A Sweet Nothing: Creating and Remembering Vessels in Sugar during the French Renaissance

This paper aims to emphasize how sugar was used to make luxury tableware during the Renaissance in France and how this material participated in political strategies of representation in sixteenth-century Europe. This spice enjoyed great demand in Europe from the fifteenth century onwards, and its abundance actively contributed to the development of magnificence in the arts of the table beyond gastronomy. Designers of such receptions imagined a plethora of sculpted and architectural elements, often called trionfi de tavola, and even offered entire sugar tableware sets. The epicentre of this phenomenon was the Italian courts, whose relations with the East were greatly facilitated, particularly Venice, which held a monopoly on this highly lucrative trade. Several unpublished testimonies, such as Le Bref et Sommaire by Ronsard and Bouquet, prove that the creation of sugar tableware was also developed in France, both at court and in the provinces, at the same time. This presentation focuses on the historical traces of these objects through written sources, such as recipes, and visual sources, like engravings, providing an account of how sugar-related practices were distributed across time and space in the realm of table craftsmanship.