Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
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  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
Ornamental Blackness: The Black Figure in European Decorative Arts

Ornamental Blackness: The Black Figure in European Decorative Arts

Childs, Adrienne L.

Hardcover

Art HistoryGeneral SociologyInterior Design

ISBN10: 0300246099
ISBN13: 9780300246094
Publisher: Yale University Press
Published: May 13 2025
Pages: 208
Weight: 2.05
Height: 0.90 Width: 8.20 Depth: 10.20
Language: English
Exploring the role the decorative arts played in the representation of Black people in European visual and material culture

This revelatory look at European decorative arts addresses the long-ignored implications of the depiction of Black bodies on luxury objects from the Baroque period through the nineteenth century. Adrienne L. Childs traces the complex history of the vogue for representing the Black body as an ornamental motif throughout spaces of wealth and refinement. Objects such as furniture, porcelain, clocks, silver, light fixtures, and more conveyed the taste for exoticism and portrayed the laboring Black body in the guise of décor. These objects also express larger ideas about the concept of race, romantic notions of distant lands, the harsh realities of slave labor in the colonies, the presence of Black servants in wealthy European households, and the culture of luxury consumption.

Ornamental Blackness demonstrates how seemingly benign decorative objects can embody the complexities of race, slavery, and representation. Childs examines the tensions inherent in the system of codes in which the Black body can be enslaved, reviled, feared, subjugated, and assaulted on one hand and a symbol of opulence on the other. In this important volume she establishes a framework for understanding the racialized aesthetics of luxury.

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