Category: artifacts
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The Gilded Coconut
Looking at this extraordinary Netherlandish coconut cup, made around 1540 and now at the National Gallery of Art, it is easy to assume that the gilded silver made it precious. In the sixteenth century, however, the coconut itself was a luxury material. Still exotic in Europe, its shell was carved with coats of arms, foliage,…
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From Manila to Bologna
From Manila to Bologna The recent death of Carlo Ginzburg, one of my favorite historians, made me think again about Bologna. Ginzburg, the great scholar of microhistory, taught us to look closely at small things, traces, clues, and fragments. That way of thinking brought me back to an unexpected connection between Manila and Bologna. The…