Focusing on the etchings of boats by Balthazar Solvyns (1760–1824), Robert Hardgrave, who is preparing a book on this artist’s life and work, demonstrates how revealing these prints are as expressions of the materiality of daily lives. The book is filled not only with boat lore and facts, but also with information about social order, class and caste (the Muga Chara type of boat, for example, is used by the lower classes to celebrate marriage),...