Lecture | Luster and Sheen: Worldly Taste in the Dutch Republic

Claudia Swan, The Inaugural Mark Steinberg Weil Professor of Art History, Washington University, St. Louis

In 1620, in the Dutch city of The Hague, an artisan received a patent for a technique that enabled him to polish whalebone in a manner that achieved spectacular “luyster en glans” (luster and sheen), comparable to the highly favored and more expensive foreign hardwood, ebony. Frames, cabinets, and furnishings crafted of ebony (and lookalike materials) were especially favored luxury goods in the seventeenth century. These included Asian lacquer objects and European objects made in imitation of the foreign technique. Like lacquerware, shimmering shells, opalescent conchs, and the mother-of-pearl with which it was often inlaid, ebony is representative of Dutch taste for the sheen and gleam of highly worked foreign materials. This lecture aims to show that highly lustrous items—shells, lacquerware, porcelain, polished woods and stones, and, of course, oil paintings—were especially prized, and that the taste for luster and sheen was closely intertwined with global trade.

Lectures by distinguished guest speakers address a range of topics relating to the appreciation and interpretation of art. They are free and open to the public. Seating is limited.

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