The present volume offers a collection of essays that examine the mechanisms and strategies of collecting, displaying and appropriating islamic art in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Many studies in this book concentrate on lesser known collections of islamic art, situated in Central and Eastern Europe that until now have received little attention from scholars. Special attention is dedicated to the figure of the Swiss collector Henri Moser Charlottenfels, whose important, still largely unstudied collection of islamic art is now being preserved at the Bernisches Historisches Museum, Switzerland.
Contributors to the volume include young researchers and established scholars from Western and Eastern Europe and beyond: Roger Nicholas Balsiger, Moya Carey, Valentina Colonna, Francine Giese, Hélène Guérin, Barbara Karl, Katrin Kaufmann, Sarah Keller, Agnieszka Kluczewska Wójcik, Inessa Kouteinikova, Axel Langer, Maria Medvedeva, Ágnes Sebestyén, Alban von Stockhausen, Ariane Varela Braga, Mercedes Volait.