Description
A dazzling testament to Southern Asian silver’s role in the transformation and consumption of once rarefied goods to those taken for granted daily around the world.
Silver elevates use, not only for the diverse religious rituals of Southern Asia, but also consumption of and access to once-new items: photographs, mirrors, railways, and automobiles; newly invented or traded foods including tea, coffee, Indian pale ale, wines, dairy products, relishes, fruits and seasonings. Many of these items originated in Southern Asia and were among the first tinned or bottled items to circulate in global markets.
A discussion of Southern Asian silver’s artistry, functionality and cultural and economic soft power is accompanied by a spectacular array of 130 suites of silver and 22 design drawings.
Edited by Katherine Anne Paul
Contributions by Tushara Bindu Gude, Kimberly Masteller, Katherine Anne Paul, Richard A. Pegg, Romita Ray, and Laura C. Woodard
Interviews with Veronica McDavid, Harish K. Patel, and Praveena Sundarraj
Author biographies
Tushara Bindu Gude is formerly associate curator of South and Southeast Asian Art at LACMA.
Kimberly Masteller is Jeanne McCray Beals Curator of South and Southeast Asian Art, Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art.
Katherine Anne Paul is lead curator and Virginia and William M. Spencer III Curator of Asian Art, Birmingham Museum of Art.
Richard A. Pegg is the director and curator of Asian Art for the MacLean Collection.
Romita Ray is associate professor of Art History at Syracuse University.
Laura C. Woodard is librarian and archivist, Birmingham Museum of Art
Table of Contents
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- Director’s Foreword
- Chair’s Preface
- Acknowledgements
- Chapter 1 Making Modernity: Keys to a Century of Aspirations through Southern Asian Silver, 1830s–1930s by Katherine Anne Paul
- Chapter 2 Stories of Silver: Interview with Collectors Harish K. Patel and Veronica McDavid
- Chapter 3 Silver for Ceremony by Kimberly Masteller
- Chapter 4 Silver and Glory: A Consideration of Trophies, Sport, and Colonialism in India by Tushara Bindu Gude
- Chapter 5 Connecting Coffee Cultures of India with Birmingham: An Interview with Praveena Sundarraj
- Chapter 6 Tracing Tea Cultures in India: Antecedents and the Nineteenth Century by Romita Ray
- Catalogue: Stories in Silver: Religious Arts; Aspirational Arts; Sensorial Arts; Revivalism in Silver Art
- Appendix A Three Maps of India’s Trade and Infrastructure from the Mid-Nineteenth to Early-Twentieth Century by Richard A. Pegg
- Appendix B Timeline
- Appendix C Designing Silver: Access for All in the Archives of the Birmingham Museum of Art by Laura C. Woodard
- Appendix D Silversmith Biographies
- Appendix E Glossary
- Recommended Reading
- Index
- Contributor Biographies.