Material Lives: Women Makers and Consumer Culture in the 18th Century

by Serena Dyer

Overview

Eighteenth-century women told their life stories through making. With its compelling stories of women's material experiences and practices, Material Lives offers a new perspective on eighteenth-century production and consumption. Genteel women's making has traditionally been seen as decorative, trivial and superficial. Yet their material archives, forged through fabric samples, watercolours, dressed prints and dolls' garments, reveal how women used the material culture of making to record and navigate their lives.

Material Lives positions women as 'makers' in a consumer society. Through fragments of fabric and paper, Dyer explores an innovative way of accessing the lives of otherwise obscured women. For researchers and students of material culture, dress history, consumption, gender and women's history, it offers a rich resource to illuminate the power of needles, paintbrushes and scissors.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781350126961
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Academic
Publication date:	02/25/2021
Pages:	272
Product dimensions:	7.55(w) x 9.60(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

Serena Dyer is Lecturer in History of Design & Material Culture at De Montfort University. She has taught at the University of Warwick and the University of Hertfordshire, and was Postdoctoral Fellow at the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art. She was previously Curator of the Museum of Domestic Design and Architecture. She has published on albums, wallpaper, consumer culture, and childhood in the 18th century. Her book, Material Lives: Women Makers and Consumer Culture in the 18th Century, was published by Bloomsbury in 2021.

Table of Contents

List of illustrations vii

Acknowledgements xiii

List of abbreviations xv

1 Introduction: Making material lives 1

Material life writing 7

The consumer culture of making 9

Four material lives 14

2 Material accounting: A sartorial account book 21

Barbara Johnson (1738-1825) 23

Educating Barbara Johnson 30

Accounting for herself 33

Material literacy 39

A chronicle of fashion 45

3 Dress of the year: Watercolours 49

Ann Frankland Lewis (1757-1842) 50

Sartorial timekeeping and the fashion plate 58

Accomplishment and creative practice 78

Society and fashionable display 89

Selfhood, emotion and the mourning watercolours 99

4 Adorned in silk: Dressed prints 123

Sabine Winn (1734-1798) 125

Paper textiles, dress and the dressed print 131

Sabine Winn's dressed prints 140

Print and making at Nostell 156

5 Fashions in miniature: Dolls 161

Laetitia Powell (1741-1801) 162

The Powell dolls 164

Mimetic dolls and miniature selves 177

Dolls as sartorial social narrators 181

6 Conclusion: Material afterlives 189

Glossary of sartorial terms 195

Notes 197

Bibliography 229

Index 241

Editorial Reviews

There is something deeply moving about encountering eighteenth-century women via the things they stitched, wore, cut, drew and painted. Richly detailed, evocative and precise – as well as beautifully illustrated – Material Lives has much in common with the intricate, creative women's work that Dyer studies in this book.” —Hannah Greig, University of York, UK

“Serena Dyer's lavishly illustrated and brilliantly researched book calls for us to rethink the immense cultural power of the “needles, brushes, glue and scissors” that four Georgian women used to fashion new versions of history. It is a compelling read.” —Alison Matthews David, Ryerson University, Canada

“A meticulous, insightful and intimate reconstruction of how four genteel women recorded and memorialized their lives through 'material life writing' ... [and] a compelling vision of women's engagement in the eighteenth-century world of goods as knowledgeable, skilful and creative makers.” —Karen Harvey, University of Birmingham, UK

“This splendid book portrays the unforgettable world of female imagination, skill and artistic talent that shaped consumer identity in the eighteenth century.” —Giorgio Riello, University of Warwick, UK

From the Publisher