![]() ![]() Addressing the study of Renaissance artisanal cultures through the prism of fairy-tale objects and their counterpart in the material artefacts of marriage custom, this Element brings together figurative representations of luxury goods with the craft histories of their making. Characterised by enchanted bridal objects of precious materials, its magical objects are couched within a veiled social history of their manufacture. First appearing in Renaissance Venice with a further efflorescence in the Parisian salons of Louis XIV, it was chiefly authored by, for, and in the name of women. From diffuse folkloric origin, the Renaissance rise of the literary fairy tale touched on princely and mercantile misadventures and triumphs, and above all female fortune in marriage, in which magical nuptial artefacts were often key to the narrative turn. In the emblematic fairy tales of Sleeping Beauty and Cinderella, the paradigmatic objects of female destiny were specifically those of textile and dress: a spindle, a jewelled gown, and most quixotic of all, a dancing slipper made of glass. By coupling Renaissance luxury wares with their fairy-tale representation, it locates the recherché materialities of bridal goods - gold, silver, diamonds and silk - within expanding colonialist markets of a newly-global early modern economy in the age of discovery. Connecting literary representations of bridal goods - dress, jewellery, carriages, toiletries, banqueting and confectionary foods - to the craft histories of their making, this Element offers a newly-contextualised socio-economic account of Renaissance luxe, from architectural interiors to sartorial fashioning and design. Largely written by, for, and in the name of women, these literary fairy-tales took a lightly comic view of life's vicissitudes, especially female fortune in marriage. ![]() The literary fairy-tale first arose in Renaissance Venice, originating from oral story-telling traditions that would later become the Arabian Nights, and subsequently in the Parisian salons of Louis XIV. Cinderella's Glass Slipper studies Renaissance material cultures through the literary prism of fairy-tale objects. ![]()
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March 2023
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