NOVELTY, TRADE AND EXCHANGE
IN THE RENAISSANCE INTERIOR
Research Department
Victoria & Albert Museum
24-25 June 2003

During the Renaissance, Italians travelled extensively and individuals often
were based in foreign branches of Italian companies. The goods they acquired
and brought home helped to establish new fashions and to generate a taste
for novelty. The house and its contents reflected and supported 'national'
and international trade and exchange: apart from artefacts produced in
Italian centres, Flemish tapestries, metalwork and paintings, German
stoneware, English pewter, Baltic amber, Spanish pottery and leather goods
all featured in the Italian interior. But goods were not only imported from
Europe: Islamic carpets, textiles, ceramics, metalwork and other objects,
whether purchased or looted, also figured prominently.

This two-day Symposium is the first in a series of events related to 'The
Domestic Interior in Italy, 1400-1600', a research project culminating in a
major exhibition at the V&A in 2006 and an associated publication (see
below). 'Novelty, Trade and Exchange in the Renaissance Interior' will
explore the general question of novelty in domestic goods. In addition to
examining the stylistic influences of imported wares on local production,
and the economics of trade and manufacture, it will focus on the movements
of both goods and people across and into Italy.

(Event sponsored by the AHRB Centre for the Study of the Domestic Interior
and the Victoria & Albert Museum)

SPEAKERS TO INCLUDE:

Patricia Allerston (University of Edinburgh): '"Contrary to the truth and
also to the emblance of reality"? Alternative Readings of a Venetian
Mercantile Family's Camera del Parto (1605)'

Anna Contadini (School of Oriental and African Studies): 'The Acquisition
and Use of Islamic Artefacts'

Gail L. Geiger (University of Wisconsin-Madison): 'Racial "Exoticism" in the
Decorative Arts'

Anja Grebe (Germanisches Nationalmuseum): 'Scrittoio and Studiolo: On the
Early History of Two Types of Furniture'

Eloy Koldeweij (Netherlands Department for Conservation): 'Corami d'oro: Did
Interiors Glitter? Fashionable Gilt Leather Hangings'

Deborah Krohn (Bard Graduate Centre, New York): 'Say it with Eels: Towards
the Material Culture of Food in Early Modern Italy'

Rosamond E. Mack (Independent scholar): 'The Rising Status of the Oriental
Carpet: Contributing Factors'

Ann Matchette (University of Sussex): 'Out with the Old, in with the New?
Disposing Household Furnishings in Florence'

Paula Nuttall (Independent scholar): 'Netherlandish Painted Cloths in Italy:
Fashion, Form and Function'

Isabella Palumbo Fossati (Independent scholar): 'Opulence and
Cosmopolitanism: The Venetian Commoner's Domestic Interior'

Maria Ruvoldt (Cooper-Hewitt Masters Program, New York): 'Sacred to Secular,
East to West: The Renaissance Study and Strategies of Display'

Cinzia Sicca (National Gallery of Art, Washington): 'From Lucca to London,
and Back: The Buonvisi and Gigli Houses from the Fifteenth to the Sixteenth
Century'

REGISTRATION

Full delegate fee: £40
Student delegate fee: £20
Fee includes sandwich lunch, morning coffee and afternoon tea.

Deadline for registration: 10 June 2003
Spaces are limited, so early booking is essential.

Please complete and return this booking form along with a cheque, made
payable to Royal College of Art, to AHRB Centre for the Study of the
Domestic Interior, Royal College of Art, Kensington Gore, London SW7 2EU.

For further information see the website: www.rca.ac.uk/csdi/ or contact AHRB
Centre for the Study of the Domestic Interior:
csdirca.ac.uk;
+44 (0)207 590 4183

_______________________________________

THE DOMESTIC INTERIOR IN ITALY,
1400-1600

The purpose of this project is to explore the urban house in Renaissance
Italy as a setting for the development of art and culture, and for the
unfolding of everyday life. Looking at the domestic interior provides unique
insights into the unprecedented quality and wealth of objects produced for
the home at the time - ranging from the artistic to the utilitarian. The
evidence available is extensive and offers a complex picture. Contemporary
depictions of interiors illustrate a wide range of domestic settings,
suggesting geographical, ethnic and social variety alongside aesthetic
diversity and development. These sources raise a number of challenging
questions about the actual visual and spatial development of the house and
its furnishings. Domestic artefacts can also powerfully illustrate the ways
the wider cultural, artistic and socio-economic changes we associate with
the Renaissance actually affected people's everyday lives. The impressive
quantity, range and novelty of objects provided for the home demand
examination in relation to new ideas of civility and decorum, and new
notions of fashion and taste. Written sources often present the house as an
extension of the self, thus provoking enquiry into the relationship between
the interior and concepts of identity, gender and the body. As attractive as
it is little-known, the Italian domestic interior demands new research and
interpretation.

The project, which was launched in September 2002, is to research and
develop an exhibition and a book on the Italian domestic interior between
c.1400 and c.1600. The exhibition will be held at the Victoria & Albert
Museum, London in 2006 and is likely to travel to another venue. Drawn from
the V&A and other collections (including art and design, archaeological and
ethnographic museums), this major exhibition aims to explore the Renaissance
interior as a powerful site where cultural and aesthetic values were
constructed and challenged.

A two-year research project jointly funded by the Getty Grant Program, the
AHRB and the Victoria & Albert Museum will generate substantial new
research
by an interdisciplinary team of scholars. The research process will involve
a series of symposia and seminars, culminating in a publication to accompany
the exhibition. This will provide a permanent record of the project's
findings. Both exhibition and book will present an entirely new way of
looking at the 'Renaissance' through the development of domestic life and
artefacts.