"New order from your hand, new lustre from your eye": the art, craft, and science of Philadelphia shellwork grottos
Date
2019
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Publisher
University of Delaware
Abstract
This thesis focuses on one miniature shellwork grotto in the collection of the Winterthur Museum, made in Philadelphia in the eighteenth century, to explore the trend of miniature Philadelphia shellwork shadowboxes in two ways. After the introduction, the second chapter argues that miniature shellwork shadowboxes served as interior follies in three ways by offering three different transporting viewing experiences in which viewers’ imaginations were moved to various places. First, the interior folly transported viewers to its full-scale European counterpart, giving a vicarious experience of a distant locale. Second, it transported the viewer into the interior of a woman’s mind, giving access to her aesthetic preferences and interests. Third, the interior folly transported the viewer to the interior of a woman’s body itself, representing the vagina through the visual and cultural connotations of grottos, flowers, and shells. The third chapter argues that the Philadelphia shellwork shadowboxes were scientific collections that show that women participated, in their own spheres and on their own terms, in the scientific craze of the Enlightenment. This thesis provides the first in-depth analysis of Winterthur’s shellwork grotto and offers cultural context for understanding the object. It analyzes the grotto as a unique example of an object wrought by women’s hands, for the female gaze, and places women into the history of scientific collecting.