Messy Subjectivities: The Popular, Affective and Technical Consistencies of Early Nineteenth-Century Staffordshire Ware

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Published: Nov 27, 2017
DOI: https://doi.org/10.5130/csr.v23i2.5075
Keywords:
subjectivity, property, affect, play, Staffordshire ware

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Nicole De Brabandere
University of the Arts, Linz Zurich University of the Arts (ZHdK)

Abstract

This article investigates how Staffordshire figurines and dinnerware, which were popular in early nineteenth-century England and its colonies, were complicit in forging emergent social, aesthetic and subjective consciousness. Staffordshire ware was influenced by diverse technical, economic and aesthetic factors, including the circulation of print media, private property, colonialism and Romanticism. At the same time, the wares both engendered Romantic versions of subjectivity that amplified the importance of the private individual, while generating emergent sites of contestation that exceeded them. The collection of Staffordshire figurines and dinnerware was a media and technical consistency where owners could inhabit the tensions of at times conflicting social, material, affective and performative affinities or antagonisms. This discussion draws from Walter Benjamin to develop a way of thinking with how the material and media specificity of Staffordshire ware could have co-composed heterogeneous knowledges, practices and subjectivities that undermined the Romantic individual. By examining the multifaceted qualities, affects and contexts of Staffordshire ware in detail I aim to develop new terms and practices with which to activate emergent versions of historicity, corporeality and world-making.

Article Details

Issue
Vol 23 No 2 (2017): Reprise
Section
Articles (Peer Reviewed)
Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Author Biography

Nicole De Brabandere, University of the Arts, Linz Zurich University of the Arts (ZHdK)

Nicole De Brabandere holds a PhD in artistic research from the Zurich University of the Arts, Switzerland, and the University of Arts in Linz, Austria, a Master of Fine Arts in ceramics from the Ohio State University, Columbus/USA and an honours degree in Cultural Studies from York University, Canada. De Brabandere was awarded two research grants (PhD research, post-doctoral research) from the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNF). De Brabandere regularly presents her research in a variety of formats, including academic and experimental writing as well as workshops and installations.

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