Shell Worlds: Maritime Microcosms in EurAsian Art and Material Culture

Asian shells were collected in early modern Europe, while Mediterranean coral was sought after in Asia. In both locations, artists and artisans created EurAsian objectscapes placing maritime material appropriated from abroad alongside local matter. Such painted and crafted shellscapes and coralscapes materialised ideas on the generation and transformation of matter. This chapter compares the cosmological ideas and material constituents that underlie artistic maritime microcosms and shows how their components echoed the material mapping of foreign spaces in the frameworks of European colonialism and Chinese tributary systems. Despite associations with culturally specific tropes in Greek mythology, Christianity, Daoism and Buddhism, the chapter argues that across Eurasia shells were believed to form gateways to underwater treasuries and give access to supernatural females.