The session is organized by Anne Hultzsch (ETH Zurich) and Laura
Hindelang (University of Bern) as part of the 2026 European
Architectural History Network (EAHN conference) in Aarhus, Denmark.
Sipping hot cocoa, grown in present-day Ghana, in 19th-century Poland from a porcelain cup decorated with a castle veduta / Stirring matcha in a ceramic chawan showing a landscape painting in 18th-century Japan / Savouring tea, traded in China against opium, served on a tray on which is painted the scene of an 18th-century English salon.
The session brings together three phenomena: ceramics featuring architectural motifs; the consumption of hot beverages, made from substances, including tea, coffee, and chocolate, which played a significant role in colonial trade and imperial networks; and their spatial environments. Through this specific group of illustrated objects and the built spaces in which they were used, thus bridging material and visual cultures, we seek to tell architectural histories of global colonial entanglements and distinct spatial practices before ca. 1900. European elites from the 16th century onwards began to define themselves through the consumption of exclusive hot beverages that contained an intrinsic trace of an elsewhere; later, their consumption often turned into popular everyday culture. Such ceramics, including porcelain, amalgamate the ingestion of procured addictive substances with the consumption of architectural imagery and, thus, the symbolism attached to architectural spaces. We consider them highly potent objects and environments through which to complicate architectural historiographies, reflecting on who, under which conditions – in terms also of class, race, or gender – produced and consumed both substance and container.
We explore questions such as: What kind of sceneries were displayed on architectural ceramics? To what extent did these real or imagined spaces relate to the physical spaces of both the production and consumption of hot beverages, including plantations and coffee or tea houses? How can we conceptualize the intimate bodily encounters with architectural porcelain, the processes of ingesting addictive or stimulating substances such as hot chocolate, tea, coffee, mate, or matcha? How can ceramics manifest a space or constitute a spatial practice within the global-colonial networks necessary to produce, trade, transport, and sell not only the beverages but also the vessels? Through these objects and their environments, how can we tell marginalized stories of exploitation, oppression, asymmetrical power relations, use, and abuse – but also of agency and resistance – in relation to architectural histories?
We are interested in papers that reflect on, but are not limited to:
the architectural imagery on beverage containers like cups, saucers, pots, storage vessels, or trays and slop bowls;
the spatial practices and environments of consumption and preparation, such as parlour, salon, teahouse, coffeehouse, bedroom, boudoir, or kitchen;
the spatial practices and environments of production and trade, such as plantations, potteries, ships, and manufactories;
strategies to expand or contest established architectural histories through intersectional, feminist, queer, decolonial, or other novel theories and methodologies.
We invite papers that centre on a specific object or space and its agency as a prism through which to interrogate broader spatial histories in any geography; we focus on the period from ca. 1500 to 1900 but are also interested in examples outside this time span if they reflect on the above questions.
Abstracts of no more than 300 words should be submitted directly to Anne Hultzsch and Laura Hindelang, along with the applicant’s name, email address, professional affiliation, address, telephone number and a short curriculum vitae (maximum one page). Check EAHN 2026 conference website for key dates and application process.
