ABSTRACT
This text introduces Gottfried Semper (1803–1879) and his efforts to understand the relationships between artefacts and people, which form the subject of this book. It observes that Semper applies putative national and racial classifications to both objects and people and, in doing so, situates things and bodies in close proximity to each other. It asserts that recent theorisations of material culture in the framework of thing theory are well suited to investigate this proximity and allow this book to study its subject matter in innovative ways. In particular, these theorisations allow this book to analyse the centrality of material artefacts to Semper's understanding of art, and the entanglement of his ideas with the notion of national belonging of artefacts, as well as artefact agency and animation. The text stresses that Semper's approach to things is not a product of his invention: it is situated within several discourses of the early 19th century. The introduction covers the biographical background relevant to the content of the book and provides summaries of its chapters.
