Domestic textiles and country house sales in Georgian England

Abstract

Textiles are central to our understanding of the second-hand trade in Georgian England, but the focus is generally on clothing; much less attention has been given to domestic textiles in the form of linen, beds and drapery. This article draws on auction catalogues from Northamptonshire, 1761–1836, to identify the changing quantity and nature of textiles being sold, the ways in which they were promoted and valorised, and what this might tell us about consumers’ motivations. It highlights how the continued appeal of second-hand textiles was framed in a rhetoric of gentility and respectability, and reveals the country house auction as a key institution in the recirculation of second-hand goods.

Keywords:

• Second-hand
• auctions
• country houses
• consumer motivations
• textiles

Acknowledgment

This research was undertaken as part of the AHRC project AH/H008365/1

Notes

1. Northamptonshire Central Library (NCL), M0005644NL/2 Cottingham, 1761, 1.

2. See Weatherill, Consumer Behaviour; Ago, Gusto for Things; Crowley, Invention of Comfort; DeJean, Age of Comfort.

3. Berg, Luxury and Pleasure, 46–110.

4. Recent collections on second-hand include Fontaine, Alternative Exchanges; Stobart and Van Damme, Modernity and the Second-Hand Trade; Fennetaux, Junqua, and Vasset, Afterlife of Used Things. In contrast, second-hand is absent from Berg, Luxury and Pleasure, and marginal in de Vries, Industrious Revolution, and Trentmann, Empire of Things.

5. for example, Coquery, “Fashion, Business, Diffusion.”

6. Lemire, “Secondhand Clothing Trade.”

7. On thrift, see Vickery, Gentleman’s Daughter, esp. 174–7; Berg, “New Commodities”; Rasmussen, “‘Recycling a Fashionable Wardrobe.” On goods as currency, see Fontaine, “Exchange of Second-hand Goods”; Coquery, “Fashion, Business, Diffusion”; Ago, Gusto for Things, 18–26.

8. Lemire, “Secondhand Clothing Trade,” 153.

9. On furniture, see Coquery, “Fashion, Business, Diffusion”; Charpy, “Auction House.”

10. Van Damme, “Second-hand Dealing”; Charpy, “Auction House”; Westgarth, Emergence of the Antique.

11. Ago, Gusto for Things, 15–39; Weatherill, Consumer Behaviour, 8–13.

12. Riello, “Fabricating the Domestic,” 49–51.

13. Ago, Gusto for Things, 26–30, 58–9; Berg, “Women’s Property.”

14. Lemire, “Second-hand Beaux”; Lemire, “Secondhand Clothing Trade”; Coquery, “Fashion, Business, Diffusion”; Charpy, “Auction House.”

15. Gregson and Crewe, Second Hand Cultures, 11–12.

16. Stewart, On Longing, 133; Wall, “English Auction,” 14–15.

17. Lemire, “Secondhand Clothing Trade,” 148; Coquery, “Language of Success,” 73–7; Wall, “English Auction.”

18. See Jeggle, “Labelling with Numbers,” 36.

19. Ohashi, “Auction Duty Act”; MacArthur and Stobart, “Going for a Song?”; Gemmett, “Tinsel of Fashion.”

20. See de Munck and Lyna, “Locating and Dislocating Value,” 4.

21. Nenadic, “Middle-rank Consumers”; Pennell, “All but the Kitchen Sink.”

22. Gemmett, “Tinsel of Fashion,” 381–8; MacArthur and Stobart, “Going for a Song?”

23. MacArthur and Stobart, “Going for a Song?,” 180–82.

24. Coquery, “Language of Success,” 86.

25. Whittle and Griffiths, Gender and Consumption, 26–48; Vickery, Gentleman’s Daughter, 127–60; Harvey, Little Republic, esp. 64–98.

26. Wall, “English Auction,” 14–15; Charpy, “Auction House,” 219.

27. M0005644NL/2 Cottingham, 1761, 1.

28. Pennell, “Making the Bed.” Domestic textiles are not mentioned amongst the goods traded second-hand by Parisian upholsterers – see Coquery, “Fashion, Business, Diffusion,” 73–4.

29. Charpy, “Auction House”; Wall, “English Auction.”

30. Quoted in Gemmett, “Tinsel of Fashion,” 383.

31. NCL, M0005646NL/11, Stanford Hall, 1792, 5; M0005644NL/13, Welton Place, 1830, 37.

32. Gemmett, “Tinsel of Fashion,” 383–4.

33. On the importance of clean linen, see Vigarello, Concepts of Cleanliness; Lemire, “Education in Comfort,” 18–20.

34. NCL, M0005644NL/9, Stamford Baron, 1823, 57–62.

35. Nenadic, “Middle-rank Consumers”; Collins, “Matters Material and Luxurious,” 114.

36. Nenadic, “Middle-rank Consumers,” 131.

37. NCL, M0005646NL/11, Stanford Hall, 1792, 6–7.

38. NCL, M0005647NL/6, Earl of Halifax, 1772, 35.

39. Quoted in Vickery, “Women and the World of Goods,” 285.

40. Vickery, Gentleman’s Daughter, 148. See also Smith, Consumption and the Making of Respectability, 189–222.

41. Vickery, Gentleman’s Daughter, 150–51. See also Nenadic, “Middle-rank Consumers.”

42. NCL, MM0005644NL/5, Wollaston Hall, 1805.

43. Smith, Consumption and the Making of Respectability, 130–38; Vickery, Gentleman’s Daughter, 149.

44. NCL, M0005644NL/5, Wollaston Hall, 24. Emphasis in the original.

45. Quoted in Vickery, “Women and the World of Goods.” 285.

46. See Jones, “Souvenirs of People.”

47. Lemire, “Education in Comfort.”

48. Pennell, “Making the Bed,” 31–3.

49. Riello, “Fabricating the Domestic,” 49–50.

50. Pennell, “Making the Bed,” 39–40. See also Vigarello, Concepts of Cleanliness, 41–5.

51. Northamptonshire Record Office, D(CA)/361, Letter, August 18, 1816.

52. NCL, M0005647NL/6, Earl of Halifax, 1772, 33–7; M0005644NL/13, Welton Place, 1830, 32–4.

53. See de Munck and Lyna, “Locating and Dislocating Value,” 4.

54. NCL, M000564NL/15, Pychley Hall, 1816, passim.

55. Crowley, Invention of Comfort, 7.

56. NCL, M0005647NL/7, Hazlebeach, 1802, 5.

57. NCL, M0005644NL/2, Cottingham, 1761, passim. These prices are printed in the catalogue. Pennell notes that, at a 1753 house sale in London, the prices realised for beds and bedding were 10–50% higher than these estimated prices – see Pennell, “Making the Bed,” 39. Whilst not uncommon practice, this is the only catalogue in the sample which marks prices in this way.

58. Shakespeare Central Library and Archives, DR18/5/6023a.

59. See Richardson, “Brand Names.”

60. Kerridge, Textile Manufactures, 35.

61. SCLA, DR18/3/47/52/15 bill from Thomas Burnett, 1765. Similar cost savings were apparent with beds: Leigh paid a minimum of £6 14s for a feather bed, bolster and two pillows – four times the cost of the most expensive bed in the Cottingham sale.

62. Edwards, Encyclopedia of Furnishing Textiles, 60–61, 173–4.

63. Vickery, Behind Closed Doors, 214.

64. NCL, M0005644NL/2, Cottingham, 1761, 6.

65. Coquery, “Language of Success,” 86; Coquery, “Fashion, Business, Diffusion,” 73.

66. Vickery, Gentleman’s Daughter, 161. See also Vickery, Behind Closed Doors, 180–82.

67. Crowley, Invention of Comfort, esp. 142–9. See also DeJean, Age of Comfort, 102–30, 156–8; Vickery, Behind Closed Doors, 207–30.

68. DeJean, Age of Comfort, 165–77; Riello, “Fabricating the Domestic.”

69. Riello, “Fabricating the Domestic,” 63; Stobart and Rothery, Consumption and the Country House, 218–23.

70. For examples of purchasing behaviour, see Gemmett, “Tinsel of Fashion”; Bristol, “A Tale of Two Sales,” 9–24.

71. NCL, M0005646NL/15, Brixworth Hall, 1797, passim.

72. Edwards, Encyclopedia of Furnishing Textiles, 203.

73. Lemire, “Education in Comfort,” 18–20; Edwards, Encyclopedia of Furnishing Textiles; Riello, “Fabricating the Domestic,” 63.

74. Vickery, Behind Closed Doors, 166–83.

75. Fowler and Cornforth, English Decoration, 225–6.

76. Edwards, Encyclopedia of Furnishing Textiles, 34–5, 117–18, 188, 240.

77. Northampton Mercury, January 3, 1780.

78. NCL, M000564NL/14, Thorp Malsor, 1815, 19; M0005644NL/13, Welton Place, 1830, 37.

79. SCLA, DR18/3/47/52/15.

80. NCL, M0005644NL/8, Geddington 1823, 14.

81. Coquery, “Language of Success,” 86. See also Jeggle, “Labelling with Numbers,” 33.

82. Gemmett, “Tinsel of Fashion,” 383–4.

83. See McCracken, Culture and Consumption, 118–29.

84. Charpey, “Auction House”; Westgarth, Emergence of the Antique.

85. Pennell, “Making the Bed.”

86. See Lemire, “Secondhand Clothing Trade,” 153–4.

87. De Munck and Lyna, “Locating and Dislocating Value,” 4; MacArthur and Stobart, “Going for a Song?,” 177–82.

88. Gemmett, “Tinsel of Fashion,” 388.