Blog Post 3

      In my first post I was discussing the portrait of the Duchess of Portsmouth, however, I decided to switch my focus to blackamoor. The specific piece I became intrigued with was the Mantle Clock created by Jean Baptiste Andre Furet in France in 1784.

Blackamoor is the term to describe a decorative art used to describe pictorial representations of Africans in paintings, sculptures, jewelry. It is a very controversial form of art popular in the Rocco Europe, and for good reason (Childs 1987). It was usually placed in the homes of the wealthy and elite (Childs 1987). Some examples of items with blackamoor adorning it are “sugar boxes, sweetmeat bowls, coffee pots, and steering elephants (Childs 1987).”

After further research I learned that blackamoor was more than just decorated trinkets. It dealt with the “concept of race, black servants in the colonies and the concept of black slaves in the homes of the wealthy (Childs 1987).” What I took this to mean, that blackamoor really embodied how the people of Rocco Europe didn’t give these African rights however, they would use their culture, their people, and even depictions of their form to decorate their homes. This just shows how taken advantage of these people were by Europeans.

Another piece I was intrigued by was Negress with a Basket by Johann Joachim Kandler and Johann Friedrich Eberlin 1741. This piece uses a covered sugar bowl decorated with a black woman in a skirt without a blouse and decorative flowers decorate the sugar bowl.  The woman’s “offering gesture and direct gaze” makes her not just décor but more like a servant (Childs 1987). I think this really demonstrates the relationship between Africans and the Europeans at the time, much like the mantle clock.

            This relationship is further discussed by Child when she talks about how humans were thought of as different based on race and they began being classified (Child 1987).  She says that “humans were brought into a system of taxonomic classification that include flora and fauna (Child 1987).” People were classified by climate and geography and the Europeans started being fascinated with the Africans because their physical appearance was in stark contrast to the predominantly white or Caucasian people found in Europe (Child 1987).

  This makes sense to me for a number of reasons. For one, people are always curious about things and people different from them. Also, Europeans were known to use art to show their wealth and status. So by displaying replicas of Africans in their homes the Europeans could show how cultured and important they are.  The reason I believe this is from my research of the Dutchess of Portsmouth. I found out that the wealthy and elite were often given little black children as gifts. These children were usually used as women’s servants and would be kept almost like pets. They were used as status symbols just like the blackamoor pieces because you had to be so powerful and rich to afford one, to go to Africa to get one, or be given one as a gift in order to gain your political favor.