The 18th century has been hailed for its revolution in consumer culture,
but Material Literacy in Eighteenth-Century Britain repositions
Britain as a nation of makers. It brings new attention to 18th-century
craftswomen and men with its focus on the material knowledge possessed
not only by professional artisans and amateur makers, but also by
skilled consumers. This book gathers together a group of
interdisciplinary scholars working in the fields of art history,
history, literature and museum studies to unearth the tactile and tacit
knowledge that underpinned fashion, tailoring and textile production. It
invites us into the workshops, drawing rooms and backrooms of a broad
range of creators, and uncovers how production and manual knowledge
extended beyond the factories and machines which dominate industrial
histories.
This book illuminates, for the first time, the material literacies
learnt, enacted and understood by British producers and consumers. The
skills required for sewing, embroidering and the textile arts were
possessed by a large proportion of the British population: men, women
and children, professional and amateur alike. Building on previous
studies of shoppers and consumption in the period, as well as narratives
of manufacture, this collection documents the multiplicity of small
producers behind Britain's consumer revolution, reshaping our
understanding of the dynamics between making and objects, consumption
and production. It demonstrates how material knowledge formed an
essential part of daily life for eighteenth-century Britons. Craft
technique, practice and production, the contributors show, constituted
forms of tactile languages that joined makers together, whether they
produced objects for profit or pleasure.
