During the Late Middle Ages a unique type of 'mixed media' recycled and
remnant art arose in houses of religious women in the Low Countries:
Enclosed Gardens. These are retables, sometimes with painted side
panels, the central section filled not only with narrative sculpture,
but also with all sorts of trinkets and hand-worked textiles. Adornments
include relics, wax medallions, gemstones set in silver, pilgrimage
souvenirs, parchment banderoles, flowers made from textiles with silk
thread, semi-precious stones, pearls and quilling (a decorative
technique using rolled paper). The ensemble is an impressive and
one-of-a-kind display and presents as an intoxicating garden. In this
essay the exceptional heritage of such Enclosed Gardens is interpreted
from a range of approaches. The Enclosed Garden is studied as a symbol
of paradise and mystical union, as the sanctuary of interiority, as the
sublimation of the sensorium (in particular the sense of smell), as a
typical gendered product, and as a centre of psycho-energetic creative
processes.
