A Taste for Luxury in Early Modern Europe Display, Acquisition and Boundaries

Jon Stobart and Johanna Ilmakunnas bring together a range of scholars from across mainland Europe and the UK to examine luxury and taste in early modern Europe.

In the 18th century, debates raged about the economic, social and moral impacts of luxury, whilst taste was viewed as a refining influence and a marker of rank and status. This book takes a fresh, comparative approach to these ideas, drawing together new scholarship to examine three related areas in a wide variety of European contexts. Firstly, the deployment of luxury goods in displays of status and how these practices varied across space and time. Secondly, the processes of communicating and acquiring taste and luxury: how did people obtain tasteful and luxurious goods, and how did they recognise them as such? Thirdly, the ways in which ideas of taste and luxury crossed national, political and economic boundaries: what happened to established ideas of luxury and taste as goods moved from one country to another, and during times of political transformation?

Through the analysis of case studies looking at consumption practices, material culture, political economy and retail marketing, A Taste for Luxury in Early Modern Europe challenges established readings of luxury and taste. This is a crucial volume for any historian seeking a more nuanced understanding of material culture, consumption and luxury in early modern Europe.

Johanna Ilmakunnas is Associate Professor (Docent) of European History at the University of Helsinki, Finland. She is the author of a major study of the lifestyle of aristocracy in 18th-century Sweden, Ett ståndsmässigt liv: Familjen von Fersens livsstil på 1700-talet (2012), and is co-editor of Sjuttonhundratal. Nordic Yearbook of Eighteenth-Century Studies.

Jon Stobart is Professor of Social History at the University of Northampton, UK. He is the author of Sugar and Spice: Grocers and Groceries in Provincial England, 1650-1830 (2012), the co-author, along with Andrew Hann and Victoria Morgan, of Spaces of Consumption: Leisure and Shopping in the English Town, c.1680-1830 (2007). He is also Founding Editor of the new journal History of Retailing and Consumption.

Introduction, Johanna Ilmakunnas (University of Helsinki, Finland) and Jon Stobart (University of Northampton, UK)

Section 1. Displaying Taste and Luxury
1. Costume and Control: Sumptuary Laws and Social Order in Seventeenth-Century Tallinn, Astrid Pajur, Uppsala University, Sweden
2. New and Old Luxuries in Brussels: A Comparative Perspective on Critical Material Culture Changes in a Capital City, 1650-1735, Bruno Blondé and Veerle de Laet, University of Antwerp, Belgium
3. Luxury, Taste and Virtue: Representations and Social Practices in Eighteenth-Century Naples, Alida Clemente, University of Human Sciences “Niccolò Cusano”, Rome, Italy
4. How About the Moorish Footman? The Lust for Luxury of the 'Bengal-Sichterman' as a Window on the East-Indian Connection in Eighteenth-Century Dutch Country House Culture, Yme Kuiper, University of Gottingen, Netherlands
5. Luxury and Taste in Eighteenth-Century Germany, Michael North, Ernst Moritz Arndt Universität Greifswald, Germany

Section 2. Making and Acquiring Taste
6. A Taste for Many Things, Good and Not So Good: Art Consumption of Nicolas, Prince Esterházy "the Magnificent"' Kristof Fatsar, Cornivus University of Budapest, Hungary
7. A Very English Affair? Furnishing the English Country House, Jon Stobart, Manchester Metropolitan University, UK
8. A Tale of Two Sales: Sir Rowland Winn and No.11 St James's Square, London, 1766-1785, Kerry Bristol, University of Leeds, UK
9. To Bring Delight to a Nose: The Swedish Ironmasters and Their Network of Commissioners, Marie Steinrud, Stockholm University, Sweden
10. To Buy a Plate: Retail and Shopping for Porcelain and Faience in Stockholm during the 18th Century, Sofia Murhem and Göran Ulväng, Uppsala University, Sweden

Section 3. Crossing Boundaries of Taste and Luxury
11. A Taste for French Style in Bourbon Spain: Eating, Drinking and Clothing in 1740s Madrid, Nadia Fernandez de Pinedo, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid and Corinne Thépaut-Cabasset, Victoria & Albert Museum, UK and Chateua de Versailles, France
12. French Fashions: Consumption and Lifestyle of the Aristocracy in Eighteenth-Century Sweden Johanna Ilmakunnas
13. British Luxuries in Early Nineteenth-Century Vyborg, Ulla Ijäs, University of Turku, Finland
14. Luxury Goods Beyond Boundaries: The Parisian Market during the French Revolution, Natacha Coquery, University of Lyon2, France
Index

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