European University Institute Library

Small things in the eighteenth century, the political and personal value of the miniature, edited by Chloe Wigston Smith, Beth Fowkes Tobin

eng

index present

non fiction

Small things in the eighteenth century

electronic resource

dictionaries

1346367039

edited by Chloe Wigston Smith, Beth Fowkes Tobin

Cambridge Social Sciences eBooks

the political and personal value of the miniature

Offering an intimate history of how small things were used, handled, and worn, this collection shows how objects such as mugs and handkerchiefs were entangled with quotidian practices and rituals of bodily care. Small things, from tiny books to ceramic trinkets and toothpick cases, could delight and entertain, generating tactile pleasures for users while at the same time signalling the limits of the body's adeptness or the hand's dexterity. Simultaneously, the volume explores the striking mobility of small things: how fans, coins, rings, and pottery could, for instance, carry political, philosophical, and cultural concepts into circumscribed spaces. From the decorative and playful to the useful and performative, such small things as tea caddies, wampum beads, and drawings of ants negotiated larger political, cultural, and scientific shifts as they transported aesthetic and cultural practices across borders, via nationalist imagery, gift exchange, and the movement of global goods.--, Provided by publisher

"The sum of All in All": The Miniature Book and the Nature of Legibility / Abigail Williams -- "Pray What a Pox are Those Damned Strings of Wampum?": British Understandings of Wampum in the Eighteenth Century / Robbie Richardson -- A Box of Tea and the British Empire / Romita Ray