Miniature Designs and Worldly Simulations: Questions of Scale in Early Modern Arts

Amongst the growing scholarship on the global circulation and appropriation of early modern arts, the creative manipulation of sizes and scales is one absorbing visual dimension that has received little attention. This session proposes to chart a connected visual sensation centering around miniaturization. From netsuke to folding fans, snuff bottles to pocket watches, a diverse range of small-sized objects were transformed into elaborately crafted luxuries and desirable collectibles across the Eurasian sphere. The global export lives of these miniature arts often departed from the usages and implications in their original cultural contexts. In late Ming China, for example, folding fans functioned as a delicate site where courtesans transformed their self-portraits and sensuality into objects of intimacy ready for public gazes. Such strong connection between miniature portraiture and female subjects’ self-fashioning also resonated with cases in early modern Europe and beyond. Meanwhile, monumental structures from around the globe—ranging from the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, Chinese pagodas, to Greco-Roman ruins—were similarly reimagined on a miniature scale and collected as not only representations but also simulations of cultural ideas. These are a few examples showcasing how miniature designs might illuminate global networks of novel technologies and contested commodities, the transforming practices of privacy and intimacy, and transcultural visual simulations. By inviting papers that bring to light more objects and scenarios exemplifying thoughtful reinventions of scales, this session explores how miniature designs encompassed new meanings and mentalities that emerged in the rapidly transforming global dynamics of the early modern period.