Sea Currents in Nineteenth-Century Art, Science and Culture: Commodifying the Ocean World [Hardcover]

How did scientists, artists, designers, manufacturers and amateur enthusiasts experience and value the sea and its products? Examining the commoditization of the ocean world during the nineteenth century, this book demonstrates how the transaction of oceanic objects inspired a multifaceted material discourse stemming from scientific exploration, colonial expansion, industrialization, and the rise of middle-class leisure.

From the seashore to the seabed, marine organisms and environments, made tangible through processing and representational technologies, captivated practitioners and audiences. Combining essays and case studies by scholars, curators, and scientists,Sea Currentsinvestigates the collecting and display, illustration and ornamentation, and trade and consumption of marine flora and fauna, analysing their material, aesthetic and commercial dimensions. Traversing global art history, the history of science, empire studies, anthropology, ecocriticism and material culture, this book surveys the currency of marine matter embedded in the economies and ecologies of a modernizing ocean world.

Kathleen Davidsonis a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Department of Art History at the University of Sydney, Australia.

Molly Dugginsis a lecturer in the Department of Art History and Theory at the National Art School, Sydney, Australia.

Sea Currentsexpands our thinking about human interactions with the oceans, linking developments in museums, consumerism, exploration, and colonialism with artistic and scientific culture, in an engaging discussion of how the ocean world was commodified by and for diverse communities. Peter H. Hoffenberg, Professor of History, University of Hawai'i at Manoa; co-editor of Oceania and the Victorian Imagination (2013)

The sea's leavings  whalebone, spermaceti, isinglass, mother-of-pearl, coral, seaweed  fascinate and allure. Exploring how nineteenth-century oceanic clÓ: