My current project, titled “The Prince, the Jeweler and the Mogul”, is a historiographical experiment, focusing a book-length study on the interpretation of a single object, unpacking it layer by layer for a deep analysis of its multiple meanings. The object, one of the most extraordinary works of art in early modern Europe, is an elaborate multi-piece model of the court of the Indian mogul Aurangzeb that was purchased around 1700 for an enormous sum by the Saxon prince August the Strong. Read more about The Prince, the Jeweler and the Mogul

In the 1750s, the Meissen porcelain factory produced a figurine based on a painting by Chardin (mediated through a print by Louis Surugue). It shows a woman sitting next to a desk, her shopping around her, writing it up in a domestic economy book, with a second notebook on her lap.
Read more about The Housekeeper

This project explores the role and meaning of miniaturized objects and scale-altering models in 17th- and early 18th-century Europe. This period was a crucial historical moment in the history of the micro, manifested in a wave of miniaturization of numerous new kinds of objects taken out of scale: miniature models, Dutch silver domestic miniatures, dollhouses, tin and subsequently porcelain figurines, optical devices with minute images, models of various types, and the like. Read more about Microhistory, for real: miniatures and miniaturization in early modern Europe

Porcelain is a material completely not essential for human development. On the contrary, it is a material that quintessentially denotes “luxury”. One might say that it entered the historical stage randomly: had it not been invented, the history of human civilization would not have unfolded very differently. Read more about Global Porcelain: the globalization of luxury