Mirror Reflections: Louis XIV, Phra Narai, and the Material Culture of Kingship.

During the 1680s, France and Siam (Thailand) exchanged spectacular embassies that were designed to increase commerce between the two kingdoms and elevate their status on the global stage. In France, scores of prints depicting the Siamese ambassadors and the lavish diplomatic receptions at Versailles and Ayutthaya were produced and circulated, while thousands of art objects – among them mirrors, porcelain, textiles, and metalwork – travelled back and forth. This essay explores how images and objects shaped the Franco- Siamese encounter and communicated the aims of its royal sponsors, Phra Narai and Louis XIV. It also emphasizes the mutual respect and understanding that characterized relations between France and Siam, values that were conveyed by these seventeenth-century artworks but were later suppressed during the mid-nineteenth century, when the two powers resumed relations as a result of France’s colonial intervention in Southeast Asia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]