Last weekend we returned to the Bard Graduate Center Gallery for their “Setting the Table” exhibit, which featured period books and artifacts focused on two aspects of upper-class formal dining: one side of the gallery featured cutlery and carving guides, while the other exhibited fine linens and elaborate folding techniques.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, I was more drawn to the knives and kitchen-related texts, while Alienor has spent the last week figuring out how to replicate some of the complex linen folds in paper.
One other element of the gallery signage particularly caught my eye, describing the relationship between the many books and informational charts that were published in the late sixteenth and throughout the seventeenth centuries. While some might consider the rampant reuse, emulation, and revision of others’ work in this pre-copyright era to be a shortcoming, the curators framed it as a dialog: “They borrowed freely from one another, engaging in a broad conversation in print across Europe.”
