Individual chapters focus our attention on objects, and the stories they can tell us about cultural interactions on a global scale, placed into contexts, such as trade, empire, mediation, and various forms of design practice. Topics included are: the global underpinnings of Renaissance material culture the trade of Indian cottons in the eighteenth-century the Japanese tea ceremony as a case of 'import substitution' German design in the context of empire handcrafted modernist furniture in Turkey the international circulation of contemporary architects. Features leading design historians, each...