| dc.description.abstract | Nautilus shells were highly coveted items in seventeenth-century Amsterdam. Shells were
imported to the Low Countries via the Dutch East India Company's extensive network from
the Pacific and West Indies. In Amsterdam, Europe’s chief market for mother-of-pearl at the
time, nautilus shells were ornamented by highly skilled artisans and displayed in curiosity
cabinets, where they represented both naturalia (natural objects) and artificialia (man-made
objects). The Bellekin family was a small but prolific dynasty of artisans, best well-known for
this type of work in Amsterdam. The nautilus shells with floral and insect motifs, made by the
Bellekin workshop, will be taken as a case study here. This thesis examines the extent to
which decorated nautilus shells were highly appreciated, partly due to being liminal objects,
which allowed them to mediate between art and nature, blurring and obscuring the boundaries
of the two. Their contemporaries were fascinated with the nautilus shell, not only for its
material properties but also for a variety of other features. As I will argue, liminality was only
one, but crucial feature that has contributed to the shell’s overall appeal. Furthermore, I will
demonstrate how the members of the Bellekin workshop utilized knowledge and skills from
diverse industries to alter nautilus shells, and yet, in the curiosity cabinets, these shells in
addition to artifice also recalled their natural origins. The concept of liminality allows for
pondering how the nautilus shell fulfilled its function as a scientific and aesthetic object in
natural history cabinets, how these objects constructed knowledge of the natural world, and
how they served to reflect a coherent image of the world from a micro to a macro perspective. | |
