Miniature town models and memory: An example from the European borderlands

Abstract

Focusing on a miniature replica of Umag/Umago in Istria, made in 1970 by exiled master craftsman Beniamino Favretto (1901–1986) and currently exhibited at the Civico Museo della Civiltà Istriana, Fiumana e Dalmata in Trieste, the author argues that miniature town models can be highly effective catalysts of imaginative emplacement in today’s arguably ‘placeless’ society. Taking a cue from the groundbreaking volume edited by Arjun Appadurai, The Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective (1986), the author first considers the ‘social life’ of Favretto’s miniature and its fortunes within the community it was produced for, which the miniature itself helped to sustain. She then proceeds by explaining the power of three-dimensional ‘miniature worlds’ to conjure up the idea of ‘home’ through their structural peculiarities, including their frozen temporality and the particular optic vantage point they afford to the viewer, also through their hybrid character as simultaneously works of art, playthings and religious objects.