Zoological Compositions : Transatlantic wanderings of objects made with birds, feathers and insects until the nineteenth century

Abstract

In the material culture of the 19^th century, in Europe and the Americas, the afterlife of birds and insects materialized in compositions that included pictures, decorative arrangements, jewellery, hats, hand-folding fans, and costumes. In these various typologies the classificatory frameworks of objects do not account for their multiple nature, sometimes nature, or art. This article reflects on the path and the meanings attributed to a type of non-indigenous feathered art produced in Rio de Janeiro in the 19^th century under the cultural transference angle (Compagnon, 2009). The starting point is the study of a feather, bird and insect bundle in its box, an 18^th century handicraft very little studied in Brazil. In this way, we find the link between the 19^th century production that appealed to a taste of bourgeois character in the context of preponderant Franco-British influence, with the time of discovery, as the material production of the Brazilian Indians began to circulate in the more restricted spheres of the aristocracy and European upper bourgeoisie.