Art Inquiries
Abstract
Ornamental Blackness by Adrienne L. Childs offers the first comprehensive survey of European luxury and utilitarian objects that treat Black Africans as decorative motifs. Proceeding chronologically from the middle Baroque period to the late nineteenth century, Childs charts the initial production of racialized objects for royal courts and aristocratic households and their later dissemination to middle-class homes. Items such as furniture, light fixtures, clocks, tableware, porcelain figurines, and treasury objects became an apparatus for controlling and fetishizing Black bodies, reinforcing the idea of Black servitude as normal. Many of these objects were crafted from precious natural materials whose extraction and transatlantic sale depended on Black slave labor. Childs identifies Venice as an epicenter for the production of ornamental blackness thanks to its reputation as a “gateway to the East” and its visible Black population. Throughout the book, Childs suggests a critical framework for understanding the racialized aesthetics of opulence.
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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
Recommended Citation
Boyle, Brigid M.. "Adrienne L. Childs, Ornamental Blackness: The Black Figure in European Decorative Arts." 21, 1 (2026). https://scholarscompass.vcu.edu/artinquiries_secacart/vol21/iss1/8
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