Objects and Their Histories, 1500-1800

by Paula Findlen (Editor)

Early Modern Things supplies fresh and provocative insights into how objects – ordinary and extraordinary, secular and sacred, natural and man-made – came to define some of the key developments of the early modern world. Now in its second edition, this book taps a rich vein of recent scholarship to explore a variety of approaches to the material culture of the early modern world (c. 1500–1800). Divided into seven parts, the book explores the ambiguity of things, representing things, making things, encountering things, empires of things, consuming things, and the power of things. This edition includes a new preface and three new essays on ‘encountering things’ to enrich the volume. These look at cabinets of curiosities, American pearls, and the material culture of West Central Africa. Spanning across the early modern world from Ming dynasty China and Tokugawa Japan to Siberia and Georgian England, from the Kingdom of the Kongo and the Ottoman Empire to the Caribbean and the Spanish Americas, the authors provide a generous set of examples in how to study the circulation, use, consumption, and, most fundamentally, the nature of things themselves. Drawing on a broad range of disciplinary perspectives and lavishly illustrated, this updated edition of Early Modern Things is essential reading for all those interested in the early modern world and the history of material culture.

Genres: History, Art History

492 pages, Hardcover

First published January 26, 2013

About the author

Paula Findlen (1964- ) is an American academic and historian, whose work focuses on the history of science and medicine, and the history of the Renaissance. She was educated at Wellesley College (BA), and the University of California, Berkeley (MA & PhD). Findlen is Professor of Early Modern Europe and History of Science, Ubaldo Pierotti Professor of Italian History, and Co-Director of the Suppes Center for the History and Philosophy of Science and Technology at Stanford University. Her book, Possessing Nature: Museums, Collecting, and Scientific Culture in Early Modern Italy was given the Pfizer Award in 1996 by the History of Science Society.

Reviews

[Hannah]

An enjoyable edited volume with lots of different geographic and disciplinary perspectives, but why on earth did it need three separate conclusions?

[Alex]

Some really good chapters and some not interesting chapters. The chapters on the Ottoman Empire, Tokugawa Japan, and on the use of porcelain by lower and middle class in the 18th century were the best in my opinion. Also, the Introduction was really good.

[Krk]

Contains some very out of the box articles, the most enjoyable detaining the rediscovery of how early modern silversmiths cast plant, insect, and animal forms.