91ֱ��

The pineapple as a symbol and object of globalisation is explored in a book co-edited by Gonville & 91ֱ�� College Fellow Dr Melissa Calaresu and published this week.

Dr Calaresu is the Neil McKendrick Lecturer in History and Professor of History at Gonville & 91ֱ�� College from this October. She was co-curator, with , of the and co-editor of the accompanying catalogue, Feast & Fast: The art of food in Europe, 1450-1800 (London: Philip Wilson, 2019).

Those in Cambridge at the start of the Covid-19 pandemic may recall the giant pineapple outside the Fitzwilliam Museum which brought joy to many in 2020.

The pineapple has special significance at the Fitzwilliam Museum with Theodorus Netscher’s ‘portrait’ of a pineapple from 1720 and one can look for the full-sized gilded pineapples on the railings outside. Dr Calaresu said: “I am especially pleased to see come to fruition my collaboration with Victoria Avery around our ongoing interest in this fascinating fruit to which so many meanings have been attached over the centuries.”

is a wide-ranging, interdisciplinary volume intended to provoke timely debate and generate radical rethinking of an overly familiar fruit with associations from luxury to kitsch.

The pineapple’s ‘discovery’ by European colonisers in the late fifteenth century and its remarkable global trajectory – from an early modern object of rarity, desire, and horticultural innovation to a cheap, canned consumable and fair-trade logo today – is a story of modern globalisation, the co-editors write. 

It deliberately problematises the pineapple by investigating understudied tensions between its representational power and the historical and political contexts of its worldwide production and consumption. This connects the global and local at the heart of contemporary debates about the nature and origins of our food. It has cross-disciplinary appeal for scholars of politics, economics, history, plant sciences, food, and material culture as well as for broader audiences interested in food, gardening, the environment, and visual arts.

is one of eight new British Academy books, the first to be published with Liverpool University Press (LUP) under a new publishing partnership launched earlier this year.

Dr Calaresu added: “Beautifully produced with full colour illustrations throughout, it has been a pleasure to work with the British Academy and Liverpool University Press, who have been attentive to the demands of coordinating many authors across many disciplines, and with so many images. That this book is one of the first in the series to be published to reach wider audiences through delayed Open Access feels especially appropriate for a volume which contends with the global significance of the pineapple.”

Top image: 

Left: A 4-metre tall pineapple installation specially-commissioned from Bompas and Parr - experts in multi-sensory experience design - displayed on the Fitzwilliam Museum’s front lawn for the duration of the exhibition, 'Feast & Fast: The Art of Food in Europe, 1500–1800'. Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, November 6, 2019 to April 26, 2020. Photo, Martin Bond.

Right: Theodorus Netscher (1661-1728), Pineapple grown in Sir Matthew Decker's garden at Richmond, Surrey, 1720, oil on canvas. Photograph © The Fitzwilliam Museum, University of Cambridge.

Bottom image: 

Left: A pineapple-shaped ice cream with a real pineapple crown, made by Ivan Day using an English, c.1790, tripartite hinged pewter mould, displayed on an English, c.1720, glass salver. © Ivan Day. Photograph © The Fitzwilliam Museum, University of Cambridge.

Right: Cornelis van Spaendonck (1756-1840), Vase of flowers, oil on panel. Broughton Collection. Photograph © The Fitzwilliam Museum, University of Cambridge.

Gonville & 91ֱ�� College wishes to thank The Fitzwilliam Museum, University of Cambridge for the use of its images.