Trading Earth

Trading Earth: Ceramics, Commodities, and Commerce

Drawing on centuries of works from across the Americas, Asia, Europe, and Africa, this exhibition focuses on global trade and ceramic objects made to store, serve, or consume staples and luxury commodities grown in soil or extracted from the earth. Foodstuffs such as tea, sugar, coffee, and spices, along with tobacco and alcohol, were marketed via vast international trade routes, resulting in the creation, dissemination, appropriation, and refinement of ceramic technique, form, and ornament, with accompanying objects from materials such as silver. The cycles of cultivation, production, trade, and consumption revealed across more than 200 works also illustrate global systems of oppression and privilege, including reliance on enslaved and other exploitative labor and lasting damage to communities and the natural world.

Elizabeth A. Williams, PhD

David and Peggy Rockefeller Curator of Decorative Arts and Design