Netherlandish networks: Home-making in an age of emerging global capitalism (1565-1799)

A display of early modern furnishings at the Museum of the Home

We are delighted to invite applications for a PhD Studentship in the Department of Art History at The Open University. This Studentship is fully funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council in partnership with the Museum of the Home in London and the Centre for the Studies of Home at Queen Mary, University of London.

Working with The Open University and the Museum of the Home, this project will explore the hidden histories behind a set of early modern objects belonging to the Museum, including a Flemish tapestry, Delftware, Chinese porcelain, japanned furniture and items inlaid with rosewood. These diverse objects all share one quality: a relationship to the Netherlandish maritime trading networks (‘Netherlandish’ here refers to the profoundly entwined economies and cultures of what is roughly now Belgium and Holland). The Netherlandish networks spanned the globe but at their centre lay the cities of Amsterdam and Antwerp, not least because their Sephardic Jewish communities facilitated otherwise difficult trading connections between Northern Europe and the extensive Spanish and Portuguese Empires. London and the emerging British Empire relied heavily on these networks, especially across the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Crucially, these networks allowed for the circulation of religious and other refugees, merchants, skilled craftworkers and enslaved people as well as materials like tropical hardwoods, objects like ceramics, clocks and metalwork and types of design that were then copied locally.

Key research questions to be explored by the project include:

What are the most efficient ways of mapping the many and complex journeys behind the interior fittings and furnishings that constituted home-making in early modern England as it became part of a global economy that, in turn, rested on colonialism and enslavement?
How were early modern homes made in and through objects – so visually, spatially and materially – in relation to two overlapping immigrant communities (Sephardic Jews and Netherlanders)?
To what extent were homes made in temporary lodgings such as boarding-houses or through public spaces such as churches or synagogues? In this process, how were objects mobilised in ritual and less formal behaviour?
How can objects best be used to instantiate specific social histories about immigration, colonialism and enslavement?
What broader historical, curatorial and art-historical methodologies may be developed from studying objects with hidden histories?