Helen Clifford

Cet article concerne la mode et, en particulier, la bijouterie d’acier diamant au xviiie siècle en Europe, se concentrant sur la popularité des articles anglais fabriqués d’abord à Wolverhampton puis à Birmingham. Le raffinement de l’acier, associé à la réputation anglaise pour les articles de métal a entaîné une domination du marché pendant la fin du xviiie siècle, non seulement en Grande-Bretagne, mais aussi en France et en Espagne. Conçue pour imiter les diamants, la bijouterie en « cut steel » portée par la fascination pour l’invention et les nouveaux matériaux est admirée et valorisée pour ses propres qualités et, dans certains cas, elle rivalise en prix avec les matériaux même qu’elle cherche à copier.This paper examines the fashion for cut steel jewellery in eighteenth-century Europe, focussing on the popularity of English made wares manufactured first in Wolverhampton then Birmingham. Development in the refinement of steel, short cuts in assembly allied with the English reputation for metalwares meant that it dominated the market during the late eighteenth century, not only in Britain, but also in France and Spain. Devised in imitation of diamonds, the contemporary fascination with invention and new materials meant that cut steel jewellery became admired and valued in its own right, and in some cases vied in price with the very material it sought to copy

... I am grateful to Robin Crichton, Philippa Glanville and Timothy Wilson for their advice and guidance. ... commanlye called a communion Cup wth thappurtances weyinge xliiii oz One greate Salte wth the cover of silver & whole gilte weye-ing xxx oz Two drinking potts pounced of ...

... The core argu-ment around which most of the papers revolve is that a ... developed from three major conferences, three workshops and a three-year seminar series organized ... John Styles argues that clothing conveyed respectability, status and fashion even amongst the poor. ...

It is rare in the world of decorative arts to be able to connect surviving objects with documents of sale and purchase, not only from the consumer, but also from the supplier, combined with details concerning care and use. Institutions, nevertheless, are a valuable source of such information because the formalized and detailed day-to-day administration they require means that archives relating to artifacts are more likely to survive. Some of the oldest and wealthiest institutions are part of the two most ancient universities, Oxford and Cambridge. A number of the colleges not only possess final yearly accounts, in some cases dating back to the fourteenth century, but also retain the material from which they were made up tradesmen's bills. Their detail and range in time allow one to analyze income and expenditure. Together with inventories and lists of benefactions, the accounts and bills make it possible to reconstruct what a college bought, from whom and when, and how the pattern of these purchases changed over time. The survival of both objects and the written record of their existence depends on how they have weathered the vicissitudes of social, political, and economic change. Silver, because it is both infinitely reusable and intrinsically valuable, is particularly vulnerable to change, by melting down, refashioning, and exchange. At Balliol College in Oxford, for example, parcels of silver were "changed for the payment of College Debts" in 1668. Many colleges pawned their silver to the University chest for loans. But the status and inherent value of wrought silver also means that it is documented with regularity and precision. Due to the more than usual care of its authorities, Brasenose College in Oxford retains not only an extensive and detailed written record of its possessions, but also some of those historic possessions themselves. Whereas most of the other colleges regularly cleaned house, dispatching tradesmen's bills to the flames after the annual audit, a long series of bursars at Brasenose, dating back to the sixteenth century, judiciously kept such documents. Only Brasenose and New College at Oxford are notable in retaining a quantity of pre-nineteenth-century bills in their archives. The records at Brasenose,

The art of the silversmith is at the cutting edge of modern design. Faced with the design of a simple domestic object, the silversmiths featured in this volume have produced an astonishing range -- from the minimal simplicity of the purely functional to the lavish ostentation of the truly baroque. These pieces utilize elements of sealife, Scandinavian design, Florida Art Deco, eighteenth-century Rococo, and totemic, timeless symbols of the natural world to forceful effect.

Clifford and Sweetmore provide a historicised guide to the development of archives held in record offices, universities and country houses over the twentieth century. They demonstrate how long-established connections between the personnel, skills and documents embedded in these different sites have shaped the research practices undertaken by academic, local and family historians. By demonstrating how new research questions pertaining to the ‘global’ have led scholars to focus on different collections within national, county and local archives, Clifford and Sweetmore reveal that continuing collaborations between higher education institutions and repositories are important in maintaining the dynamism of archives and universities alike. They end their chapter with a consideration of the potential problems that might limit future connections.

ABSTRACT This article explores the sophisticated visual and textual language of one of the most common, yet overlooked, forms of early advertising – the trade card. Analysis is based on mid-seventeenth- to late eighteenth-century examples within two key collections at the Bodleian Library, Oxford, and Waddesdon Manor, Buckinghamshire. The rare examples of continental, particularly French, advertising in the latter collection provide the opportunity to compare the codes and conventions used by English and French retailers. The authors challenge the view that this form of advertising was either primitive or predominantly English.

The theme of the present issue originated from a session of the Design History Society Conference (2001) dedicated to examining the visual and textual descriptions of design in eighteenth-century England and France. The session invited answers to the questions: how was design communicated between makers and patrons, designers and entrepreneurs and producers and consumers? What visual, verbal and written languages were used? Were these languages becoming standardized, and how were designers, makers and clients trained to 'write' and 'read' them? Lastly, how did eighteenth-century commentators describe the objects they saw before them? While such issues of translation and dissemination are common enough in discussions of design in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries,1 they have not, thus far, featured prominently with respect to the eighteenth century, historians of which tend overwhelmingly to be preoccupied with the fixed, finished product rather than with the flux of process. The present issue is offered as a partial remedy for this lack. It has seemed fitting to allow France to play the glory part because then and thereafter she was heralded, admired and envied as a leader in design: the British House of Commons' Select Committee on the Arts and Principles of Design, convened in 18356, was still looking to the greater artistic content in French design for the explanation of the success of her 'fancy works', wallpaper and silk particularly, by comparison with their British equivalents.2 The English were habitually caricatured as hard-working, solid and mechanical in their talents, lacking those qualities of imagination and originality upon which superior turnover apparently depended.3 The 1835-6 Committee believed that one of the surest means of instilling a better knowledge of the principles of good design in the manufacturing classes lay in the foundation of design schools. In the implementation of this view, it had been anticipated by Shipley's Academy, founded in 1754, and the subject of Moira Thunder's contribution to the present collection. Thunder is less concerned, however, with the polemics of design than with measuring the impact or effectiveness of the education offered by such schools-to put it another way, with the translation of design into product. By a careful examination of the annual competition drawings in textile design, which she evaluates in terms of their translatability into cloth, or 'weavability', she challenges Matthew Craske's recent conclusion that design schools in Britain were largely without positive effect on trade and industry.4 Certain it is, at any rate, that contemporaries were persuaded of the practical utility of the Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce-the title by which William Shipley's venture was later, and is now, better known-and set about establishing sister institutions in imitation of it. In France more than forty design schools were founded in the second half of the eighteenth century and, as Renaud d'Enfert's recent study has shown, the pattern of their geographical distribution corresponds closely in over 40 per cent of cases to the distribution of the textile industry, a statistic that strongly suggests that manufacture helped shape 'where it did not actively invest', in pedagogical innovations.5 Examination of the curricula of these schools reveals that the content of the

Cet article concerne la mode et, en particulier, la bijouterie d’acier diamant au xviiie siècle en Europe, se concentrant sur la popularité des articles anglais fabriqués d’abord à Wolverhampton puis à Birmingham. Le raffinement de l’acier, associé à la réputation anglaise pour les articles de métal a entaîné une domination du marché pendant la fin du xviiie siècle, non seulement en Grande-Bretagne, mais aussi en France et en Espagne. Conçue pour imiter les diamants, la bijouterie en « cut steel » portée par la fascination pour l’invention et les nouveaux matériaux est admirée et valorisée pour ses propres qualités et, dans certains cas, elle rivalise en prix avec les matériaux même qu’elle cherche à copier.This paper examines the fashion for cut steel jewellery in eighteenth-century Europe, focussing on the popularity of English made wares manufactured first in Wolverhampton then Birmingham. Development in the refinement of steel, short cuts in assembly allied with the English reputation for metalwares meant that it dominated the market during the late eighteenth century, not only in Britain, but also in France and Spain. Devised in imitation of diamonds, the contemporary fascination with invention and new materials meant that cut steel jewellery became admired and valued in its own right, and in some cases vied in price with the very material it sought to copy

The art of the silversmith is at the cutting edge of modern design. Faced with the design of a simple domestic object, the silversmiths featured in this volume have produced an astonishing range -- from the minimal simplicity of the purely functional to the lavish ostentation of the truly baroque. These pieces utilize elements of sealife, Scandinavian design, Florida Art Deco, eighteenth-century Rococo, and totemic, timeless symbols of the natural world to forceful effect.

Résumé La sous-traitance dans les métiers londoniens est un phénomène massif au XVIIIe siècle qui transforme l’économie et la culture technique artisanales. Elle est liée à la recherche de producteurs qualifiés capables de répondre à la demande en nombre d’articles hautement composites, censés varier les effets visuels et fonctionnels des objets de consommation. L’économie de la variété, appliquée à une production importante, favorise l’extension des circuits entre producteurs et l’essor des marchés de production, c’est-à-dire une organisation ramifiée complexe fondée sur la mobilisation d’opérateurs externes spécialisés, sous l’égide d’artisans-entrepreneurs. Nous nous proposons d’examiner l’impact de cette organisation du travail sur la culture technique et les identités professionnelles en milieu artisanal. On abordera cette question d’une part à travers l’écrit économique, d’autre part à partir d’actes de la pratique.

Clifford and Sweetmore provide a historicised guide to the development of archives held in record offices, universities and country houses over the twentieth century. They demonstrate how long-established connections between the personnel, skills and documents embedded in these different sites have shaped the research practices undertaken by academic, local and family historians. By demonstrating how new research questions pertaining to the ‘global’ have led scholars to focus on different collections within national, county and local archives, Clifford and Sweetmore reveal that continuing collaborations between higher education institutions and repositories are important in maintaining the dynamism of archives and universities alike. They end their chapter with a consideration of the potential problems that might limit future connections.

It is rare in the world of decorative arts to be able to connect surviving objects with documents of sale and purchase, not only from the consumer, but also from the supplier, combined with details concerning care and use. Institutions, nevertheless, are a valuable source of such information because the formalized and detailed day-to-day administration they require means that archives relating to artifacts are more likely to survive. Some of the oldest and wealthiest institutions are part of the two most ancient universities, Oxford and Cambridge. A number of the colleges not only possess final yearly accounts, in some cases dating back to the fourteenth century, but also retain the material from which they were made up tradesmen's bills. Their detail and range in time allow one to analyze income and expenditure. Together with inventories and lists of benefactions, the accounts and bills make it possible to reconstruct what a college bought, from whom and when, and how the pattern of these purchases changed over time. The survival of both objects and the written record of their existence depends on how they have weathered the vicissitudes of social, political, and economic change. Silver, because it is both infinitely reusable and intrinsically valuable, is particularly vulnerable to change, by melting down, refashioning, and exchange. At Balliol College in Oxford, for example, parcels of silver were "changed for the payment of College Debts" in 1668. Many colleges pawned their silver to the University chest for loans. But the status and inherent value of wrought silver also means that it is documented with regularity and precision. Due to the more than usual care of its authorities, Brasenose College in Oxford retains not only an extensive and detailed written record of its possessions, but also some of those historic possessions themselves. Whereas most of the other colleges regularly cleaned house, dispatching tradesmen's bills to the flames after the annual audit, a long series of bursars at Brasenose, dating back to the sixteenth century, judiciously kept such documents. Only Brasenose and New College at Oxford are notable in retaining a quantity of pre-nineteenth-century bills in their archives. The records at Brasenose,

ABSTRACT This article explores the sophisticated visual and textual language of one of the most common, yet overlooked, forms of early advertising – the trade card. Analysis is based on mid-seventeenth- to late eighteenth-century examples within two key collections at the Bodleian Library, Oxford, and Waddesdon Manor, Buckinghamshire. The rare examples of continental, particularly French, advertising in the latter collection provide the opportunity to compare the codes and conventions used by English and French retailers. The authors challenge the view that this form of advertising was either primitive or predominantly English.

... I am grateful to Robin Crichton, Philippa Glanville and Timothy Wilson for their advice and guidance. ... commanlye called a communion Cup wth thappurtances weyinge xliiii oz One greate Salte wth the cover of silver & whole gilte weye-ing xxx oz Two drinking potts pounced of ...

In order to please their customers, goldsmiths in eighteenth-century London had to make sure that the 'form, decoration and weight of an order [was] accurately conveyed if the end was to meet with the customer's satisfaction' (p. 68). In this gem of a book, Helen Clifford certainly ...