Beyond the Mint: Picturing Gold on the Rijksmuseum’s Box of the Dutch West India Company

In 1749 the Dutch West India Company (GWC) presented an extraordinary document box – finely crafted in gold and tortoiseshell and lined with velvet – to Stadholder Willem IV (1711-1751). Pictured on the lid, shaped in gold, are the three prized commodities exported from Africa at the time of the box’s making: gold, ivory, and enslaved people. But while the value and material properties of gold are celebrated in this lavish gift, its dazzling richness obscures the anxieties that accompanied the circulation of un-minted gold in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. As I argue, the box respon... Mehr ...