The wetting trap chair at Rosenborg Castle

In this presentation, we will introduce the peculiar case of the wetting trap chair presumably from the 17th century today kept at Rosenborg Castle focusing on its role at the royal Danish court and in the royal Danish collections. We will take you through what we know about the Danish chair and how we know it as well as presenting similar cases of devices for pranking at other early modern European courts and collections. Taking these examples as our point of departure, we will speculate how the Danish chair was used and how we can interpret it today as part of a greater European culture of courtly amusement. Further, we hope to have a discussion with you concerning the methodological considerations of interpreting early modern phenomena based on scarce source materials; how far can we take the interpretation of the chair’s uses and history?