Ornamental Blackness

The Black Figure in European Decorative Arts

Adrienne L. Childs

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Hardback

Forthcoming
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English

Yale University
20 May 2025

Art & Architecture; Art & design styles: Baroque

Exploring the role the decorative arts played in the representation of Black people in European visual and material culture

This revelatory look at European decorative arts addresses the long-ignored implications of the depiction of Black bodies on luxury objects from the Baroque period through the nineteenth century. Adrienne L. Childs traces the complex history of the vogue for representing the Black body as an ornamental motif throughout spaces of wealth and refinement. Objects such as furniture, porcelain, clocks, silver, light fixtures, and more conveyed the taste for exoticism and portrayed the laboring Black body in the guise of décor. These objects also express larger ideas about the concept of race, romantic notions of distant lands, the harsh realities of slave labor in the colonies, the presence of Black servants in wealthy European households, and the culture of luxury consumption.

Ornamental Blackness demonstrates how seemingly benign decorative objects can embody the complexities of race, slavery, and representation. Childs examines the tensions inherent in the system of codes in which the Black body can be enslaved, reviled, feared, subjugated, and assaulted on one hand and a symbol of opulence on the other. In this important volume she establishes a framework for understanding the racialized aesthetics of luxury.

By: Adrienne L. Childs
Imprint: Yale University
Country of Publication: United States
Dimensions: Height: 254mm, Width: 203mm,
ISBN: 9780300246094
ISBN 10: 0300246099
Pages: 208
Publication Date: 20 May 2025
Audience: Professional and scholarly , Undergraduate
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Forthcoming

Adrienne L. Childs is an art historian and curator.

Reviews for Ornamental Blackness: The Black Figure in European Decorative Arts

“This highly original book—written by an exceptional scholar of great breadth, depth, and generosity—has the capacity to fundamentally change the field of European decorative arts.”—Iris Moon, author of Melancholy Wedgwood “Ornamental Blackness is a much-needed study, not only for art historians, but also for scholars of the political, economic, and literary history of Europe and the Atlantic world.”—Paul Kaplan, Purchase College, SUNY