In this article I interrogate the complex relationship between nature and culture by examining how tropical nature and raw materials were conceptualised and displayed in the nineteenth century. I do so by discussing a display of tropical wood mounted by the Empire of Brazil for the Exposition Universelle in Paris in 1867. The reception of this display in Europe is analysed through Karl Max's ideas on the gendering of nature and commodity exchange, through the concept of tropicality, and Claude Lévi-Strauss' raw and cooked binaries, which help unveil how natural materials were conceptualised and commodified into things themselves. Broadly, I am interested in putting 'nature in our official past' and bring to the fore key concerns from environmental history studies to bear upon design historical enquiries.

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What happens when research and researchers discern and foreground Latin American andCaribbean agency in design? Guided by this challenge, we sought to create over three years of collaborative project a new approach to the research and discourse on Latin American and Caribbean design history. Through the formation of a network of scholars working across the globe, the organization of dedicated themed panels in international conferences, and the culmination of these efforts in the present edited volume, we propose to decolonize and globalize the study of design history in and from that region. To this end, this Introduction situates the fluctuation of interest in Latin American and Caribbean Studies in Europe and the United States, and discusses how the development of Latin American and Caribbean design history need not follow some of the colonialist premises instigated by area studies' scholars. Rather, through a critical review of historiographical trends found in both area studies and in design studies and history journal articles, this Introduction offers an interpretation of how and why design historical understanding has been produced in and from that region, and points to fruitful developments in this scholarship. In order to highlight design agency, we propose to focus on 'design exchanges', understood as meetings and encounters of cultural practices, peoples and objects.

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