The cheerful scene in the courtly ambience throws a spotlight on the global imagination around 1750: the lute and chessboard come from the Arab world, the coffee in the cup from Africa or the Caribbean, the parrot from South America. The “Indian” flowers on the woman’s dress are from Japan, just as the garb of the two in general makes one think of kimonos and East Asia. When this sculpture was formed, the transatlantic triangular trade was in full swing. Are the enormous privileges enjoyed by the lovers to be regarded naively? In other words, what else would need to be shown next to the rococo sculpture for the whole picture to emerge?

This letter is from the State Archives in Salvador da Bahia (Arquivo Público do Estado da Bahia (APEB), Seção de Arquivo Colonial e provincial. Governo da Administração). The heat and humidity have discolored the pages a bit. The letter is signed by the Hamburg Consul Peter (Pedro) Peycke, requesting to be granted the same privileges as the French and American Consuls.

Josiah Wedgwood pushed the industrialization of English ceramic production, but was also an active member of the newly formed Society for the Abolition of the Slave Trade. To support the movement, he had William Hackwood, his most talented modeller, design a medallion. It shows a chained black man kneeling. Next to it a line reads, “Am I not a Man and a Brother.” Wedgwood had the medallion produced and distributed at his own expense. Ladies of high society wore it as a brooch, hat pin or necklace, gentlemen wore it with their snuffboxes.

Enslaved people who managed to return to West Africa imported craftsmanship and formal aesthetic know-how from Brazil. Mosques, like the one in Porto-Novo (Benin), speak the language of the Portuguese Baroque.

Before the British cultivated rubber trees in Southeast Asia, natural rubber mostly came from the Amazon. In a telling contrast to the realities of rubber production, the poster shows a small indigenous family going about their work in an almost bourgeois, idyllic manner.

In the 1950s, Lina Bo Bardi, always attentive to shapes, bought everyday objects at markets in the Brazilian northeast. These included clay bowls, jugs, baskets or wooden spoons. The architect and designer recognized in these simple, functional objects the key to an independent Brazilian design.

Squiggles, like those drawn by Pelé, can be found on clay bowls or clothing patterns in Bahia, Brazil, but also in West Africa.

The iron masks are a by-product of plantation colonialism. The plate in front of the mouth is to prevent the slaves from eating the sugar cane during the harvest. As in Haiti, sugar was the key source of European wealth in Bahia. At a later stage, coffee and cocoa took on greater importance. Such objects, which bear witness to the dark side of modernism, are usually not to be found in European museum collections.

The Brazilian football legend Pelé signed the leather ball with a stylized ‘P’. Pelé played for FC Santos, the team from the city with the largest coffee port. Does this signature signal Pelé’s affiliation with Afro-Brazilian culture? Or would this interpretation go too far, since the symbol itself is in fact very widespread?
The Pelé signed ball is part of Allan Sekula’s Docker’s Museum.