Constructed Tastes

Abstract

Chapter 4 argues that the consumption of Chinese porcelain by Iberian high-ranking nobility depended on the social and sensory construction of taste. The first section adopts a sociological perspective to show that porcelain was valued because it was well suited to the values of the nobility at the turn of the seventeenth century, and that taste itself was neither fixed nor passive but was produced through a dialectical relationship with consumption practices. The second section adopts a sensory perspective, drawing on cognitive science and philosophy of perception, to show that elite Iberian consumption of porcelain was driven not only by symbolic concerns of social display but also by sensory pleasure. Continued contact with porcelain, its material properties, and its use as a utensil for serving food contributed to the rapid domestication of this exotic material, which became central to a contemporary epicurean culture.