Hollie Chung
MA work
MA work
Unpacking Convent Ceramics: Bridging the Gap Between Thematic Materiality and Convent Culture in Early Seventeenth-Century Northern Italy
When addressing sixteenth- and seventeenth-century convent material culture there exists a dislocation between document and object. The nineteenth-century Napoleonic suppression of the monasteries resulted in a confiscation, distribution and selling off of monastic property; as a consequence reliable convent provenance for convent goods are exceedingly rare. Thus, much of what is known about convent material culture is necessarily gleamed from textual sources such as inventorial records, testaments and the occasional visitor accounts.
This thesis explores an untapped corpus of convent-specific goods: convent ceramics, which are, in most cases plates or dining wares, personalised by the name of a female monastic and a date. These largely unexplored wares, originating from Faenza and the Veneto region, offer a domestic facet to otherwise sensationalised histories of convent life, which commonly exploit notions of rebellious luxury and forced enclosure. Subsequently, their potential as vehicles to formulate a rounder sense of convent culture is speculated throughout.
The dating of these ceramic wares posits them at a time of monastic tension due to ever-rising convent numbers and intense patriarchal visitations carried out between 1592–1618 in order to assess living conditions and the extent of female monastic material possession. Subsequently, any personal goods maintained at this time must be considered within the heightened tensions of such an environment. Convent ceramics, in both their stylised and personalised capacity stimulate exciting questions about female monastic consumption and identity. Furthermore, they offer new ground to reinvigorate a largely dormant sector of convent material culture studies: one based on thematic materiality and the potentiality of design agency within conventual proximities.Â
Info
Info
-
MA Degree
School
School of Humanities
Programme
MA History of Design, 2014
-
Contact
-
-
Before coming to the course I received a BA in Art History from The University of York, specialising in Renaissance mannerist vedute (cityviews) in Granducal Florence. Since joining the course I have developed an interest in objects of devotion, hierotopic agency and, more recently, the field of maiolica and ceramic materiality. Subsequently, my dissertation explores Italian Renaissance convent ceramics and notions of material propriety within monastic spaces. This aimed to contribute a design historical approach to a sparse scholarship surrounding these particular ceramic goods and, consequently, the saturated field of convent histories.
I have enjoyed two years as the Renaissance strand’s course representative and have spent the past year volunteering in the Sculpture Department at the V&A, interning for a modern design gallery of Mexican and Austrian design and editing the column ‘Materiality/Immateriality’ on Unmaking Things.Â
-
Degrees
- BA (Hons) History of art, University of York, 2012
-
Experience
- Intern, Sculpture Department, The Victoria and Albert Museum, London, 2013–present; Column editor, Unmaking Things, 2013–present; PA and curatorial assistant (internship), Marion Friedmann Galleries, London, 2013–2014; Curatorial and gallery assistant (volunteer), The Royal Cornwall Museum, Truro, 2010
-
Awards
- Winner, The Montjoie Fund, 2013
-
Publications
- 'Putting a Price on Money: A Contemporary Abstraction of Value', Unmaking Things, 2013; 'The Experience of Nostalgia and Novelty', V&A/RCA History of Design Course Bulletin, 2013; 'Material Transmissions & Expanding Hierotopies: The Case of the Contact Relic', Unmaking Things, 2013