CHAM

📄 Últimos Outputs | Recent Research Outputs

“Textiles have actually been found among the products entering the port of Lisbon ever since the arrival of the first ship to complete the return voyage from India in 1499, and were immediately recognised as important testimonies to the material culture of the new Asian experience under the Portuguese overseas enterprise, recently begun in that part of the globe. The quantity and, in particular, the novelty of these products with such different provenances, in terms of colours, decoration, materials, and techniques used, must have aroused a fresh sensory experience, leading to increasing demand among those who gradually came into contact with them. Such was the case with textiles originating in the mythical land of China, which had up until then been enveloped in an aura of rarity, luxury and preciousness, stimulated by the high price, the long distance that separated Europe from China and ignorance of their exact geographic origin.”