Dipika Nadkarni

Throughout the long nineteenth century, tourists from Europe visited British India and brought back with them souvenir objects that were produced specifically for sale to Europeans. The current pattern of object research in museums focuses on provenance by tracing collector histories and biographies, an approach that often looks at these historic souvenirs as idiosyncratic additions to the enrichment of European intellectual histories. This research attempts instead to look collectively at these objects as representing a system designed to promote Indian handicraft traditions to a European audience, using the objects in the Sammlung Kulturen der Welt (ehemals Völkerkundesammlung Lübeck) as a case study. Through my research, I challenge notions of inauthenticity of souvenir crafts by exploring the adaptability of indigenous craftsmanship to rapidly mould itself to a widening clientele and changing European taste. By tracing first the development of handicrafts in precolonial India, as well as exploring their role in early colonial knowledge production, my research then investigates the representation and dissemination of Indian crafts in the West.

In the latter half of the nineteenth century, Indian handicrafts were presented as commodities and consumables at the colonial exhibitions that were held in many countries. Starting with the Crystal Palace Exhibition of 1851 in London, Indian handicrafts were placed on a global stage for Europe to witness. In the rush of competitive international colonial exhibitions that followed up until World War I, every major colonial power sought to display the riches, innovations, art, and manufactures of their colonies. These exhibitions presented to their western audience a strong visual representation of life and material culture in the colonies, but also provided a means for the Empire to maintain its position of control. Everyday objects were transformed by removing them from their ordinary contexts and inserting them into these new visual modes.

Through their representation of Indian material culture, these exhibitions also shaped European attitudes towards a constructed and conjectured ideological image of India that served to legitimise the colonial discourse. Yet, collectively, these surviving objects offer us an opportunity to look behind the veil of systems that were designed to promote Indian handicraft traditions to a European audience. For Indian artisans and merchants, these exhibitions meant a whole new clientele and market for their wares; and for the Indian elite, a means to promote a carefully-crafted image of India to the West. This project thus attempts to trace Indian objects in Lübeck not only to contexts of souvenir production as a response to colonialism, but also as they navigate through epistemological spaces between their changing status as traditional crafts, commodities, souvenirs of global tourism, and finally, in the present day, museum artifacts.