Dinner Is Served

Europe’s aristocratic families used to indulge in luxurious banquets with exquisite table accessories to demonstrate their power and extravagantly while away their time. Well into the 18th century, it was not unusual for people to bring their own cutlery – quite often peculiar, valuable one-of-a-kind pieces. In the Baroque period, matching dinner services came into vogue and finally, in the wake of industrialisation, became mass-produced commodities. Trading with faraway countries, conquests and migration pro-cesses augmented people’s menus with exotic fruit and spices, and contrib-uted to a change in customs and traditions. Juxtaposing ethnographic treas-ures and exquisite historical examples of the goldsmith’s art with imagina-tively designed contemporary dining utensils and everyday objects, the exhi-bition will be themed around dining cultures around the globe. After all, the way to culture is also through the stomach.