British Academy: The UK's National Academy for the Humanities and Social Sciences
Craft and World Commerce
Friday 8 July 2005
9.30am-7.00pm
The British Academy, 10 Carlton House Terrace, London SW1Y 5AH
Convenor:
Professor Maxine Berg, FBA, University of Warwick
Craft and World Commerce addresses themes of knowledge transfer and the world trade in craft and luxury goods from the pre-historic period to the nineteenth century. This seminar is an interdisciplinary forum of researchers from archaeology, history of art, Museum Studies, Asian Studies, economic and social history and history of science and technology. It continues discussion of art, technology, knowledge and trade in the Warwick-CNAM, Paris Research Interchange on 'Cultures of Commerce and Invention'. This particular workshop brings together historians and museum curators to take up themes of 'global connections' forged through wider world trade in craft and luxury goods. We seek to understand how technologies 'travelled' or were re-invented with the trade in luxury and craft goods between East and West. We will examine the impact of wider-world markets for luxury goods on artisan organization and production centres in transmitting regions, as well as the incentives for innovation they provided to receiving regions. Though small sectors of most economies from ancient to modern times, this global luxury trade provided for models of cosmopolitan mercantile cultures, the stimulus for new technologies and organization of production, and aesthetic interchange.
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For further information contact:
Meetings Department
The British Academy, 10 Carlton House Terrace, London SW1
Telephone: 020 7969 5246
Email: events@britac.ac.uk