The word itself is thought to come from the Middle English "black Moor". Blackamoors are a favorite decorative piece for interior designers, whether as standalone statues, trochees or candelabras.
The word “Black moor is a recognized, standard term which refers to a specific type of motif - that of a black African. This has been used in sculpture, jewelry, armorial designs and the decorative arts and was and still is a specialty of Venice since the 16th century, although also produced elsewhere.
The decorative arts have begun to expand beyond the emphasis on craftsmanship, and luxury production to investigate the economic, social and cultural issues embodied in the objects, their consumption and environs.
Ornamental Blackness attempts to create a framework for understanding how the decorative arts figure into the larger discourse of representing blacks and blackness in European visual culture of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
Objects such as porcelain figurines, clocks, light fixtures, furniture, among others, operated within a multi-dimensional matrix of ideas and contexts that transcended the limits of their specific functionality. Implicated in these practices were larger social issues such as black slave labor in the colonies, notions of exoticism and primitivism and the presence of black servants in wealthy European households.
Small, utilitarian objects, furniture, wallpaper, tapestry designs and more could insidiously present the idea of black servitude or the black primitive body as normal, natural or charmingly exotic in the context of a grand table setting or an opulent sitting room.
US $399.00
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