 The plants alongside around the same number of paintings of birds and animals amount to one of the most extensive collections of flora and fauna produced by a company official on the subcontinent in the 18th century. This type of drawing points to the systematic depiction of plants in the European conventions of linear taxonomy on plain sheets of paper, the sheer number of works and the moments of startling artistry in many of the depictions. But they can also with other paintings and other art forms, including poetry gardens and recipes to expand the approach to the depiction of plants and birds, in which works made for company officials are one part. For instance, Martens inscribed painting of a flaming Lily can be related to one included in an album of 17th and 18th century Indian paintings that Francis juice collected in the early 19th century, or the paintings of flowers placed adjacent to gardens in another one of his albums. Here the singular flower is attended to alongside its position within the garden, its laborers and users as well as its metaphors. It opens up the question of ephemeral arts and their documentation and other ones. And specifically within that, the connections between food and art, which I'll discuss today via flowering plants, fruits and vegetables and other produce like legumes. Martens flaming Lily looks different when considered as one among the 600 in the series, and different still when connected to other arts in the region. So together, they offer an opportunity to think through a range of approaches to the depiction of cultivation and sale from a single painting to the series as a data set to farms and gardens gardeners and grain sellers markets and albums. And consider how ephemeral arts passed down to us through representation. Born in Leon in 1735 Club Martens traveled to India in 1751 at the age of 16, as in the army of the French East India Company. And whereas the British gained power, he switched the company's forces in 1760. And in 1775 he became superintendent of the Nawab or Mughal governor of our arsenal in Lucknow. And in 1779 he became an employee of the Nawab himself and remained in the region until his death in 1800. As Rosie Louland Jones has spiritedly documented Martens was an extraordinary man with a keen sense for business alongside a range of eclectic interests from hot air balloon flights to rerouting a river to cool a house of his own design. In 1786 he took over the estate of Najafgar, which can be viewed in this watercolor by see to round made a few decades later, and became a local landowner. While he continued to grow and sell crops for the local market. He also introduced potentially lucrative high value raw materials like indigo for dyes and roses for fragrant waters and perfumes. He experimented with potentially valuable produce like the potato and tobacco. He further hired Indian artists whose names remain unknown to us to primarily depict plants and birds, which amount to around again 600, including this one of coriander. The artists were taught to focus on parts of the plants important to linear taxonomy, and most of the plants bear linear names to the extent possible within that system. Some are also inscribed with the names of the plants and version and words. The scholars have focused on the qualities and products of Martin that were exceptional. Here I'd like to turn to Martin 600 paintings as a data set and acknowledge the work of Henry Nolte in cataloging this collection IQ gardens and his generosity and sharing the materials with me. With this data set of paintings as a whole, it becomes clear that while Martin did experiment with certain lucrative items. He also maintained the crops already in rotation that supplied a local market as well as his own pantry. We see coriander and radishes, as well as different types of spinach, cucumber, okra eggplant, French beans, amaranth, caperberries, mustard, chilies, watercress, gourds, grains like barley, flocks and millet, and legumes including chickpeas, tour, masoor and urad dal, or lentils, and fruits including plums, pomegranates, melons, guavas, jackfruit, mulberries, tamarind and pears, spices and herbs like coriander, verbena, fennel, ginger and cumin. In his writings, Martin discusses the fruits that the estate sold locally in Comfort are slightly further away in Lucknow, which included pomegranates, sweet limes, mulberries and custard apples from the orchards. They also sold different types of lentils or dal and maize. The fruits were also cultivated for fodder. One quote instructs the help to feed a pomegranate a day to the cranes and the peacocks. And this type of attention to what types of produce animals eat in order to perfume their flesh is also told repeatedly by contemporary cooks and eaters from this region such as gaming for Siberian cranes who feasted on saffron in their migrations or feeding saffron pills directly to animals to again infuse their flesh. These quotes map onto the drawings, but the drawings also provide far more variety in terms of the produce, as well as insight into the range of products cultivated by the estate than the writings by Martin himself. So alongside fruits, vegetables, grain and legumes there were also sweet smelling flowers, jasmine, poppies, larkspur, trees and shrubs and numerous medical plants. They also show the limits of Linnaean taxonomy. While some plants bear the classifications like the coriander on the left. Others like the radish on the right bear a name so generic that it's hard to discern the specific vegetable. Written in Persian and Urdu on the other hand are are much more specific, such as Metis for Fenugreek through the naming conventions it becomes clear that different knowledge systems are being woven together and supplementing information that is not yet been provided by the Linnaean system. These drawings were clearly produced to be part of a European classification of natural history, and they map on to the documentation of other colonial officials in terms of their interest in the values of imported and exported goods, especially for, again, export and for revenue collection so absolutely part of the colonial system. And I just want to briefly mention another company official named James Forbes, who from 1760 to 1784 worked in Western India, and in 1778, he was appointed to be a revenue collector in Gujarat, which included some 200 villages. And like Martin while he detailed the most high value items in his letters and illustration like cottons or the chili that you're seeing on the screen. Red dyes tobacco sugar cane. He also focused on the crops that sustained people. Grains like rice or sorghum millet beans, doll and oils for cooking and lights. However, such series of plants as lucrative colonial goods, or those gleaned for sustenance and revenue. We juxtaposed with other depictions of plants, laborers and poetry to begin to gesture to a wider system so moving from the ingredients that are documenting what was growing at the time and where those items were moving to how they were part of an aesthetic system a part of a series of metaphors. For instance, Delphinium. Sorry, this, sorry, these are actually two more from Forbes's albums that China, or the chickpea and Dori the sorghum. Delphinium, known as nepharmon or larkspur is a loan on its sheet of pale paper in Martin's collection, but gains its flower companion the poppy in the border of what is now known as the small Clive album at the V&A. Nicholas Roth has discussed how larkspurs and corn poppies, which also feature in Martin's collection of drawings are both annual flowers that were commonly grown together in mixture alternating rows, in part because they share similar cultivation needs, but also because they look so attractive together so they begin to move from, you know, a system of cultivation to one that is aesthetic. And on the right was part of an album that contain paintings that are not only unified by the flower friend borders of poppies and larkspurs, but also seem to put the single botanical specimen back within the context of the garden. The album contains alternating pages of specimens, or what we might call flower portraits with scenes of gardens. On the right we see a man watering the garden, while another man hose it, and a beautiful woman collects its flowery offerings. To give you a broader sense of the album's juxtapositions, we see two paintings of women and children who have collected flowers many flip flourishing trees, followed by a pair of plants on the right. The, and on the right the depiction of the only edible plant in the album, the branch of a cherry tree. These are two scenes of more masculine activities, a scene of a hunt in the wilderness, and a portrait of a man holding a flower in a garden. These situate the paintings of flowers and fruits within the spaces of cultivation and social activity related to gardens. They also gesture to the labor of cultivation, as we saw in the first painting where the lady and man hoeing seem to have been added by a later artist to join the man drawing water as of acknowledging that more people were required in the garden from those managing it to those experiencing its beauty. The juxtaposition of these works also points to the movement of produce from the garden or farm, which other types of manuscripts depict more explicitly. In the Tashri Akvam, which translates as the history of the origin and distinguishing marks of the different cast of India, which was commissioned by the company Colonel James Skinner in 1825 from Delhi artists, and is now in the British Library. We see paintings of occupations from the garden to the market or from picked grain and legumes to their roasting and processing, as is seen from fruits distilled into flower waters, oils and perhaps alcoholic beverages. Another author in this period, Ghulam Yahya, created a compendium of 11 trades for the company official Robert Glenn and Bareilly, again also in North India, circa 1820. His attention to certain types of labor is also part of the colonial acquisition of information, as are many of the other albums I've discussed, and marks an intersection of cultivation and markets with representation. He includes grand parters, grocers and kebab roasters and detailed priceless as Mehraf Shah Farouk has discussed. The grocer, for instance, specialized and imported items from the southern duck and plateau of India, from the east, the west and the mountains, and these included nutmeg and cloves, cotton almonds, ginger, almonds of Kabul, almonds of Dostpur, almonds, currants and Persian plums, which we see in the schematic table of ingredients and prices, the representation of the grocer with his colorful wares, scales and pots, and then the graphic rendition solely of the containers. However, a small number of items were grown locally in Bareilly in North India. It is fascinating that in Martin's series of botanical illustrations, none of the foreign items appear, but the artist did visualize most of the local goods, as noted in Ghulam Yahya's list, for instance. So we meet our coriander again, on div, cumin, tobacco and rose petals in the list and in the illustration. So we start to see that these are really documenting a much more local industry. The manuscript also acknowledges the movement from fields to markets to cook delicacies in the kebab maker. The author distinguishes between recipes made by trained cooks of wealthy people that include cream, ground poppy seeds, ginger juice and saffron, for example, which are still very familiar as marinating ingredients today. These ingredients that we know from the grocer were obtained from abroad, versus those available in the market made simply when, and I quote, a cow or goat meat is chopped and red chilies and salt are added. The paste is then stuck on iron skewers and roasted, then sold. And this product could make 150 kebabs, for example. The movement from the fields to markets to foodstuffs is also seen in other illustrative manuscripts from North India, such as the Eid Ki Tathniat or greetings on the Festival of Eid, written by Mir Hassan in 1786 for Nawab Asafo Dalla, but this is a manuscript copy from a few years later. It describes the flourishing city of Faizabad during this festival period, and most resplendently includes market scenes here in the whitewashed arched colonies and on the street. We see vendors selling different types of melons, other selling sherbet and foodstuffs and hookahs for smoking. Melons, tobacco, rosewater, these items were equally portrayed in Marten's collection of botanical paintings and in Ghulam Yahya's descriptions, as well as in the materials on the other side of produce in recipes like the kebabs, and those described in recipe books. This is a 19th century. In the recipe book, for example, it's lithographed, the Khwan Niamut, the cuisine of riches or the abundant table, which offers recipes for such commestibles seen in the Eid Ki Tathniat manuscript we just saw. Almond sweets like loz badam, scented with roses and saffron, as well as the types of vessels in different materials, such as unfired clay to impart the cool earth, and to soak up excess liquid or copper to retain either heat or cold for serving the recipes discussed inside. Other types of items gained specificity through oral history. Suleyman Khan, the Raja of Mahmudabad, once described to me the first liquid to pass a newborn's lips called Guhti. He said that the ingredients depend on the mother and the father's humors and the family's characteristics. And that someone in his family, for example, was never swiss seed coriander. So the proper herbs were pounded, boiled, liquefied, strained and given to the child by the Hakim, who is a doctor of Islamic medicine. And I'm showing you one image on the right of Hakim. And this was the first thing given, he described, even before a mother's milk in order to purge the child. And this he describes as the very beginning of cuisine. The single plant, the single plant splayed on the page in a natural history illustration, gains a context outside of the series and the system of classification. Yet it also remains a crucial part of how we might begin to consider these relationships between food and art. So food as an ingredient and art has a representation of it as well as its sensory experience. Poems also describe cities that were flourishing in terms of a progression of raw foodstuffs. And if anyone ever comes to that Isle of Singhala writes Malik Muhammad, Jayasi and the Hindavi romance Padmavat circa 1540 as translated by Aditya Bell. It is as if he enters paradise on every side are planted thick mango grows rising from the earth to meet the sky. Jayasi moves from the mango groves to the fruit dense and pleasant to the birds that sit in the mango orchard to the wells and step wells lakes and pools. To the, again, I'm continuing to quote the ambrosial gardens planted with peerless fruit watched over carefully limes fresh and color and orange citrons and almond trees willows and figs grow there. In fruit are huge citrons grapefruits and lemons and oranges red and full of juice grapes ripen and apples fresh and leaf pomegranates and vines please the eyes. The Indian gooseberries are delightful and the banana clusters hanging low mulberries Avaroa and red currents bear fruit, as do the Corinda to do be enthroned G nut. One can see both soil and date and other edible fruits both sweet and sour, the wells yield water like sherbet, as if mixed with sugar in the channels. It flows through the clay pots of water wheels and soaks the ambrosial vines and quote. This description is paradisiacal like a romantic idealization or a moogle Arcadia and the phrasing of Sunil Sharma. But it is interesting to read it for the movement from mango groves to cultivated gardens to flower gardens to the city and the markets, where all of these items are sold and processed into delicacies and other goods. So why bring all of this together. While this talk has been just a sketch. I wanted to open a conversation on flowers and food stuffs that are ephemeral that we can access only through these kind of ingredient lists or these representations. So consider how we might access them holistically from their depiction from botanical paintings produced for company officials to albums poems narrative narratives and the cultivators and cooks who tended and transformed them. To some extent many of these people and plants are absent right plants will and die after a few days or if dried months dishes go bad, fragrant distillations evaporate. Many of the artists names I've discussed are now unknown to us, not to mention the laborers depicted as types rather than as individuals. The ephemerality of this material is both within the material itself and in those that tended to it. Is it an appropriate methodology then to build a framework around what is absent through materials that do remain. The artistic production of course also has its own goals, which intersect with food and cultivation, but also of course aestheticize it. There is a high low aspect at play here in the histories of these arts. The paintings of plants are often deemed illustrations sit sitting somewhere in between science and art and scholarship. There are a number of colonial systems of knowledge acquisition, whereas the late Mughal paintings are within fine manuscripts or albums. And then of course, we see the same distinctions within histories of food themselves, and we saw that even in the description of the kebabs right those that are made for the masses and those that are made for the elites. So in today's talk on the progression from cultivation to design and society on this double page folio in an album now in the so museum. At the center of the page on the left is the botanical drawing of a mango surrounded by floral designs set within mango shapes and tones all within a mango yellow border and of course perhaps this is Indian yellow derived from the urine of the cow who eats mango leaves again we return to the source itself. The adjacent folio depicts the youthful Mughal Mughal Emperor Jahungir holding a mango. And the creator of this album clearly was thinking about how a beloved food stuff like a mango moves from the fruit itself to pigment design and contemplation, both connected to and removed from its life on the tree. So with that I will end and pass it over to Susan. Thank you very much. Holly and I started talking very early on about food as a project, many, many years ago, and we can't remember where it was, but these are sort of works in progress if you will now finally coming it seems to closer to a fruition if I may use that that term. Thank you for this invitation. Shria, thank you for for your hosting us and to Emma for making it happen, the practicalities of things. So, this too is a project of mine that I've been working on bits and pieces over a long period of time. And this year on sabbatical I'm hoping to produce physical, a physical something other than than the food that I keep making and eating. But before I start, I'd like to, to ask for your indulgence as I'd like to make a note of the incredible events that happen in Iran on the streets of Iran and are have been spearheaded by brave young women, or women of all ages in Iran, who have gotten the title of heroes of the year from the Times magazine, all of which we forget in the midst of celebrations of Christmas and New Year and this, or wars elsewhere. But that we need to, I feel very strongly, as an Iranian who lived through the first revolution, of which this sort of activity women facing outwards with their arms raised, men facing towards the Ayatollah with their arms raised is a process, a historical process that requires us thinking and I'm a historian and I look at these things in terms of the historical location of the movement that becomes that of perhaps emancipation, not just of women, but of the people of a place such as Iran and in the middle of 19th century in fact the origins of this active sort of avant garde breaking away from the rules of, of dress for women emerge out of Iran in fact, with the famous to her the pure one, known in the solace of the eye a poet of enormous significance and what she did which was to enter the room at a conference of men without her face cover which was the norm cause such opera that allegedly one of those men cut his own throat and others ran out of the room. In part, this is to say that what is happening in Iran is not a Western originated feminist activity but one that has historical roots and in many of these places. In fact, they happen quite exactly at the same time as they do in the West, in fact, on that note and I appreciate your kindness in indulging me to bring something that is on the minds of many of us who are deeply affected by what is happening in, and Iran is not just an isolated place but a representation of a larger territory, if you will. Okay, now I switch to aestheticizing the experience of food, following what what Holly said I'd like to pick up on, and we can talk about it when we sit down to talk about our respective papers about that kind of a family reality of experience of eating food or being in front of food and encountering food, if you will. So, my projects is not about the shared practice, especially of the early modern period, I go a century or so before Holly's project to cover 16th and 17th centuries and this early modern sort of the aestheticizing of food come and sell practices, the emergence of images, picturing food, especially in oil painting in European arts where the the sensuality of food itself comes to life with the use of oil, and also a moment when cookery, treatises emerge in large numbers, objects are specifically made for food practices and so forth. I put it in that context to just say that I'm perfectly alert to the sort of the neighborhoods, if you will, the larger Eurasian context of this early modern period. I want to focus on the case in Iran, and this is the period of Safavid, the coin coincides with the Safavid period, there are particularities that emerge out of this for instance sheification of Iran, distinction of an imperial claim that is characterized by she Islamic approach, which has its own qualities beyond the time I have here, but to note the emergence of a cluster of images and texts, cookery, treatises, poetic expressions, objects and practices that are specifically profoundly important in the production of the of culture, if you will, broadly speaking in Iran of this of this period. So I make the project really takes note of these clusters of evidence that are related to food and taste and and this I mean, not only in terms of the sense of gustatory taste, but also in terms of that's the one that oftentimes dictionaries define it, but also as defined by the ability to judge and recognize, recognize what is good or suitable. In the personal Arabic context, it would be the term, so, or though, which is, in fact, a context to which I pay a great deal of attention in this project by looking at the link between painting texts and context, as well as, for instance, noting that this album page with the very sensuous sort of a reclining female figure with a dog lapping up liquid out of the bowl. And then to flowers, and then the poetic passages around which reference on the lower right hand corner of it, for instance, reference fruits, maybe, and, and in fact, connect fruit food love together in a way, add ability taste organs of taste and come together with notions of beauty and erotic undertones as it were. So I am, I'm thinking in terms of fluidities in imagination between the real and the ethereal, the, the staff which is present and tangible, and that which is evoked and intangible. So again, a familiarity is part of that as well as it were. But I want to focus my attention here in particular on rice and rice as the dishes made of rice and rice as in dishes made for rice, actually, and bring you a few sort of notes on where this goes. In the, in the painting of shot that must receiving one of the, not the. That's actually yes shot that must receiving one of the is back rulers in the murals of the audience hall of the chance to tune palace. You can see a number of activities amongst which music dancing, chatting, posing, all of that is part of the deal but, but also food delivery of food for instance up here food displayed all over the place, and dishes that would carry and present the food in all of these instances. The, the assumption and literature scholarship has tended to think of them as being imaginary being sort of evocations of feasts, but never thought of in terms of related to actual practices or perhaps evocative of events that took place in that same audience with these kinds of feasts, which are now sort of conventionally represented what one finds in these are this correspondence between vast murals. Smaller paintings in manuscripts such as you see on the lower right hand side, and actual objects of which the most spectacular display is the dense display at the top of the VNA highly recommend a visit there, just to look at how amazing it is to look at dishes in a stacked up actually in a museum. And there, what I'd like to pose here is or propose here is the variety of shapes that we find from, in fact, sources as well referenced. The variety of shapes of objects unusual in this period in porcelain and ceramics in fact, of which I show you bunch of little dishes and so forth. We hear, for instance, from from the order of shot utmost to host his contemporary Emperor of Mughal India homayun, where he orders, for instance in this farm on this, this directive, how the emperor should be hosted as he took refuge in Iran with every morning for breakfast, small dishes with with certain cheeses or or yogurt and and sweets and so forth. There are small dishes to be put in a vast tray and deliver singly in other words, each companion of the Emperor will get one of these trays. And so these dishes that we see small ones which we don't know otherwise what they are for are actually described in terms of what they should be for breakfast, for instance, to the Emperor or for courses of meals that were delivered in feasts. Otherwise, in fact, one of the most important things I point these again to you is the delivery of, for instance, meals for dinner, various rice dishes which are mixed with these are specially made rice dishes, which are supposed to be delivered in vast platters, but not as big as those trays but platters described to be specific with a certain depth and a certain depth and that these would be then carried per person per person of importance in other words not shared food out of the same container, but specific ones. And in paintings like the you can see here from the shop number of shot utmost, we find the trace. There is one young man walking out and delivering something which looks like a bejeweled rice if you will. I will point out to this one which is described in that order for delivery of dinner dishes to humayun as being a blue and white Chinese platter or porcelain with a lid, a domicile lid on top of it. These are part of, in other words, the specifics of what kind of food in what kind of dishes and under what conditions to be delivered and consumed as sort of a protocol, if you will, of dishes and dishes and indeed in these cases, we begin to the way I'm beginning to see it is how we patch together bits and pieces that come from an order and basically a royal farm on to archival material of the sort that relate to inventories to the dishes that are sitting for the most part in museums such as the V&A to evidence of wall paintings to evidence of of paintings in manuscripts as well as in pieces, cookery treatises as we come to see them. So, here, the specificity of the kind of platter, the language as it is called in this order of shot utmost to be specially used for the delivery of rice, the varieties of sizes and shapes of vis-a-vis the particular delivery mode and here I refer back again to these dishes with the lid on top, and then these platters for rice, smaller dishes for various kinds of foods, coffee cups, wine cups and wine bottles which are the varieties enormous in the context of the Safavid material. And then, in addition to those, we have eloquent objects which are extraordinarily unique in this period, plates and bowls that speak to their own function. Of those, I have gone slightly overboard and have put a number of them on my slides simply to demonstrate how, for instance, a bowl, the one in the Louvre, would reference drinking out of it, or how a dish will talk about what it is supposed to be delivering and how it is supposed to be experienced. These are unusual for the neighboring environment. In other words, we don't find them in the Ottoman context, we don't find them in the Mughal context, nor do we know of these kinds of dishes which are eloquent about what their own function is in the European or East Asian context. It's particularity of the sort of level of correspondence you find in these in the period of discussion here. And I show you just these two in order to say something about the fact that this is not only about the dishes for food, but also, for instance, a bucket for the bathhouse which says that it is a bucket meant to pour water over, for instance, the body of the beloved as the poem on the top bucket indicates. Now this object eloquence is different from what we know from earlier medieval Islamic material in which aphorisms and certain fixed phrases were used to speak to the good wishes and the health and prosperity of the owners. Rather, and here is what this object eloquence comes to play an important role in thinking about how food is enliven and aestheticizes the whole experience. In that we find, for instance, a dish, this is my star example where the, the epigraphic band is in fact reads or translates as when the sun turns yellow in the dark blue sky. And I am reminded of saffron rice on a lapis colored dish. And if you put the rice dish into that plate. What you do have in fact is this evocation of the poetic where the, the sun, the saffron rises into the blue sky as if that dish of within that dish of blue and white is activating that notion, the experience of, of the saffron rice. More, perhaps, importantly, is the way in which contemporary author chefs talk about the way in which they are bound, duty bound to colorfully present their dishes and speak to the, the specifics of how you compose a dish of food and deliver it in a ceramic dish in a chini, precisely the kind of dish that we find. And finally, and these are all invented recipes new invented recipes hundreds of them, which are at this moment really uniquely and only available to the elite to the rich. They are the foods of festivities and the court, but then eventually they trickle down to the larger population and they survive today as the so called Persian cuisine if you were to think about Persian food, these races are the distinguishing features of that. And I point again to the domicile lid on top of the dishes as on the right hand side painting. We hear that all Europeans and Armenian Syrian and Ottoman travelers to South Africa, Persia agree on the uniqueness and excellence as the words they use of the rice dishes in Iran. Shavdan the French jeweler traveler who was there in the 1660s says that Persian style of rice is quote the best esteemed of all Asia. And, in fact, my last word and, if I can turn the page. This is a very aesthetic as Syrian Armenian visitor who is linked or links between Aleppo in Syria, and as far on in this period, new Jolfa of as far on where the Armenians of as far on lived mostly. The rice and I quote the preparation of pillow, this kind of rice is quite remarkable. In fact, when one lifts the cover of a long plate, it's aroma is so sweet that the spirits of all are in revived by the admirable power of that food, and each one's appetite. What it was missing is awakened. It is this kind of a lifting of the lid, Sarah push, and that sense of awakening at the site of the food at the reading of the poem, if you will, poems are read out loud with a sort of poetic and musical voice. The waft of the, the smell of the food evoking the taste of the food, those experiences that no longer can be captured, except for these kinds of evocations, and the, and the praises that come as part of the sensation of the, of the rice, actually in other words this is sensation of rice and the experience of rice that can be brought about by way of composing these pieces of evidence. And that, I argue, and I hope I'm right, but he's going to tell me more about it, and is an entirely Iranian phenomenon. Thank you. Would you, would you like me to start or would you like to start. I would, whatever you prefer. I mean they are such different subjects. Yeah, but there are, but there are so many overlaps. Yes. So, I want to, if I may, I want to start with your last picture the mango. Yeah, which I think is is quite remarkable. Yeah, as it really does. If you can talk a little bit more about what you meant you kind of put it in and moved on. Mango and those oval shaped containers of designs and the color references that go back to mango actually. If you can speak a little bit more about how, how you think, I mean it's one thing you and I look at it. How do you think those were experienced in the time by those who would look at them. But it's such a wonderful question, and I would need to look more at the manuscript to make sure that those, when, when, when were those placed together right who was the compiler of that album. But what does seem very clear and this is also what I was hoping to ask you about is this. The, the compiler seemed to want the viewer to put together the fruit, the fruit itself. So the food, the ingredient with all the things that might come from that fruit from the taste itself to the potential pigment to the notion of a design in a mango shape which is so important in textile design, for example, the, the contemplation itself of the, the beauty of the fruit to its representation in this album. So they're making that link from the ingredient itself to all of its potentials within the aesthetic realm. And that's, I guess one of, so it was exciting for me to see that, that there was that historical recognition, I guess. Because one thing that I keep thinking about is what it's so simple, but what is the relationship between food and art. Those are obviously very, and one can approach it from so many directions and that's what I was hoping to ask you what how you see those in dialogue I guess both historically and now contemporaneously like what your own interests are in bringing these together. Yeah, I thank you, you're so clever turned it around. So, as soon as you talk about food nowadays, everybody thinks about the starships and oh it's all gone we you know the science of food is enormous and I have to say, I find myself completely lost in trying to read about the neuroscience of the senses that relate to food. It's absolutely enormous field and multidisciplinary. And for our historians it has been, and for the most part it has been more about documenting and more sort of a descriptive approach to food and manners of serving it and eating it and the things that are eaten and what is the narrative that goes around with and so forth. In our fields, they haven't been really explored at all. Ceramics or vessels for food and drink are amongst the most important components of what is called Islamic arts. And yes, all we know about them are the shapes, the types, the technologies, the sizes and very indexical for the most part. We also get to know and this is a cup. So it's for drinking and that is a wine bottle and so forth. But how do they actually function in a context where they are not just stacked up or put together in a book about ceramics, and their profiles go on. But how do they function when you put them into a context of use, and then try to evoke them I wanted to particularly point to that one. So the enthronement of Joseph, the story of Joseph is a really important one, the beautiful use of who is not in this team, but in its chronic variation and the Persian poetic variation is invited into the palace of Zalekha, who is the daughter of Potiphar's wife who is named in the Quran and Zalekha in order to prove the beauty of Joseph which was irresistible for her. She, she gives every woman in the room a fruit and the fruit varies according to the depiction of the artist, it could be an apple, an orange, you get a cucumber and a knife. But if Joseph arrives in the room, they all are so taken by his beauty they all cut their hands of the fruit in one. So here's this notion of blood dripping and they don't sense it in this case, this notion of a taste of that beauty of Joseph seems to be in these paintings at least or the poetic context to come through. So how's the language of speaking about those multi disciplinary ways of not just looking and discussing or describing but also thinking about those experiences that come together. So what you were talking when you were talking about about the mango or about those particular. You never talked about smell and I was very interested in hearing about smell, I mean I think of mango in terms of the taste of mango is contested right the Indians think that Egyptians I lived in Cairo Egyptians swear by theirs. There's mango contestation all over the place but ultimately it's not the taste it's actually the smell. That makes the distinction. So, you know, all your plants have a smell coriander, you know, all of that. So how do we deal with this I mean I came across this thing of lifting the lid and that waft of the smell of the rice. I've eaten Persian rice and knows what I'm talking about. If you haven't, you wouldn't know what I'm saying it's, it's, it's that particular smell, and it's dry. You always come with your question about the or that some of the origins of these foods and a lot of those are they come to India. Yeah. And when you look in the 18th 19th century with many of those dishes, both in the cookbooks and in the written descriptions. People discuss the the final phase of cooking, which is done or the breath, where you seal the pot you then lift it, and the fragrant waters, like the cure the screw climb flower the rose water. That's the breath that you get when you lift the lid. And those are the same plants that are depicted in the natural history illustrations. But you get the scent only when it's in that cook the cooked phase. So I wonder, yeah, for the, for the company official who commissions these and this becomes an album and an archive. Are those experiences that you're talking about which are the things that you are they transfer or how are they or have they ever been transferred in other words, is this transference of that kind of information that is multi sensory is is only available to those who know what is a dam port. Right. Or also the, the Indian office library. Collectors. It's a great question. I mean, I think that some of the company officials do describe meals. Right. And some go into more details than others. You. They do have a, I mean, because Martin, as well as Antoine, we pull yeah, they write in their letters about how they're acquiring the reason why Martin wants to have so many rose petals is because he wants to distill that distill the rose water and he both gives it to people but it's also for sale because he knows how important. That is, as a, as a part of hospitality. Right. So he's absolutely aware of that and participating in it. But how do you, how do you get to that. What you're just talking about is how do you get to a memory right which is what. Which is what's so kind of precious about eating. And we all have it on a personal level there are moments in literature where one encounters that moments in poetry. And here like when you were talking with that beautiful connection between the lover and taste right. There's a phrase in order to the words. Kaba be sure to be sure to be right. So you have your kebab you have your wine and you have your, your ladies writer that should be and those are linked. Poetically, and you can and also. So the sounds themselves lead one to it. And you, yeah, one does wonder how much is the food itself what's in the food and then the poetic imagination, which it seems like your vessels participate in. Yeah, that's my arguments. I don't have, I mean, let's say a hundred vessels that have survived. Maybe 20 will have epigraphic additions. But it's large enough in numbers to know that this was one category of significance. But we cannot tell which of these dishes were actually used. Right. So you are. All you can do is patch together bits and pieces of evidence and those ephemeral pieces of evidence to to intimate some knowledge of what would have been the experience of sitting in a, in a feast and these young men bringing dishes. In large numbers to to put in front of you what was it like to be able to read that poem written around that and it's not these are not shared plates. They are individual large plates but individual access to it. So there's something special about that whole thing of, you know, how do you consume the food, you know. And what else goes with it. The sounds and the. I once was taken by two artists to the home of one of them in as far as they know. But they talked to each other and they were walking around and they had things on the wall and they would look at it and one would come up with a poem that was relevant to the subject of the painting. And then they would have a conversation through the poetics of these paintings. We forget that that is part of it. You forget that looking at the paintings. Trigger upon in the mind of. We may not be accustomed to it. But that was the case of experience of those paintings. So that that sort of thinking you know you're the manuscript you showed that wonderful. Double page of a marketplace with the. Was it homes on site, or it's the narrative. It's a narrative of what happened. Yeah, but are they. What is what is happening. Yeah, there's an impact here far. There's far more text in our writings, right. I just showed one. Yeah. So if you don't know the poem, you can come up with a phone. Yeah, in other words, yeah, in that case, yeah, there's a narrative. Paintings. Yeah. And that's but that's one of the things that I think is so hard to access that I think we're both kind of wondering about that. Is it a single moment is it a personal moment. That one has in an intimate conversation where you have two artists who are looking at a painting together that's about them and their connection. Does it become more of a quarterly etiquette circumstance. Is it. There are these, and is the goal to. You can't obtain that it's also attractive. In other words, my problem more than any of the historical issues. Yeah. Yeah. Amazing. Thank you. I know I have a question, but I'm going to be a good host and look around the room to see if, if there are other questions as well. Thank you so much to both of you for this. Both fascinating presentations and the conversation so much enjoyed. I have a question for Suzanne. Firstly, I'm not an expert, but this is the first time I hear of anything like that. And I think it's extremely striking, compelling. I didn't really talk by the way this inside us maybe very hungry. And I may not be the only one. Can you tell us a little bit more about the coop of works with the inscriptions. It, they belong to specific period. What sort of book ends that period. We, we, you may not have, you know, answers to all these questions in which collections are they have they been spread all over the world or are they still primarily in Iran. Do they have other commonalities and the question I had is, and I know, because of my knowledge of moving into that again we may not have answers. How much do these dishes with the inscriptions permeate society to they belong only to sort of ceremonial. Feasting that we can imagine depicted at court, or does it spread a little bit perhaps in commerce and trade societies. I don't know. And again, I realize we may not have the answers but I wonder if the what qualifies these objects may begin giving some answers to these questions. Right. It's a really good point and if you look at ceramic. It's primarily these dishes, the ceramic pieces that I'm focusing on the production prior to this period is for the most part, three of these kinds of writings, the epic graphic, except for those medieval objects, which are filled with aphorisms and so forth. And one of the things that distinguishes them from this 16th 17th century material is that those are in Arabic. And these are in Persian. And this person is a really important transition actually. And then continues. So this is when it starts but it continues to be produced in 18th century 19th century and so forth. But it is specific to the Iranian world. And connects for instance these vast platters. They are shallow and have a lip, a fairly flat lip that is only found in the context of Saturday ceramics. And Ottoman ceramics tend to be smaller in diameter and deeper. It relates to the kind of food that the Ottoman court, for instance, consumed. So they are specific for rice, it seems. At least that's how my bits and pieces of information seem to point to. And therefore, are they spread all over the place. Most of what is available is actually in European American collections, Japanese collections and so forth. The ones that are at the V&A are very instructive because it's a huge number in the dense display and they were collected primarily in 19th century. And from Esfahan and from the houses of Esfahan, which is pointing to a sub-imperial infiltration of this practice, they were heirlooms, essentially, and in huge numbers they were taken. And not in the court. In Iran, those things in the court of the Safis did not survive as it was raided, unlike the Ottoman court, for instance. So on that level, you know, there are kind of little bits of evidence that make me think that eventually they became more widespread practice, part of the widespread practice. I'm not sure. I mean, the objects are the ones that are in the collections and I can look. They are the ones that are in fact at the V&A are 16th and 17th centuries. So how it goes to the, let's say, the wealthy, not the ordinary household, but the wealthier and each of Esfahan, let's say, merchant communities, is where they have actually been collected from. That's the primary evidence. I thought you were saying that therefore they don't mean that they're less posh. Yeah, I had a question about it. So first of all, thank you for two amazing talks and sort of insights and different kinds of things. I was so struck, Holly, with by something that you said and I think this will go to both your talks but about things that animals were ingesting to flavor their flesh. Right. And I think that this idea of the distance between the, what we now call farm to table was sort of the fields and what is on your plate and then I think, Holly, in your talk, there was one particular example of agricultural fields, let's say in gardens of course but agricultural fields and I think in one of yours where it was kind of you have the table and you had somebody kind of telling the soil in the same frame, which I think it's quite interesting. And I think I was just curious about what the, I mean, first of all, in some sense what role the senses play as well in between these spaces because you have this kind of very fragrant, very sort of intense food plate, that kind of nexus happening and then the agricultural field of the garden is probably quite a fragrant space but then the agricultural field like it's sweat and toy, you know, it's earthy. There's a difference and I was curious about whether and I think, as you were saying there are limitations to what we can experience through the visual. And so, of course, we are thinking about it in context with text and so with that text, either in the kind of the text that you're looking at, both in both your context but also whether there were later on, with their letters was Claude Martin writing about it were other people writing about sort of both agricultural production was that such an important part of sort of revenue and not just revenue collecting, but also will sort of export and things like that. Yeah. Yeah, no, it's a, it's a fantastic question and it. There's things so big like so economic economic histories yield a lot of information. What was being planted when is it what are the. But then moving to other levels which is exactly what you're saying like how do you. How do you move from so if you're looking at older cookbooks. They'll give you names, right, like a pearl below. What does a pearl below me. Exactly. Right. So, then you start to shop right and then and you read a lot of cookbooks and you look at painting. And then, like one chef I spoke to talked about. You have to tie the, the, the white of an egg into the silk so that when it cooked with the chicken, you could then unwrap it and those times become the pearls, right, like you wouldn't get there from the name, right, you have to have this unbelievable impression and that's part of the fun and I think a lot of contemporary chefs play with that a lot, right, he'll take a name, and then they'll spin, right, which actually it has a lot of creative potential and should be a lot it. Yeah. But there are these gaps, right between the historical record. And where you move to something else and that's where I think some of the knowledge of kind of knowing, and this was again just, this was just a cook who realized that the Siberian crane that people were talking about in the recipe books, traveled over the cashmere, the, the saffron fields and cashmere right so then that's how they're ingested. And then that suddenly changes how you think about the recipe. And so there's just an ingenuity of cooks and ingredients and bringing that all together and you do see that. And the kind of exactly and the seasonality. And there's just a real, a real beauty to that. And, but, but I think it is this kind of cobbling and that's why when I first doing this research where I was trained as an art historian but I wasn't necessarily doing our historical research. I started to think well actually is art history, actually a wonderful methodology for approaching ephemeral arts because sometimes what you're dealing with is absent when you look at the ceramics ceramics are made to hold food, but we almost never talk about never the food. I'm missing. Yeah, but yet I don't I that's I'm so curious and I'm curious forever and audience actually like is art history. Does it actually provide the tools to come at some of this ephemerality. I mean, just to say hopefully the questions. We can talk about through the different talks as well so I think that hopefully it'll be an ongoing conversation with all of you so just on the. Let's move to what how we just said about if art history is the proper tool for that. I actually think it is, but I think it is art history as practice with regards to fields that are not of the origins of art history as a discipline. The reason is that the discipline is changing because people who look at different representations and expressions throughout spatial or our material have different problems to deal with like the ones that we face. Perhaps it's time for our history to think that it's a discipline, it's doors are open that it is with these other you know those who practice things around African art history are teaching us things. We never thought of, for instance, that that's at least hindering whether it's the right tool. Yeah, just on the on the topic of we think of ceramic food. We have a comment from Sabrina Brown online saying thank you to you Nadine for helping me visualize how how the saffron rice would have looked on our lap this colored dish. Yeah, we do have a couple of other questions from online so I think I'm just going to read. I can do both and then maybe you can answer them quite specific. So Sujata me gamma asks, when, when are local names of plants and languages beyond English first used in botanical drawings in India difficult question. And what might be what might the presence of these multiple languages revealed to us. And also how wonderful that the text on the diverse vessels related to the food or drinks served in them. How can we access the food cultures of those not so privileged through those these diverse vessels we talked about a little bit already. I'll just go on to the next question so we can answer them together. Georgia mafia Lee begatti asks a question about the cultivation of flowers. Could they also be planted next to one another depending on the combined perfume they would create. She's really interesting point. And she also has a question for Professor by what it was common to chew clothes when talking to the shower or in gatherings. Would it be possible to trace if specific spices were chewed before eating so as to highlight the taste of the food itself. Great questions. Thank you. I know it is. Go for it. I just want to talk about, for instance, the show that there are this treatise on on agriculture, which has a chapter on me a treatise on agriculture with a chapter on gardening and I think we might have to go back and look at that. It was written early in the 16th century, probably gathering knowledge of the 15th century more for the benefit of the emerging moogles in South Asia. But it's a really important documentation. And there you see, for instance, in the garden. What flowers, what bush. And so forth. So, can you think of those in the Indian context, further than, you know, Absolutely. And you're such a wonderful, wonderful garden. Just thinking of, I mentioned Nicholas Ross. And Ebycoke has. I think, and she's had. Because scholars in replanting so replacing the colonial lawn with the orchards and the flowers at the orchards would be a wrap or bet. Also have bees and certain birds come at certain times and then you'd have the sound of certain birds. And that was very, very much that seems to art of the garden. And I imagine that that, that, yeah, what do you Yeah, I think that's that's the point is really it's partly about the gardens and the fragrances but also the fruits and vegetables and what you can actually extract from there the herbs you know that the medieval gardens of the monasteries like the one in the cloisters up on top of the Manhattan Island is is a really great example of the kinds of gardens that we know from an evil world in Europe, but it is also crucially important to consider. We never hear about kitchen gardens that I know of. But there must be an aspect of the kitchen garden in those kinds of garden designs as well. But I was also thinking about objects that are particularly made for encapsulating protecting smell of things like rosewater. You know, these glass things for rosewater which is prevented from evaporating for as long as possible. So, should just ask question, my dear colleague, which you might want to to think about her question about. Was it about the dishes and if, if those kinds of eloquent dishes appear in the in a more pedestrian version. No, or if they did, they haven't survived. Survivals of these are usually related, especially of earlier period related to the elites. What's interesting with the rice like with the the the rice dishes you're speaking about when they're coming to India at least in the histories that I've read of the cuisine of baking rice so the pulau or what also becomes a very on in India, that those were coming these huge pots right that were brought in order to feed huge numbers of people and in Lucknow at least you still see them feeding huge numbers of people so like in Lucknow. And this is part you know, it can sometimes be hard to parse what is Laura and what is. But the Nawab Asif Udalla there's a time of great famine and and some of the famine architecture at this time is really interesting. The Nawab obviously built huge building than the these the the pots to create rice would, he would have them cooking outside of religious structure connected to she is yeah and you still see that today during the those times of year. But then you also have kind of huge granaries that company officials and that they're also erecting sometimes to be filled sometimes not to be filled. So this idea that you would also have to counter famine is something that one really important yeah. Think about as well. And you do see that's what I found so interesting in some of the compilations of natural history illustrations that you have some of these very elite goods very lucrative goods, like rosewater. But then you also have just your basic grains that are so critical. And I think some of those dishes, they're made for the populace they're not necessarily made for the elites and it's just so interesting. But they can be just they can be as like I always think about making yogurt right where you you're making yogurt and clay vessels because the clay absorbs that extra way and thickens the yogurt so it makes it more delicious. So they're like the vessel and the thing inside of it are tied together. Yeah, by the way that just on the on the level of beating the larger population. The Ottoman court had chickens that were also producing for food given away to the populace as did Safavid court. And I imagine Mughal court. So none of them made the food only for the consumption of the court and its festivities, but also to be shared as a as a form of barricade, you know, that kind of generosity and an obligation action. Before we close just going back to the clothe question and the language question of where, you know, what the wind of the languages in the botanical paintings come in, or even what they signify as well as what relevance it has for scholars today, or also then it's such a wonderful question. I mean, in some ways they work as like a Rosetta stone, I think to a certain where you'll have the different names, but sometimes you'll have a linear name that's just like the very, very, like vegetable, you know, like it's a very generic name. The other languages are much more specific and it's been. And they can be in different hands as well, which are showing kind of the different knowledge is that are entering into the image. And that's why the inscription. What the artist depicts and what is inscribed can can offer different types of knowledge and I think that's what I've at least and again this is a thanks to Henry know to what's been so interesting in looking at just the kind of data set of the natural natural history drawing that they're, they're being gathered for the scientific purpose. But they can actually offer if you look at them slant a slant they can offer other types of knowledge and connection to the land and innovation. Also kind of exposes a sort of new informant work that's being created and cultivated. I was at Georgia who asked about right before you eat. Yeah. No clothes before you meet the show and so were there other things that you would chew before you eat enhance the taste of food. Not that I know. They come in from this time period, what we understand they come in courses. Start actually with what Europeans all talked about as being dessert, what are they doing they serve the dessert cars. And they did and we run me and still eat the dessert first. So, to get the appetite going. You start with fruits and sweets. But to have something in particular. It's on a, on a, you have to look a little bit more in. We should have thought ahead and planned for you know sort of baked rice and saffron but we don't we don't have that apologies but we have wine in the next room so I think we'd say big thank you and then carry on our conversations.