VIRTUAL ISTANBUL HERITAGE(S)

Abstract

This paper examines the tradition of porcelain collecting and display within the Baden-Durlach dynasty through collecting spaces documented at Karlsburg in Durlach and at Karlsruhe Palace between c. 1712/13 and 1783. Drawing on inventories, wills, estate records, and transfer documents, it approaches these interiors through collection history and traces the attribution, movement, redistribution, and regrouping of porcelain and related cabinet objects across generations. By converting dispersed records into an analyzable relational network, the paper asks how object groupings, naming practices, and spatial references shaped courtly collecting spaces and how such spaces can be reconstructed once they survive only fragmentarily or have disappeared altogether. For these lost rooms, rough archival indications assigning porcelains to particular rooms or cabinet units provide a working framework. Object categories and the combinations of porcelain with display furniture offer further evidence for reconstructing display strategies and possible modes of spatial organization. In this perspective, porcelain emerges as a medium through which ownership, prestige, and interior order were articulated. Read alongside comparative cases, the Baden-Durlach material places these interiors within a broader dynastic and regional tradition of courtly display. The paper argues that archival relations can preserve significant elements of a room’s historical structure even after its architectural fabric and original arrangement have been lost. It thus proposes a way of moving from collection history to the lost room, while linking dynastic tradition, regional court culture, and the historical production of heritage and place.