During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Asian shells were highly desired by collectors in early modern Europe, while coral from the Mediterranean was eagerly sought after in Asia. In both locations, artisans and painters created EurAsian objectscapes that placed maritime material appropriated from abroad alongside local matter. Such shell and coralscapes were highly ambiguous, belonging to oceanic and terrestrial, global and local, commodified and sacred realms, but unambiguously materialized ideas on the generation and transformation of matter. Despite the attribution of different culturally defined meanings to shells and coral, this chapter argues that, in both Europe and China, maritime material culture formed a gateway to imaginary foreign worlds full of precious rarities, unusual creatures and beautiful women.

Shells in Flux

The material cultures of European harbour cities, such as Antwerp and Amsterdam, Lisbon and Livorno, incorporated imported Asian objects, among them shells. The same was true for elite collecting in inland cities such as Florence and Dresden where important court collections were being formed, as discussed in chapter 1. In addition, archaeological evidence of a non-European shell, which was presumably traded through Portuguese networks, from the remains of a fifteenth-century fishing village on the Belgian coast in West Flanders confirms the existence of extra-European maritime material culture beyond the main urban centres. Inventories, correspondence and other texts from the time document the availability of large quantities of a wide range of shell species that were exchanged through networks that connected courts, merchants and collectors across Europe.