Transcultural things and the spectre of Orientalism in early modern Poland-Lithuania

Transcultural things examines four sets of artefacts from the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth: maps pointing to Poland–Lithuania’s roots in the supposedly ‘Oriental’ land of Sarmatia, portrayals of fashions that purport to trace Polish culture back to a distant and revered past, Ottomanesque costumes worn by Polish ambassadors and carpets labelled as Polish despite their foreign provenance.

These ex...