Erika is a PhD candidate at LIAS (Leiden Institute for Area Studies) and her project is fully funded by The Hulsewé-Wazniewski Foundation (HWS). Erika is interested in the design, trade, and consumption of Chinese material culture in early modern Europe. Her project focuses on silks and papers made in eighteenth-century Guangzhou and Suzhou for the European markets, where they were used for the furnishing of the interior space. More specifically, Erika studies wallpaper sets, as well as wall hangings, curtains, and screens, and how they were incorporated, manipulated, and re-invented by artists in eighteenth-century Italy.

More information about Erika Riccobon

Erika is a PhD candidate at LIAS (Leiden Institute for Area Studies) and her project is fully funded by The Hulsewé-Wazniewski Foundation (HWS). Erika is interested in the design, trade, and consumption of Chinese material culture in early modern Europe. Her project focuses on silks and papers made in eighteenth-century Guangzhou and Suzhou for the European markets, where they were used for the furnishing of the interior space. More specifically, Erika studies wallpaper sets, as well as wall hangings, curtains, and screens, and how they were incorporated, manipulated, and re-invented by artists in eighteenth-century Italy.

The project –titled The Interior Space as a Picture– investigates the multiple design practices revealed by these artworks, offering a polyvocal perspective on the making and re-imagining of Chinese silks and papers circulating in Europe at the time. By challenging a purely decorative understanding of rocaille ‘wall art’, the project aims to highlight the intersections between methods of interior design and the Enlightenment’s encyclopaedic impulse as visualised, for instance, through botanical and zoological pictures.

Erika received a Research Master’s degree in Asian Studies and a pre-Master’s degree in South and Southeast Asian Studies from Leiden University. Before her studies in the Humanities, she worked for over four years in the luxury fashion industry as a designer in South Korea, France, and Italy. Erika’s background in the creative arts has helped her develop an analytical approach which pays attention to practices of making and historical forms of design thinking.

PUBLICATIONS

2025      (forthcoming) Erika Riccobon, Qinxin He, ‘Children Playing ‘Scholar’: Unboxing a Transitional Piece from Jan Theodor Royer’s Collection’, The Oriental Ceramic Society Newsletter 33.

2024      Qinxin He, Erika Riccobon, ‘From Rebus to Encyclopaedia: Jean Theodor Royer’s Collection of  Chinese Transitional Wares’, Aziatische Kunst 4 (2024): 38-49.                      

CONFERENCE PRESENTATIONS

2025      (forthcoming) ‘From “birds and flowers” to Menagerie of the Fantastic: Chinese Wallpapers and Their Reinterpretations in Savoy Piedmont (1730-1770s)’, EAAA, The Fourth Conference of the European Association for Asian Art and Archaeology, University of Lisbon, September 8-13.

2025      (forthcoming) ‘From ‘Birds and Flowers’ to Ménagerie of the Fantastic: The ‘Nature-historical aesthetic’ of Guangzhou’s Wallpapers and their Reinterpretations in Savoy Piedmont (1730s-1770s),’ Visual and Material History Working Group, European University Institute (EUI), Connections, Conflicts, and Convergences: Exploring ‘Othering’ in Global Visual and Material Cultures, ca. 1500-1800, Florence, February 27-28.

2023      ‘Folding Fans in Translation: Ivory as Painting Medium and Site of Cross-cultural Design
in the Early Phase of the Canton Trade,’ HECAA@30, Environments, Materials, and Futures in the Eighteenth Century, Boston, Cambridge and Providence, October 12-14.

2023      ‘Re-materialising Walls through Intermedial Design: Chinese Silk and Paper Wall Hangings in Eighteenth-century European Interiors,’ Dressing the Early Modern Network, Dressing the Interior in the Early Modern: Textiles in Various Domestic Settings, Leiden University, September 23.

2023      ‘A Rebus to Solve, a Story to Imagine: The Multiple Lives of Jean Theodor Royer’s Chinese Transitional Wares (1635-1660),’ with Qinxin He (Leiden University), KVVAK, Young Scholars’ Symposium in Asian Art, New Perspectives on Asian Art and Material Culture, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, June 17.

Keywords

design thinking- visual culture studies - cultural analysis - picture theory - material culture studies - global history