Enfilade

From Routledge:

Arlene Leis, ed., Women, Collecting, and Cultures beyond Europe (New York: Routledge, 2022), 282 pages, ISBN: 978-1032135465, £130 / $150

This edited volume builds on recent research and offers a wider lens through which to examine and challenge women’s collecting histories. Spanning from the seventeenth century to the twenty-first (although not organized chronologically) the research herein extends beyond European geographies and across time periods; it brings to light new research on how artificiallia and naturallia were collected, transported, exchanged, and/or displayed beyond Europe. Women, Collecting and Cultures beyond Europe considers collections as points of contact that forged transcultural connections and knowledge exchange. Some authors focus on collectors and what was collected, while others consider taxonomies, travel, patterns of consumption, migration, markets, and the after life of things. In its broad and interdisciplinary approach, this book amplifies women’s voices, and aims to position their collecting practices toward new transcultural directions, including women’s relation to distinct cultures, customs, and beliefs as well as exposing the challenges women faced when carving a place for themselves within global networks.

Arlene Leis is an independent art historian who received her PhD from University of York.

C O N T E N T S

Collecting to Collectingism: New Directions in Women’s Transcultural Practices — Arlene Leis

Part I: Points of Transcultural Exchange
1  Européenerie in Feminine Space: Qing Imperial Women and Collecting in China’s Long Eighteenth Century — Chih-En Chen
2  Coerced Contact: The Dzungar Court Costume of a Swedish Knitting Instructor — Lisa Hellman
3  Trading Places: The Japanese Art Collection of O’Tama Kiyohara Ragusa — Maria Antonietta Spadaro
4  Created to Gleam: Decorum, Taste, and Luxury of Four Dresses from Viceregal Mexico — Martha Sandoval-Villegas and Laura Garcia-Vedrenne

Part II: Natural History, Colonial Encounters, and Indigenous Histories
5  The Botanist Was a Woman: Classifying and Collecting on the First French Circumnavigation of the Globe — Glynis Ridley
6  Pineapple Lady: Expertise and Exoticism in Agnes Block’s Self-Representation as Flora Batava — Catherine Powell-Warren
7  A Memsahib’s ‘Natural World’: Lady Mary Impey’s Collection of Indian Natural History Paintings — Apurba Chatterjee
8  Women and Huipils: The Treasuring of an Indigenous Garment in New Spain — Martha Sandoval-Villegas
9  Colonial Pantomime: Queen Marie I of Portugal’s Human Cabinet of Curiosities — Agnieszka Anna Ficek

Part III: Settlers, Immigrants, and New Frontiers
10  Settler Botanists, Nature’s Gentlemen, and the Canadian Book of Nature: Catharine Parr Traill’s Canadian Wild Flowers — Cynthia Sugars
11  Collecting Indian Art in Santa Fe: The Bryn Mawrters and the Politics of Preservation — Nancy Owen Lewis
12  The Spectacle of Sponsoring an Ottoman Trousseau — Gwendolyn Collaço
13  Las Bexareñas and their Wills: Women’s Material Culture and Cataloguing Practices in Spanish San Fernando de Béxar — Amy M. Porter

Part IV: Recovery, Collaboration, and Repatriation
14  ‘He Surely Existed’: Women of the Early Folk Art Collecting Movement and Thomas W. Commeraw, Forgotten African-American Potter — Brandt Zipp
15  Adjacency in the Collection — Toby Upson
16  Collecting Fibre Arts in Arnhem Land — Louise Hamby
17  From Women’s Hands: Learning from Métis Women’s Collections — Angela Fey and Maureen Matthews