The Private Lives of Mariners’ East Asian Objects

Abstract

This article examines the domestic lives of East Asian objects brought by seafarers from Slovenian lands in the second half of the 19th century and the first decades of the 20th, mostly men serving in the Austro-Hungarian War Navy. Drawing on a variety of material, documentary and oral sources it first explores how the sailors’ social and educational backgrounds, their positions on their vessels as well as other circumstances of their voyages impacted their access to such objects. In accordance with the fashions of the time, decorative and souvenir items dominate in their legacies. The main part of the analysis focuses on how objects’ meanings and uses changed once they were brought to the new socio-cultural milieu and displayed in the homes of the seafarers and later their heirs. For the seafarers they presented an embodied memory and testimony of their voyages and experiences in what at the time were distant and exotic lands. Through their very presence as well as the storytelling they prompted these objects to some extent also shaped the imaginaries of East Asia. In the transmission of objects through lines of inheritance, however, most of the information about their provenance was quickly lost, and the significance of the objects became anchored in the relationship with the seafaring relative. While those heirs who are direct descendants of the seafarers tend to perceive objects as material witnesses of their families’ histories, more distant relatives stress the objects’ decorative and aesthetic qualities.

Keywords

• East Asian objects in Slovenia
• seafarers
• objects of memory
• Austro-Hungarian Navy
• inherited objects