Exotic Switzerland?: Looking Outward in the Age of Enlightenment, Paperback

During the 17th and 18th centuries, foreign material culture was introduced into France and Switzerland and integrated into European interiors and decorative arts. Scholars have emphasized this era's emerging taste for the exotic in order to explain the unprecedented craze for lacquer, porcelain, and textiles that imitated non-Western techniques and iconography. Yet what constituted the exotic during the age of Enlightenment? How was the place of foreign material culture negotiated? And how did it impact European identities? Exotic Switzerland? moves from questions about the nature of exoticism to explore exoticism in practice. The physical relocation of material fragments in European interiors is the core of this volume. Finally, the contributors also explore the rise of disciplines such as anthropology and ethnology through collection, publication, and print culture.

About author(s):Noémie Étienne is professor of early modern art history at the University of Bern. Claire Brizon is doctoral student in art history at the University of Bern. Chonja Lee is postdoctoral researcher at the University of Bern. Étienne Wismer is doctoral student in art history at the University of Bern.