Luxury: History, Culture, Consumption is particularly honoured to present this special issue devoted to the Europe 1600–1815 Galleries at the Victoria & Albert Museum London.
It would be hard to imagine a more luxurious collection of objects than those detailed in the series of articles and case studies included in this issue, nor indeed to experience a more luxuriously immersive experience when visiting the galleries, the creation of which also provides fascinating reading. The team of experts that Lesley Ellis Miller and Hilary Young, as guest editors, have assembled to write for this issue offer a unique insight into the production and consumption of luxury objects during this period. In addition, those same writers as the experts, curators, conservators and educationalists who worked on the Galleries provide us with a fascinating account of how they succeeded so triumphantly in their task to make the luxuries of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries relevant to today’s audience.
What is most strikingly revealed on reading this issue is how so many of the current debates being held within the rapidly growing field of Critical Luxury Studies can trace their origins to the period of intense intellectual, political, artistic and mercantile exploration represented by the Galleries. While the dazzling array of objects bought to life by the articles unsurprisingly provide perfect examples of luxury’s established qualities and are often made of the most exquisite and rare materials, display an awe-inspiring level of technical skill, are often unique, commissioned objects and typically prohibitively costly, they also represent conceptions of, and indeed in some cases, arguments against, an understanding of luxury as pertinent and as thought provoking now as they were in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
In our contemporary climate of increasingly isolationist political thought and essentialist belief the objects discussed in this issue speak of globalization, hybridity and dialogue. The structures that made these same objects possible, whether that be in the form of liberal philosophies, a new fluidity in economic and social status or increasing cross-cultural contact were as essential to their production as their actual physical and technical construction, all of which provide a rich and varied set of examples with which we can today consider the support of luxury, both ideological and actual.
As fabulous and almost inconceivable as the level of ingenuity and skill employed in the fabrication of these objects was, this has been matched in many instances by the innovative techniques employed in the Europe 1600–1815 Galleries, such as the use of digital technologies to assist in the restoration of the objects, the visitor’s interaction with them or the recreation of their environments, reminding us once again that luxury has always been inextricably linked to technical innovation and experiment.
This issue closes with a review by Peter McNeil of a Finnish exhibition of what must surely be considered one of the most abidingly luxurious objects – lace. However, as many of the objects in the V&A also demonstrate, lace is an example of what has been described as a little luxury, which due to shifting economic circumstances and fashionable taste was enjoyed by a much larger section of society than just the powerful and privileged. McNeil then uses this to consider the conception of luxury within an avowedly socialist country such as Finland revealing, as with the objects in the V&A, that luxury is mutable, revelatory, inspiring but above all, to quote from Lesley Ellis Miller’s introductory article, Luxury in Europe 1600–1815: Negotiating Narratives 2010–15 an expression of “seduction by design.”
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Jonathan Faiers
Jonathan Faiers is Professor of Fashion Thinking, Winchester School of Art, University of Southampton, UK.[email protected]