Making a Case for Ebony

This essay makes a case for assessing the significance of material and labor in the context of the global history of early modern art, through an analysis of a single case or cabinet dated to the second quarter of the seventeenth century: an imposing ebony chest inlaid with mother-of-pearl created by Herman Doomer (1595-1650), a contemporary and compatriot of the Dutch artist Rembrandt van Rijn (1606-1669). The essay endeavors to address the place of enslaved labor in Dutch seventeenth-century taste that favored foreign goods and materials.