Notes from a Conference: A voluptuous day at the Calouste Gulbenkian Museum
A crossroads between gastronomy, decorative arts, and history
Yesterday, a marvellous conference organised by the Calouste Gulbenkian Museum Foundation took place in Lisbon - and online. Called the Gulbenkian Conference on Art History, it is a new biannual initiative by the Museum, which aims to bring together innovative themes and methodologies related to the study of its collection.
On the Gulbenkian Museum page, the event is presented as:
The Global Table in the 18th Century, from Silver and Glass to Lacquer and Porcelain, aims to highlight exchanges and understand the web of relationships, currently called foodways, around the production, preparation and presentation of food in the Modern world.
Scholar and Dr Peter Fuhring tell us the story about the collection: over 50 years, Calouste Gulbenkian put together an incredible collection of silverware and tableware. He was known for mostly dining out, so this collecting was for pure artistical and cultural reasons, as biographer Jonathan Comlin writes in “Mr Five Per Cent”.
Did you know that before the complicated silverware centrepieces, back in the 16th century, the main centrepieces for royal banquets were made of sugar? We only have memories of those, and we do not know if they were eaten at the end - but surely, finishing a war-treaty banquet by drowning in sugar has an allegoric allure to remember.
Dr Kirstin Kennedy of the Victoria and Albert Museum followed up with a presentation of «Tableau de Paris» (1783), where Louis Sébastien Mercier invites its readers to embark on a transcontinental journey without leaving the table:
from China and Japan come the porcelain on which the fragrant teas of Asia steam; We help ourselves to sugar, grown in the Americas by unfortunate slaves who were transplanted there from Africa, with a spoon whose metal comes from mines in Peru.
Kennedy imagines a time-traveller, that would not recognize the 18th Century table if coming from a Medieval or Renaissance place: the spectacular plate has finally moved on the table, and food moves closer to the diners.
Three courses became the norm: the first, in a large vessel, could be a soup or a bisque: the “boiling part”. It was followed by a secon service, a roasted game balanced out by vegetables. Each diner was able to serve themself. The meal ends with a dessert, that follows a “pain d’Espagne”, which we know a lot about if we look at the shared Portuguese and Japanese Nanban heritage.
She also reminds us that in the 18th Century, there was a very modern twist on cuisine: reminding us of a “fish ham” recipe, it made me think that we are all now applauding Aponiente restaurant for something that was discovered, experienced and known two hundred years before.
Globalisation has a long history - back in the Roma age, Plinius argued for liberal sugar consumption: health and wealth have gone hand in hand since the dawn of times, even if of course nowadays sugar is not a rare, refined addition but rather a food for the poor.
In a true voyage into the history of gastronomy, we went with Dr Rose Kerr to eat preserved fruits, pickles and up to 190 items at a recorded banquet in Imperial China in the 18th century, with mostly female attendees - and where every porcelain dish was beautifully and uniquely, bespoke for each rank.
We travelled immediately again with Oxford University’s Dr Farzaneh Moussav, who offered us a historical look at how the tin-glazed ceramics industry, an Islamic art, emerged in Mexico as Talavera ceramics, thousands of kilometres from its roots: the Middle East, and Baghdad and Puebla de Los Angeles, near Mexico City.
Circumstantial evidence brings us to believe that among the first European settlers, there were a lot of people from Hispano-Moorish heritage who carried on with them their Al-Andalus craftsmanship and roots.
I will not review all the presentations, or this post will be too long. But let me highlight s very interesting closing presentation that delved deep into the habits - gastronomic and social - of the (g)host: Calouste Gulbenkian himself.
In 1935, coming across the table set for Calouste Gulbenkian's breakfast in his room at 51 avenue d'Iéna, Kenneth Clark confessed to being enchanted by the "douceur de vivre" of the scene. Two eggs in a silver-gilded “tazza”, designed by Charles Percier, stood out among the key elements.
This informative and interesting presentation touches upon the eating habits of the Gulbenkian family - and we can see from the screenshot below, all the different meals that were being served at the Gulbenkian mansion in Paris: an early meal for the family of Calouste on the left, lone dining for Calouste himself, and a staggering 44 meals for all staff. Different cooks, different menus for all.
When Calouste and his family fled Paris following the German occupation, they could not avoid bringing and looking for luxury in their daily lives. It is so that Calouste becomes a frequent customer of the most luxurious restaurant in town, which was part of the hotel he had chosen as a residence. Hotel Aviz and its restaurant were his home.
This is where history passed, says the newspaper O Público (translation is mine):
Aviz was the best restaurant in Lisbon. In front of the house was the master João Ribeiro and behind him the Rugeroni family, who in the early 1930s transformed the Palacete Silva Graça (whose first owner was José Joaquim Silva Graça, director of the newspaper O Século) into a luxury hotel, which It would then be the most refined in the capital. Despite being a relatively small mansion, located on Av. Fontes Pereira de Melo, and originally designed by the architect Ventura Terra for housing, it operated for almost three decades as a hotel and attracted the finest of national and international society.
the former Aviz Hotel, in Lisbon, welcomed spies on both sides of the barricade. It was considered “the most sumptuous hotel” in the world and was visited by the world's elite, from Frank Sinatra to Maria Calas, as well as several kings and queens. Calouste Gulbenkian lived here for the last few years, praising the excellence of the restaurant's cuisine, which had several “lives” in the following decades.
Aviz closed in the Sixties, while the affluent customers moved to the newly inaugurated Ritz. and now there is nothing comparable in town, unfortunately. It was located where now is the tall Sheraton, between Saldanha and the Marques of Pombal roundabout. For some years, the splendour of the restaurant (that moved to Chiado and Cascais) was hosted in the new Aviz hotel, which now became an ugly PortoBay hotel, with a cheap Italian menu on offer. Sic transit gloria mundi.
But for one fleeting moment, we were able to peek into the life of this benevolent ghost and host, and Dr. Vera Mariz presented all impeccably.
It was an interesting moment where gastronomy and culinary crossed paths, in a multi-disciplinary fashion, with arts, history, geography, anthropology and sociology. Kudos to the Gulbenkian organisers: instead of doing a vapid dinner for influencers with a handful of chefs preparing uninteresting dishes for a selected few, they opened up culture, making it available to everyone.
This is what we need in gastronomy. Clever, cross-disciplinary discussion embracing the whole understanding of human life. Reducing the discussion to twinling stars and guides is poor - there is a whole world out there, and events like these are a true invitation to explore.
You can find the link to the recordings here.
More information:
Av. de Berna, 45A, 1067-001 Lisboa
+351 21 7823000
Wednesday to Monday, 10:00 – 18:00 (last entry at 17:30)
Closed on Tuesdays and public holidays 1 January, Easter Sunday, 1 May, 24 and 25 December
Thanks a lot for such a delightful appetizer. I´ll send it to Benjamin Weil, Gulbenkian´s Modern Art Center director. Because of his interest in gastronomy, I´m sure he´s aware of the meeting.
best regards. jorge