This presentation draws from the forthcoming book The Empire’s New Cloth: Cross-cultural Textiles at the Qing Court (Yale University Press, early 2025). Large-scale pictorial tapestries ranked among the most precious art forms in the early modern period. While their circulations and functions among European courts have been well studied, less known are their journeys to China and subsequent roles in stimulating new developments in Qing imperial arts.
Harvard Science Center • Room 469 • 1 Oxford Street • Cambridge, MA
This event will gather specialists—historians of science, furniture, labor, and politics, as well as horologists, and conservators—around the Pope Orrery (built 1776-1787 in Boston) to interpret it from their diverse vantage points. Together we will use the Pope Orrery as a mise-en-scène for an examination of Boston and the British world during the American Revolution, as witnessed by the labor, technology, economics, and politics of its production and sale, the social classes involved, and its use as a spectacle, prestige item, and model for teaching natural philosophy and religion. The...