Joints of Utility, Crafts of Knowledge: the Material Culture of the Sino-British Furniture Trade during the Long Eighteenth Century

This dissertation examines the material culture of the Sino-British furniture trade in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. In the beginning of the eighteenth century, the British East India Company began importing a large quantity of furniture made in Canton (Guangzhou), China. As the trade between Britain and China became standardized around 1720, this furniture became a part of the private trade carried out by merchants associated with Company. Unlike other objects of the China trade that fed into the vogue of chinoiserie, export furniture crafted with hardwoods from the Indian Ocean was produced in European designs of the time and thus was often indistinguishable from its Western counterparts. What cultural and economic values did export furniture represent in the early modern maritime trade and how did it reify the trans-regional movement of knowledge and taste between China and Britain? Going beyond the conventional perspective on export Chinese objects oriented toward European reception, I connect production with consumption in order to follow the trajectory of export furniture from its origins in the intra-Asian timber trade to its requisition and manufacture in Canton to its reception and use in both Britain and China, highlighting how this process linked the disparate spheres of commerce, knowledge production and distribution, and cultural practices. In the course of exploring these multiple dimensions of the object’s material life, this dissertation underscores export furniture’s bicultural and transcultural characteristics. Utilizing diverse sets of visual, material, and textual sources, each chapter of the dissertation investigates different aspects of the movement of furniture as an assemblage. Chapter 1 reconstructs the itinerary of export furniture as a commodity from the EIC timber trade between India and China to the ordering and shipping of the furniture for the British market. I show how the character of export furniture was shaped by the constraints of space and the economic, environmental, and epistemic contingencies of long distance travel and communication. Chapter 2 examines the influence of imported Asian rosewood – an important cabinet timber from which most hardwood Chinese export furniture was made – on early modern British arboreal knowledge. If the knowledge of rosewood in the seventeenth century was grounded in classical texts that defined it as a subshrub growing in the eastern Mediterranean region, in the eighteenth century the term came to refer to a hardwood species imported from tropical Asia. I argue that this change allowed rosewood to obtain a new status as a universal category in the botanical taxonomy, which collected, pruned, and ordered heterogeneous cultural and natural information associated with it into a neatly classified “cabinet” of universal knowledge. Chapter 3 returns to Canton to investigate Cantonese cabinetmakers and the production of export furniture. By reading the joinery of extant export furniture pieces, I show how Chinese artisans recreated foreign forms by mobilizing their embodied knowledge of craft rather than by imitating European joinery constructions. The details of this material translation not only reflect the flexibility and resilience of traditional Chinese craft but also illuminate the tacit knowledge and craft patterns of early modern Chinese artisans. Chapters 4 and 5 turn to the domain of consumption in Britain and China, respectively. Chapter 4 explores how Chinese cabinets were experienced in early modern Britain. Comparing lacquered and hardwood display cabinets, I show that Chinese cabinets were not just exotic objects; they played an active role in the evolution of the cabinet as a type of furniture in the domestic material culture and created an affective space both within themselves and in their ambient space that invited the bodily experience and imagination of the user-beholder. The final chapter examines the movement and adaptation of European round tables in mid-Qing Chinese material culture. Introduced by European mariners to Canton, the round tables quickly found their niche in local everyday life and eventually spread beyond Guangdong. I show how they partook in the formation of a new social dining practice that conveyed a new political vision of equality. As a whole, my dissertation argues that export furniture was a Eurasian object that embodied cross-cultural knowledge of craft and nature, and engendered new ideas of utility and sociability

Reading the inventory: household goods, domestic cultures and difference in England and Wales, 1841–81

PhDThis thesis employs almost five hundred household inventories relating to properties in England and Wales between 1841 and 1881; they provide the first large-scale evidence for what people’s houses during this period actually contained. Taking a material culture approach, investigation moves between aggregate analysis, interpretation of individual cases and a qualitative reading of contemporary texts to consider the practical, social and cultural meanings of the contents listed in the inventories. Firstly, differences between the ways that different categories of people equipped and laid out their homes are identified. This calibrates existing class-based accounts, which are based on sources further removed from actual practice, and finds that differences relating to personal wealth and occupation were substantially moderated by geographical location. Secondly, the thesis addresses the functional specialisation of space that has been understood as a fundamental principle of nineteenth-century domestic organisation. It finds that, although some specialisations were widespread, in the area of hospitable provision many homes manifested a flexible, pragmatic, approach; strict specialisation was confined to the wealthier middle classes. Thirdly, the meanings of bedroom goods are tracked in contemporary texts. The bedroom, which has been relatively ignored by historians of the nineteenth-century home, appears as a focal site for ideas about cleanliness, convenience, class, health, science and progress; it was here, in the middle of the century, in the private reaches of the private home, that there was a voluntary adoption of public health measures. Throughout, detailed interpretation of single inventories counterbalances aggregate analysis. This reveals the complicated ways that individuals adopted, rejected or negotiated norms and throws into relief the way that ‘ideal’ separations, such as that between home and work, were in practice impossible

A stylistic approach to the God of Small Things written by Arundhati Roy

This thesis presents a creative-analytical hybrid production in relation to the stylistic distinctiveness in The God of Small Things, the debut novel of Arundhati Roy. Roy’s text drew the world’s gaze after winning the Booker Prize in 1997. Many studies have been written on diverse aspects of the book, and much has been said regarding the writer’s style. However, those studies rarely focus on the minutiae of Roy’s writing and this thesis provides a greater degree of detailed analysis. The objective is to achieve a deeper understanding of the relationship between style and literary aesthetics in The God of Small Things by studying the stylistic patterns behind Roy’s resonating poetic prose. The stylistic study is carried out adopting two approaches: the corpus-based approach (Part A) and the empirical-creative approach (Part B). The first section provides a stylistic analysis concentrating on the most significant stylistic features of the novel. The study is based on the list of style markers rendered by Leech and Short, Style in Fiction (1981) and elaborated according to the following key aspects that were extracted from the repertoire using my intuitive observation of the novel. These chosen style markers taken together represent key aspects of Roy’s style: (1) Lexis—Roy’s very frequent and particular utilization of adjectives; (2) Grammar—the high concentration of minor sentences and the listing of noun phrases in the text; (3) Figures of Speech— repetition and neologism. The second section presents a self-written pastiche which aims at imitating Roy’s style in literary prose and adapting its approach to a Chinese context. The creative process serves as an experiment on taking pastiche writing as an “experiential” approach to stylistics. In addition, since the resemblance of the pastiche to Roy’s style should not be the only value of the piece, some key themes in the original text are also reproduced. The analysis in Part A illustrates patterns of Roy’s stylistic choices. On the use of adjectives, Roy tends to arrange adjectival elements in sequence, construct a fixed “like” sentence structure, and adopt combining word forms and affective adjectives. On minor sentences, Roy chooses to separate adverbial phrases, sentence fragments starting with “like”, “as though”, and clauses beginning with “that”, “which”, “and”, “but”, “or”. As for repetitions, there is repeated use of set phrases, sentence patterns and recurrent appearance of certain lines and images. Lastly, on neologisms, Roy’s patterns of creating new words include hyphenation, direct merging, and prefix/suffix building. The pastiche is entitled Hong Kong Locust Stand I. By juxtaposing with the original, it is found that many stylistic features in The God of Small Things, are present in the pastiche, though with variation. While stylistic elements cannot totally be independent from the theme, the atmosphere, character and plot of the pastiche also demonstrate qualities representing those in Roy’s novel. The pastiche presents an innovative and respectful way to come to terms with Roy’s style through selective imitation and creative adaptation. In conclusion, it is hoped that this study opens the way for further hybrid studies of style that incorporate both analytical and creative approaches

Retailing Retold: Unfolding the Process of Image Construction in Everyday Practice

Retailing Retold offers an alternative approach to the analysis of how international retail images are translated across national boundaries. The approach extends the view on image in previous research as an instrument for monitoring the effects of marketing strategies on consumers’ perceptions of the retailer. Instead, it suggests that the usefulness of image resides in its ability to capture the relationship between international retailing and the lived culture. Informed by communication and cultural studies, the book argues that the formation of retail image needs to be understood as a construction process whereby consumers give retailing meaning in everyday practice. To this end, image construction is posited as a spatial storytelling in which consumers make sense of their experiences of retailing. In the tension between the strategically planned retail place and the lived spaces of those who use it, image is produced. In the book the image construction process is empirically explored through consumers’ storytelling of a major international furnishing retailer situated in Sweden and China. The exploration demonstrates how image is built via the manner by which the retailer is retold. By being retold, the retailer is silently provided with a unique and embodied existence in an everyday culture. The findings reveal a set of spatial tensions involved in the construction of an international retail image, which give fresh insights into how images of planned environments evolve with time and place

The Architecture of Nineteenth-Century Cuban Sugar Mills: Creole Power and African Resistance in Late Colonial Cuba

By the mid-nineteenth century, Cuba had become the world\u27s leading sugar producer, providing about a third of the world\u27s supply. As a result, sugar mills dominated the Cuban countryside, each one growing into a micro-town, with housing complexes (mansions for owners and slave barracks or bohios for workers), industrial facilities (mills and boiler houses), and adjoining buildings (kitchens, infirmaries, etc.), all organized around a central, open space, known as a batey. Owned by the Creole elite (New World offspring of Spanish settlers) and worked by African slaves, sugar mills became places of enslavement and subjugation as well as contact, interaction, and mestizaje. My dissertation will provide the first comprehensive and in-depth study of the architecture of nineteenth-century Cuban sugar mills, with a twofold aim: first, to examine how the Creole sugar planters designed and manipulated the architectural forms and spaces to convey order, power, and affluence, and to enforce slavery and racial difference; second, to analyze how African slaves countered Creole power through violent forms of resistance (intentional fires, collective protests) as well as non-violent ones (preservation of native customs, beliefs, music and dance) that involved subversive and transformative uses of architectural spaces. A study of socio-spatial negotiation, this dissertation traces the process by which an architectural setting designed for subjugation developed a distinctive architectural language. The first chapter reconstructs the typical plantation scheme adopted by most Cuban planters in the early nineteenth century, analyzing how it combined earlier Spanish models with more contemporaneous Neoclassical ones. The second chapter analyzes the architecture of the industrial naves, along with the beautifully rendered nineteenth-century lithographs of Eduardo Laplante, in the context of the Creoles\u27 fascination with technology and mechanization. Chapter three explores the ways in which planters used architecture to enforce segregation, full visibility, and panoptic surveillance, while chapter four examines the development of a unique, distinctively Cuban architectural language, clearly manifested in the bohios and casas de viviendas. The fifth and last chapter investigates how the slaves appropriated and transformed the architectural spaces to undermine Creole power and make their own condition more bearable

Attitudes toward home furnishings case goods: an investigation of motivations and values relative to product choice

The purpose of this dissertation was twofold: (a) to investigate consumer's attitudes toward home furnishings case goods; and (b) to determine how their attitudes influence their home furnishings case good consumption choices. Based on preliminary research findings and an analysis of the attitude-behavior relationship literature, the main research constructs were determined and operationalized. The Theory of Reasoned Action was deemed to be most suited for the study. A conceptual model, Home Furnishings Case Goods Consumption Model, was then created. The model's foundation was the Theory of Reasoned Action with the addition of three constructs: home furnishings case goods attributes/evaluative criteria, hedonic and utilitarian motivations, and consumer perceived consumption values. The sample for the study was drawn from a home furnishings retailer's database, which included participants from Georgia and Florida. Participants completed a 14 page booklet survey questionnaire that contained scales to measure research constructs, as well as demographic, socioeconomic, and dwelling-specific information (n =190). Confirmatory factor analysis was used to measure the adequacy of the Home Furnishings Case Goods Consumption Model and the eight formulated hypotheses were individually analyzed through the use of multiple regression analysis. Although the findings of this research are market specific, they have important implications for the home furnishings case goods industry. This research demonstrated usefulness of the individual scales used. Overall, this study provides product developers, manufacturers, and marketers with a greater understanding of the home furnishings case goods consumer and it could allow sellers to create lead times, which could ultimately provide a source for competitive advantage. Furthermore, by delving into the mind of the home furnishings case goods consumer, manufacturers and retailers could provide consumers with more tailored offerings/selections that would better suit their needs and desires

Routing-out Portable Antiquities: a biographical study of the contemporary lives of Tamil antiquities

Developing the idea of an ‘object biography’, as defined by Kopytoff (1986), this thesis challenges a fixed, static concept of antiquities and their present meanings by focusing on the routes they travel through space and time as they circulate through the hands of unauthorised finders, dealers and collectors. The research has been carried out in India, focusing on the South Indian state of Tamil Nadu. As a non-Western country with a period of colonial history, India is an ideal location to explore not just the diversity and mutability of these meanings but also the tensions between authorized and divergent viewpoints regarding the value and management of the past. My methodology has drawn on theoretical models from the social sciences that approach the production of meaning in and through material culture as an organic and on-going process of human-object relations. Through a process of qualitative surveying using purposive sampling and semi-structured interviews, two distinct object case studies have been devised and investigated: the circulation of structural and household antiques from the 19th and 20th century houses of the Nagarathar Chettiars, and the excavation of coins, beads, jewellery and figurines in the riverbeds of Tamil Nadu and their subsequent sale, collection and circulation. In the course of fieldwork I have recorded over 55 hours of interactions with 107 respondents in locations across Tamil Nadu, as well as Bangalore, Mumbai, Jodhpur and London. I have supported this data with photographs, fieldnotes, and internet sources. In my analysis of this data I have argued that many people in Tamil Nadu and South India feel a sense of distance and alienation from the world of ‘heritage’ as defined and managed by the government, while at the same time people are engaged in their own processes of meaning-making through the old objects they engage with and circulate on a daily basis. The objects studied in this thesis are not seen as pertaining to the ‘sleeping’ realm of antiquities and authorized heritage, but to the ‘waking’ realm of active circulation, use and transformation. Furthermore, in the variety of ways that people engage with and transform these objects we can see the negotiation of relationships with the past and identities in the present at a time of rapid social and economic change in India.AHR

Music and elite identity in the English country house, c.1790-1840

In this thesis I investigate two untapped music book collections that belonged to two women. Elizabeth Sykes Egerton (1777-1853) and Lydia Hoare Acland (1786-1856) lived at Tatton Park, Cheshire, and Killerton House, Devon, respectively. Upon their marriage in the early nineteenth century, they brought with them the music books they had compiled so far to their new homes, and they continued to collect and play music after marriage. I examine the vocal music in Elizabeth’s and Lydia’s collections, and I aim to show how selected vocal music repertoires contributed toward the construction of landed elite identity in these women and their husbands, concentrating on gender, class, national identity and religion.In chapter one, I concentrate on songs that depict destitute and suffering individuals to move both listeners and performers to compassion. The songs are topical and provide insights into contemporary understandings of sympathy and landed elite responsibility for the distressed. In chapter two, I focus on the ingoing and outgoing movements of music in the country house, and the consumption of foreign music in the home. I divide the chapter into two sections, first examining Elizabeth’s Italian vocal music that she collected during her girlhood years in London and York in the 1790s. The Italian music that Elizabeth brought to Tatton complemented other Italian objects and items in the home. Italian culture appealed to the Egerton family both before and after Elizabeth and Wilbraham married. In the second section, I investigate Lydia and her family’s journey to Vienna for the Congress in 1814-1815. Lydia took away with her a book of vocal music to remind her of home in a foreign environment. While away in Vienna, the Aclands attended concerts and music salons, and they purchased music books to bring back home to add to their collection. In the final chapter, I concentrate on the man of the house at music and I consider the social expectations, duties and responsibilities that had befallen our landed elite men, Thomas Dyke Acland and Wilbraham Egerton. I discuss Thomas’s and Wilbraham’s musical engagements and occasions for performing music, and how men’s music-making contributed to a masculine identity.By placing the vocal music in broader social and cultural contexts, reading personal correspondence, newspaper articles, account books and diaries, we can begin to understand what our families thought about music, and how they used and experienced music in and around their homes, forming an important part of their lifestyle