Luxury for Export

Book excerpt: Soon after the Portuguese opened the first direct sea route from Europe to Asia, they established trading centers in India and Sri Lanka. By the early 1500s, the courts and the cities of Europe had become avid consumers of luxury goods imported form South Asia. This book shows how the trade in exotica spurred the development of an extraordinary hybrid art, at once Indian and Portufuese. Many of the feautred objects have never before been properly identified or presented to the public. AUTHOR: Pedro Moura Carvalho is Aga Khan Fellow at Harvard University. 57 illustrations