Unboxing the Long Eighteenth Century

Boxes are objects which at once contain and extend their makers’ and users’ contact with the world. Then as now, they traveled the globe, moving between cultures and amongst sellers, consumers, and collectors. With online shopping and shipping, they have proliferated as symbols of consumerism, as fodder for YouTube and TikTok videos, and as useful nuisances, littering our landscapes. They have not, however, claimed the same space in our scholarly studies. Usually an afterthought or even discarded entirely, boxes could be luxury goods themselves, made by skilled craftspersons with significant care and attention to detail. Boxes contain, store, hide, protect, wrap, package, present, and encase, but they can also reveal, expose, manifest, exhibit, and even release. Here we turn attention to the box as a signifier and site of meaning. As noted in the Encyclopédie, “The number of assemblages that can be called a box is infinite.” (“Le nombre des assemblages auxquels on donne le nom de boîte est infini.”)

This panel invites papers that explore boxes of all kinds, including but not limited to boxes for artist’s materials; snuff boxes; powder boxes; mouche boxes; nécessaires; etuis; tea or coffee canisters; specimen boxes; trunks; coffers; caskets; and cases; as well as their representation. These objects raise issues related to interiority and exteriority, storage and display, the hidden and the revealed. Global topics from the 17th through the early 19th century that address labor, performance, the senses, empire, materiality, gender, race, and other avenues of exploration are welcome.