The Newsletter 59 Spring 2012

Travelling far on "rather short legs". Company-furniture on the move and the problem of shared heritage

Marieke BloembergenMartijn Eickhoff

This essay focuses on an impressive, almost 3 meter high, opulently carved teakwood room-screen with a human figure (probably Perseus) and two dragons, made by Chinese craftsmen in Java in the early eighteenth century, to furnish the Council Room of the Dutch East India Company (VOC) in Batavia. We will follow this object’s travels through time and space. The aim is to gain insight into the multiple layers of heritage formation in colonial and postcolonial contexts.

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