Wow! eBook
Plants and Gardens as Artefacts in Transcultural Contexts: Between Asia and Europe
Author(s): Minna Törmä
- Publisher: Routledge
- Publication Date: October 2, 2025
- Edition: 1st
- Language: English
- Print length: 182 pages
- ISBN-10: 1032846496
- ISBN-13: 9781032846491
Book Description
This edited volume explores the ways in which the object biography or object itinerary approach could be adapted to frame research on animate objects, such as plants and gardens in transcultural contexts.
By treating these animate elements as ‘objects’ in the manner of artefacts and looking at their individual histories, we gain a more nuanced sense of how data accumulated, how new knowledge developed through printed texts and specimen collections, and how the creators of gardens or landscapes formed their collections. Chapters explore the shifts in meanings when objects from diverse origins meet in new cultural contexts where their new owners create assemblages based on their perception of the world.
The book will be of interest to scholars working in art history, material culture, and cultural geography.
Editorial Reviews
Review
“Rich in new research and underpinned by a sophisticated engagement with questions of methodology, this impressive collection ranges widely in time and space. By focussing on the complex transcultural ‘itineraries’ of plants, images and spaces from the early modern period to the contemporary, each essay provides an individually enlightening case study, while taken together they make a significant contribution to our understanding of phenomena at the intersection of nature and culture.”
— Craig Clunas, FBA, University of Oxford
“Taking examples from the history of trade, art, architecture, and landscape design, the essays in this volume give us a nuanced understanding of how plants―as objects, images, or symbols―shaped transcultural exchanges. A timely contribution to a largely neglected field, highly informative and a pleasant read.”
–Anton Schweizer, Kyushu University
About the Author
Minna Törmä is an honorary senior lecturer research fellow in the history of art at the University of Glasgow and adjunct professor of art history at the University of Helsinki.
