Pub Date : 2021-04-23DOI: 10.1080/20511817.2021.1897266
Jonathan Faiers
Abstract The current pandemic is demanding a radical reconceptualization of fashion. In the context of an unprecedented economic decline, the collapse of physical fashion retailing and a fundamental interrogation of previous clothing consumption patterns, can the same be said of haute couture luxury fashion? Taking the current couture season’s promotional films as a starting point, this article discusses whether couture and its clientele has been forced to adapt or remains largely unaltered since couture’s establishment in the nineteenth century and as represented in literature.
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Pub Date : 2021-01-02DOI: 10.1080/20511817.2020.1864599
Allison Zurfluh
Introduction The sun is beginning to sink over Torcello as I navigate my way back toward Burano. It is Sunday, and the weekend is mercifully coming to an end. I round the south corner of Isola Santa Cristina and pull up to a nesting barena (saltmarsh mudflat) that is home to a family of small white seagulls, known in dialect as coc ai. About three weeks ago, I met two tiny nestlings there while picking up trash that floats in from the mainland and have gone to observe quietly and unobtrusively twice a week, careful not to stay too long or disturb their habitat. Italy had a four-day holiday this week, and an unprecedented number of leisure boats speeding their way into the north. I was surprised and felt uneasy with the endless drone of motors and uninformed traffic in this protected and delicate environment. With a deep knowledge of, and respect for, the city of Venice, its people and environment, Allison Zurfluh curates bespoke educative itineraries into Venice’s northern lagoon. She has worked for twenty years as a translator in Classical Music and Olympic Sport; is the chief editor of DeluxePad, the luxury lifestyle magazine for private aircraft, and has contributed to international publications such as Cond e Nast Traveller UK, Swiss Universe in-flight Magazine, InTime Venice & Veneto, Swiss Style, and Legendary Stein in Salzburg. Zurfluh is also the author of The Veremonda Resurrection which traces the revival of a seventeenthcentury Venetian opera (Gli Ori, 2016), and of a children’s book on Venice Lia Leaves the Library (Lineadacqua Edizioni, 2017). allisonzurfluh@gmail.com Lu xu ry D O I: 10 .1 08 0/ 20 51 18 17 .2 02 0. 18 64 59 9
引言当我驶向布拉诺时，太阳开始从托切洛上空落下。今天是星期天，幸运的是周末即将结束。我绕过Isola Santa Cristina的南角，把车停在一个筑巢的barena（盐沼泥滩），那里是一个白色小海鸥家族的家，在方言中被称为coc-ai。大约三周前，我在那里遇到了两只小海鸥，它们正在捡从大陆飘来的垃圾，每周两次安静而不引人注目地去观察，小心不要停留太久或打扰它们的栖息地。意大利本周迎来了为期四天的假期，数量空前的休闲船正驶向北部。在这个受保护和微妙的环境中，我对无休止的马达嗡嗡声和不知情的交通感到惊讶和不安。Allison Zurfluh对威尼斯市及其人民和环境有着深刻的了解和尊重，他策划了前往威尼斯北部泻湖的定制教育行程。她从事古典音乐和奥林匹克体育翻译工作已有二十年；是私人飞机豪华生活方式杂志DeluxePad的主编，并为英国康泰纳仕旅行社、瑞士环球飞行杂志、威尼斯和威尼托InTime、瑞士风格和萨尔茨堡传奇斯坦等国际出版物撰稿。Zurfluh还是《Veremonda复活》一书的作者，该书追溯了17世纪威尼斯歌剧的复兴（Gli Ori，2016），以及一本关于威尼斯Lia Leaves the Library的儿童书（Lineadacqua Edizioni，2017）。allisonzurfluh@gmail.com鲁：10.1080/20518.17.02.0。18 64 59 9
{"title":"The Last Sacrifice: The Potential of a Revived Venetian World","authors":"Allison Zurfluh","doi":"10.1080/20511817.2020.1864599","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/20511817.2020.1864599","url":null,"abstract":"Introduction The sun is beginning to sink over Torcello as I navigate my way back toward Burano. It is Sunday, and the weekend is mercifully coming to an end. I round the south corner of Isola Santa Cristina and pull up to a nesting barena (saltmarsh mudflat) that is home to a family of small white seagulls, known in dialect as coc ai. About three weeks ago, I met two tiny nestlings there while picking up trash that floats in from the mainland and have gone to observe quietly and unobtrusively twice a week, careful not to stay too long or disturb their habitat. Italy had a four-day holiday this week, and an unprecedented number of leisure boats speeding their way into the north. I was surprised and felt uneasy with the endless drone of motors and uninformed traffic in this protected and delicate environment. With a deep knowledge of, and respect for, the city of Venice, its people and environment, Allison Zurfluh curates bespoke educative itineraries into Venice’s northern lagoon. She has worked for twenty years as a translator in Classical Music and Olympic Sport; is the chief editor of DeluxePad, the luxury lifestyle magazine for private aircraft, and has contributed to international publications such as Cond e Nast Traveller UK, Swiss Universe in-flight Magazine, InTime Venice & Veneto, Swiss Style, and Legendary Stein in Salzburg. Zurfluh is also the author of The Veremonda Resurrection which traces the revival of a seventeenthcentury Venetian opera (Gli Ori, 2016), and of a children’s book on Venice Lia Leaves the Library (Lineadacqua Edizioni, 2017). allisonzurfluh@gmail.com Lu xu ry D O I: 10 .1 08 0/ 20 51 18 17 .2 02 0. 18 64 59 9","PeriodicalId":55901,"journal":{"name":"Luxury-History Culture Consumption","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2021-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41543070","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-01-02DOI: 10.1080/20511817.2021.1877000
Bruno A Martinho
Abstract In early modern Iberia, rhino horns were widely consumed by high-ranking persons. Rhino horns were often confused with the horns of the legendary unicorn, which were said to be able to transform poison into water with their touch. Consumption of rhino horns is often explained either by their ascribed prophylactic properties or by their use as the symbolic representation items for social manifestation. These motivations have long been identified, but they still continue to puzzle us. In this paper, I argue that a structural belief in the power of touch to transform matter from one stage to another played a central role in early-modern Iberia’s consumption of rhino horns. The belief in the transformative power of touch was the framework that can explain the development of a diverse set of motivations that fed the market and circulation of rhino horns in early modern Iberia. The socially-constructed perception that touching certain objects could bring transformation sustained the consumption of horns, because it was shared by most agents involved: consumers, apothecaries, physicians, scholars, and so on. Ultimately, this paper contributes to a more complex approach to analysing the consumption of luxurious goods in general. By opening up its scope, this paper shows how understanding consumption dynamics should include social practices, spiritual beliefs, medical knowledge or symbolic representations.
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Pub Date : 2021-01-02DOI: 10.1080/20511817.2020.1864601
J. Dickenson
Abstract When “King Kong Rhino”—the monumental–sculpture by the Taiwanese artist Shih Li-Jen (1955–) left Venice for Bassano del Grappa in December 2018, it joined a distinguished line of rhinoceroses to have embarked on a European tour. This article examines the place of Shih’s rhinoceros sculptures in this “Endless Circle of Life,” beginning with the European journeys of two historical rhinoceroses, Ganda who arrived in Portugal in 1515, and Clara who was displayed in Venice in 1751. The article outlines Shih’s idiosyncratic collage of themes from Eastern and Western history, philosophy, spirituality and mythology, and his perception of the rhinoceros as powerful but threatened, as expressed in his motto “Strength and Vulnerability.” The animal’s vulnerability has been fuelled by its long history of exploitation for profit. Though it remains an object of commodification today—in some societies rhinoceros horn is revered as the ultimate gift—there has recently been a discernible shift in the way these magnificent animals are viewed, a shift away from exploitation and which Shih claims drives his work. Despite his expressed intentions, however, this paper suggests that, perhaps unwittingly, the marketing of his work serves to extend the long history of human exploitation of the rhinoceros. Finally, the commodification of Venice and its Biennale, at which “King Kong Rhino” was exhibited, is discussed in the context of the current COVID-19 pandemic.
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Pub Date : 2021-01-02DOI: 10.1080/20511817.2020.1864598
Sophie Bostock
Abstract The Orientalist Museum in Qatar has a small, but important, Meissen porcelain statue of a rhinoceros. This rhino is none other than Clara, the same rhinoceros which toured Venice in 1751, and enjoyed a career spanning some twenty years touring Europe. She became so famous that she was commemorated in art of a variety of media and is represented in the two famous paintings by Pietro Longhi and Jean-Baptiste Oudry, in bronze sculpture, and even appeared as part of the background of an engraving in an eighteenth-century anatomy book. This article will introduce Qatar’s Meissen rhinoceros, its provenance and highlight the ongoing travels of Miss Clara.
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Pub Date : 2021-01-02DOI: 10.1080/20511817.2020.1864602
Ronna Bloom
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Pub Date : 2021-01-02DOI: 10.1080/20511817.2020.1864600
Lynn Johnson
Abstract Most luxury consumers link rarity to higher status. It may be a luxury car, yacht, haute-couture fashion and accessories, prestige holiday destinations such as Venice, or purchasing “exotic” wildlife products. For some, legal luxury is not enough to fulfil their status need and they take a step into a world of illegal consumption; this is the case for the buyers of rhino horn in Viet Nam. The desire for rare wildlife “products,” both legal and illegal is increasing rapidly. Legally, the desire to supply means species are both captive bred en masse and legally harvested from the wild to fulfil the demand. Illegally, criminal syndicates have moved beyond simply exploiting the existing demand to manufacturing new markets using the same principles luxury goods manufacturers have used for decades to trigger desire and purchasing decisions. Uncurtailed luxury consumption of exotic wildlife “products” is driving the illegal poaching and unsustainable harvesting of many species. Extinction is a direct result of the “vulgarity of desire” for luxury goods made from endangered species. Battling this trend requires a different approach to traditional conservation methods. Nature Needs More utilises an innovative approach to wildlife conservation, that of “demand reduction.” But demand reduction alone is not enough, there is a need to redirect desire away from both legal and illegal consumption of exotic and endangered species. Nature Needs More combines demand reduction campaigns in SE Asia with work to revive and reinvent Magnificence, a concept steeped in history but subverted by luxury in recent centuries. This paper outlines Nature Needs More’s research in the field, and the mechanisms by which we can provide elites with an alternative to fulfil their self-image and status needs based on contribution instead of consumption of our most fragile heritage.
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Pub Date : 2021-01-02DOI: 10.1080/20511817.2020.1864596
Catherine Kovesi
Abstract This article analyses the oeuvre of the Venetian artist Gigi Bon whose distinctive attitude to her city and the rhinoceros inspired this special issue and the exhibition which preceded it. To enter the Studio d’Arte “Mirabilia” of Gigi Bon is to be introduced to a world of sculptures, prints, and objects of wonder in the tradition of the sixteenth-century Wünderkammer or Cabinet of Curiosities. But more than this, it is an entrée into the mind and active working studio of an artist who has a unique vision, developed over almost thirty years, of the profound links between her own identity, that of the city of Venice, and the predicament of the rhinoceros. Her artistic output, and in particular her mixed media lost-wax bronze sculptures, prints, and sizeable silken scarves incorporate elements of the precious, the rare, the fantastical, and the whimsical, and all reflect profoundly on themes of self, Venice, and the rhinoceros.
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Pub Date : 2021-01-02DOI: 10.1080/20511817.2020.1864597
G. Ridley
Abstract In 1741, a Dutch sea captain succeeded in transporting a live female Indian rhino calf from north-east India to his home town of Leiden. Named “Clara,” she was only the fifth Indian rhinoceros to be seen on European soil since the fall of the Roman empire and the only rhinoceros on the continent in the mid-eighteenth century. From 1741 to 1758, Douwemout Van der Meer displayed Clara across Europe to commoners and kings. In 1751, Van der Meer took Clara to Venice, to show her during Carnival. But en route to Venice, Clara shed her horn. Clara and the crowds that queued to see her—even in her hornless state—are recorded in the paintings and etchings of the father and son, Pietro and Alessandro Longhi. The article provides a brief introduction to Clara’s history and mid-eighteenth-century European odyssey, before examining her 1751 visit to Venice. At that time, the fragility of Clara’s status as the only one of her kind in Europe was further heightened by her shed horn, while rumors that she had been lost to the Grand Canal may be seen as an astute marketing ploy on the part of Van der Meer, and strangely prescient of the potential disappearance of both the rhinoceros and Venice itself.
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