of increasing Westernization in Asia, these transient objects supported European commercial writing practices and thus provided an important, but overlooked, structural apparatus for their expanding overseas trade enterprise. Relying upon the archival records of the Dutch and English East India Companies, this essay explores the relationship between furniture, wrting tools, and the formats of commercial documentation in eighteenth-century coastal Yemen.