Aesthetics on the secondary market
Bruno Blondé (University of Antwerp - Centre for Urban History), Britt Denis (University of
Antwerp - Centre for Urban History) and Jon Stobart (University of Northampton)
Introduction
For decades the history of material culture and consumption has been caught in ‘grand
narratives’. Historiography has long passed the initial enthusiasm of McKendrick cum suis,
authors selling eighteenth-century consumer changes as ingredients of the ‘birth of a
consumer society’. This does not prevent other generalising master narratives from playing a
major role in recent material culture and history of consumption research. The “industrious
revolution” concept is undoubtedly one of the most influential, though not uncontested,
intellectual frameworks that currently prevail. While authors such as Jan de Vries excel in a
refined and balanced intellectual analysis of eighteenth-century consumer changes, by and
large it is overarching arguments and concepts (such as luxury, novelty and comfort) that lead
their thoughts (de Vries, 2008). When it comes to the ‘material’ of ‘material culture’, several
scholars have already argued in favour of a fundamental shift from an intrinsic value-based
expenditure and ownership pattern to a designbased consumer model. This, again, is a general
model that – even accounting for its typological
explanatory potential rather than its actual historical
character – tends to frame material culture changes
into one, overarching general process and
discourse. In doing so, as Maxine Berg
acknowledges, the most influential historiography
shares a major common feature: it pays little
attention to the specific objects studied (Berg 2005,
85): ‘While so much of the recent history of
consumption in the eighteenth century has focused
on the role of demand and on new consumer
aspirations, it gives little consideration to consumer goods themselves’. Moreover, while the
historiography has developed a hegemonic narrative centred around ‘fashion’,
‘industriousness’, ‘comfort’, ‘luxury’ and ‘pleasure’, too little is still known about the way
cultural values were actually constructed and bundles of characteristics woven around specific
objects and groups of objects.
The main aim of this contribution consists to analyse the subtle discursive ways in which
objects obtained value in eighteenth-century newspaper advertisements. Rather than focusing
on advertisements for ‘new shops’ and ‘new objects’, we deal in this article with
announcements of auctions, more particularly the general auctions in which all kinds of
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household goods were offered for sale. By focusing on this type of advertisement we hope to
put different material objects into a comparative perspective. Indeed, not only household
furniture, but also textiles, silverware, clocks, kettles, chinaware and coaches were offered for
sale and advertised well in advance through notices in the local and metropolitan newspapers.
Hence, auction announcements offer the unique possibility of looking at a more complete
context in which objects were offered for sale. In principle, probate inventories could serve a
similar purpose, but they are not rich in documenting product qualities (Overton 2004, 114116) and, for obvious reasons, appraisers were not inclined to use persuasive adjectives –
persuasion being not the ultimate goal of drawing up an inventory. As with inventories, of
course, wealthier householders are over-represented in newspaper ads as they were more
likely to have their estate auction announced, whether post mortem, after bankruptcy or
relocation. As a result, our analysis tends to focus upon material culture patterns among these
wealthier households.
For this paper, the bulk of the qualitative data are drawn from the Gazette van Antwerpen, a
sample being taken for the years 1730-1731, 1759-1761 and 1789-1791. This generated a total
of 3676 advertisements. To this, we have added a much smaller set of advertisements from the
Daily Advertiser (a London newspaper, sampled for 1772) and Adams Weekly Courant (from
Chester, sampled 1778-79), together with a range of examples taken from the broader
provincial press in eighteenth-century England. This material can be subjected to multiple
interrogations, but we focus here on the ways in which material objects were described. What
kinds of adjectives were used and to what extent did these vary between different types of
objects? Can we discern an over-arching discourse centred around ‘novelty’ or ‘fashion’ or
were other priorities more important? By drawing data from two countries, our analysis has an
important comparative dimension and allows us to consider the ways in which the
local/national cultural and economic milieu impacted on the description of material objects
being offered for sale. Moreover, comparing these descriptions to the language deployed in
the printed catalogues for auctions of household goods also allows us to place newspapers
into a comparative framework.
A language of persuasion?
It has been argued elsewhere that eighteenth-century advertisements employed a rhetoric of
persuasion, although this was often couched in terms of politeness both in linguistic and
cultural terms (Lyna and Van Damme 2009; Stobart 2008). Advertisements for the sale of
household goods generally followed a standard format. They began with an announcement of
when and where the auction would occur; then headlined the type and sometimes the
character of goods being offered for sale, before offering a more detailed list of the particular
objects available. At the bottom of the advertisement were details of arrangements for
viewing the lots and sometimes information about where auction catalogues could be
obtained.
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The Antwerp data reveal that the majority of goods were advertised without recourse to any
adjectival modifier whatsoever (Table 1). For England, the picture is more impressionistic,
but it appears that this ‘silence’ was far less common: only a quarter of auction advertisements
were without qualitative descriptions, although a further 40 percent described the goods as
‘genuine’, rather than in truly qualitative terms. The relative absence of adjectives to describe
the qualities of auctioned goods as a whole does not exclude persuasion, however. Very often
this was derived from the mere juxtaposition of different objects: the ‘chairs, sofas, pierglasses, girondoles, dining, Pembroke and card tables, India dressing glasses and boxes,
carpets … four post and tent bed-steads with damask, chints, morine, cotton, Manchester and
other furniture, fine down and goose-feather beds, blankets quilts, counterpanes, matrasses …
Kitchen articles, brewing vessels &c’ advertised by Joseph Skerrett (Adams Weekly Courant,
17 March 1778) forms both an inventory of comfortable living and evokes a sense of variety
and consumer choice that were critical attributes in the eighteenth century (Coquery 2011,
273-274). Very often, moreover, auctioneers stressed this variety and abundance of choice in
an overt way. On Friday, January 16th 1789, for instance, an auction was announced in the
Gazette van Antwerpen in which a large set of furniture (“een groote partije grove meubelen”)
with – among other things – different chests were offered for sale next to, again among others,
a large set of paintings (Gazette van Antwerpen, 16 January 1789). On February 6th a long list
of goods was auctioned on the Antwerp Friday Market. The preceding advertisement did a
good job of evoking the splendour and variety of the goods that were offered for sale, yet the
description was concluded by a meaningful and more other goods too many to be mentioned
(“en meer andere goederen te lang om melden”) (Gazette van Antwerpen, 2 February 1789).
Table 1. Descriptions of auction lots in eighteenth-century Antwerp auction advertisements
(A)
(B)
(C)
N
%
% (only auction
descriptions)
Other
218
5,930359 35,44715
Schoon (beautiful)
306
8,324266 49,7561
Curieus ('curious')
11
0,299238 1,788618
Kostelijk (precious)
12
0,326442 1,95122
Mode (fashionable)
4
0,108814 0,650407
Modern
40
1,088139 6,504065
New
7
0,190424 1,138211
lots
with
3
Kunstig (ingenious)
4
0,108814 0,650407
Uitmuntend
(excellent/outstanding)
13
0,353645 2,113821
No quality given
3061
83,26986
Total
3676
100
100
When we zoom in on the Antwerp auction lots that were accompanied by modifiers (column
C), a very diverse picture appears. Indeed, a considerable proportion of auction lots were
described with the help of ‘unique’ adjectives or descriptors, such as the large set of perfumes
and exquisite pomades that were announced for sale on May 30th 1789 (Gazette van
Antwerpen, 29 May 1789). However, when this large residual ‘other’ category is removed, by
far the most frequently used descriptor referred to the aesthetic quality of object groups,
usually in terms of the description ‘schoon’ (79 percent), followed by the presupposed
‘modernity’ of the goods (8 percent). Schoon can be translated as beautiful, but it has far more
nuanced meanings, including handsome, fine, clean and pure. The fine detail of nuances that
come with the use of adjectives related to aesthetics have yet to be explored in detail.
Moreover, it goes without saying that auction advertisements fall short in contextualising
“beautifulness” in a detailed way.
The same variety of meanings comes out more explicitly in the English advertisements, with
both the beauty and cleanness of the auction goods being emphasised. The former is brought
out through adjectives such as ‘elegant’ and ‘neat’, both of which were redolent with
significance for eighteenth-century householders. As Vickery argues, these terms ‘embodied
the social distinctions of provincial gentility’: they communicated ideas of good taste rather
than ostentatious grandeur, but lifted both goods and their owners above mere respectability
(Vickery 1998, 161; 2009, 180-2). Newspaper advertisements thus pitched the auctioned
goods as signifiers of gentility – an association reinforced by auction catalogues which added
‘genteel’ to the descriptions (MacArthur and Stobart 2010, 184) . In describing goods as
‘genuine’, auctioneers were saying something about their provenance, but they were also
reassuring potential purchasers about the reputable nature of the objects being offered for sale.
One advertisement noted that the listed objects were ‘all perfectly clean goods’ (which echoes
the ‘schoon’ of Antwerp advertisements), while another elaborated further. Under a headline
emphasising the goods as elegant and a long list of objects being sold, the auctioneer
concluded his advertisement with the promise that: ‘There are no Scraps or Scrapings of
Time, to be met with in this House – most of the Articles are new – Beauty and Art are so
happily blended in the principal Pieces, that, it is hoped, Criticism will lose her Sting on the
Day of Viewing and give an assenting Nod on the Day of Sale’ (Daily Advertiser, 30 January
1771; Northampton Mercury, 3 January 1780).
At the same time, of course, these were used goods, one of the key attractions of which was
their price relative to those purchased new. It is striking, therefore, that the newspaper
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advertisements in Antwerp and England make no mention of goods being cheap – a selling
point increasingly emphasised in advertisements for new goods, from tea to textiles, and a key
part of the rhetoric of persuasion deployed by shopkeepers (Stobart, 2008, Lyna and Van
Damme, 2009). What is seen in a small proportion of English, but intriguingly not in Antwerp
advertisements, is an emphasis on the auctioned goods being ‘valuable’. Contra de Vries’
arguments, this reflects the continued importance of material objects as stores of wealth and
perhaps links to gentry and middling sort concerns for ‘prudent economy’ in terms of securing
good quality goods at much reduced prices (Harvey 2012, 64-98; Vickery 1998, 127-60;
Nenadic 1994a, 1994b)
Objects of desire?
As well as qualitative descriptors being attached to the auctioned goods as a whole, some
advertisements also promoted individual objects or groups of objects in this way. Overall this
practice followed a very similar pattern to that described above (Table 2). By and large,
Antwerp advertisements provided detailed lists of goods, but auctioneers seldom were
inclined to make use of adjectives to heighten their attraction to potential purchasers. This was
undoubtedly linked to the need to restrict the length of the advertisement, partly because they
were priced according to the space they occupied and partly to avoid them becoming too long
for readers to bother with. However, there is also some tantalising evidence that auctioneers
were wary of being seen to ‘puff’ the goods. In an auction catalogue, one Northamptonshire
auctioneer acidly observed: ‘Bombast Puffing of Pictures as well as other Articles, is always
ridiculous; as not furnishing any just or clear Ideas by which the unskilled may form any
judgment of their Merits, but at the same time never fails to excite the Laughter and Contempt
of the Connisseur [sic.]’ (Catalogue for auction at Islip Mills, 19 December 1787). That only a
small proportion of objects were given a qualitative descriptor is thus unsurprising; but neither
is it a huge setback for our analysis. Indeed, such selectivity adds enormously to the marginal
value of those objects that were effectively described with greater precision (column C).
Table 2. Quality descriptions of objects in eighteenth-century Antwerp auction advertisements
(A)
(B)
(C)
N
%
% (only objects with descriptions)
Other
41
0,376147 3,510274
Schoon (beautiful)
927
8,504587 79,36644
Curieus (curious)
6
0,055046 0,513699
Kostelijk (precious)
5
0,045872 0,428082
5
Mode (fashionable)
9
0,082569 0,770548
Modern
97
0,889908 8,304795
New
53
0,486239 4,537671
Old
15
0,137615 1,284247
Kunstig (ingenious)
0
0
Uitmuntend
(excellent/outstanding)
15
0,137615 1,284247
No quality given
9732
89,2844
Total
10900
100%
0
100%
Again, it is not so much the novelty of objects, or their capability to evoke modernity, but
rather the beauty of things that was marketed. Indeed, ‘schoon’ becomes predominant in the
Antwerp adverts, accounting for nearly 80 percent of the occurrences of descriptive modifiers
(Table 2). Much the same was true in England, where elegant, neat, fine and handsome were
predominant. This underlines our earlier argument that these used goods were being linked
firmly into ideas of gentility and taste. They reflected the ways in which the (lesser) gentry
viewed and described themselves as ‘civil’, ‘genteel’, ‘well-bred’ and ‘polished’ (Vickery,
1998, 13). Whether such groups were the most prominent amongst the buyers at auctions, and
indeed whether the goods actually merited these descriptions, is less important than the social
and cultural world in which they were being situated. These objects were ‘declared’ as
beautiful, elegant and genteel (a word used far more often in auction catalogues than
advertisements) and were thus rendered markers of this status . (Stobart 2011, 95-96; Searle
1975) It is possible, of course, that this language of aesthetics may have been the vector
hiding characteristics such as ‘novelty’ and ‘fashionability’ or even economy and value. But it
is telling that reference was made to the aesthetics of things rather than to the characteristics
most often applauded in the historiography of eighteenth-century consumption.
Figure 1. Percentage of auction lots with a quality indication
6
45
40
35
30
25
20
15
10
5
0
Not all objects were equally likely to be described in detail. The Antwerp data shows quite
clearly that paintings were accorded qualitative descriptors far more often than were other
categories of goods (Figure 1). More importantly, despite the predominance of aesthetic
descriptions, different types of goods were described in rather different ways, suggesting that
the nature of the object was significant in how it was viewed and portrayed as an object of
desire. In this context, the combination of adjective and noun was important, influencing the
meaning of both, according to the particular context. A handsome painting, for example,
meant something rather different from a handsome dining table or a handsome coach.
Furthermore, different categories of goods were characterised by a variety of secondary
descriptions.
Unsurprisingly perhaps, paintings were predominantly described in terms of their aesthetic
appeal: they were things of beauty and portrayed as such in the auction advertisements
(Figure 3). In England paintings were mostly sold framed and these were occasionally
described in detail, again with their aesthetic qualities to the fore. While auction catalogues in
the Netherlands provide similar details, ads were shorter in describing works of art, with a
strong emphasis on the aesthetics of paintings. Yet aesthetics were not the only selling point
for paintings; their value was also emphasised. In English advertisementsreference was
sometimes made to specific painters or genres – no doubt as a way of heightening their appeal
to the cognoscenti. For example, when advertising a sale in Gresford near Chester, the
auctioneer noted ‘A large Collection of Paintings, by the best Masters, A very large
Collection of original Drawings, many of which are scarce and valuable, and fine
Impressions’ (Adams Weekly Courant, 19 January 1779). In Antwerp as well the value of
paintings was often constructed by emphasising the fame of the painters such as the very
beautiful of a painting by Snijders representing an orderly “camp-veldt” (“een extra schoone
schilderye, representerende een ordentelyck camp-veldt, zynde geschildert door den grooten
fameusen konst schilder Snayers”) that was offered on August 18th 1760 (Gazette van
Antwerpen, 12 August 1760).
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Figure 2. Quality descriptions of auction shares (lots) by object category
400
300
200
100
0
Other
Schoon (beautiful)
Curieus (curious)
Kostelijk (precious)
Mode (fashionable)
Modern
New
Kunstig (ingenious)
Uitmuntend (outstanding/excellent)
No quality given
Figure 3. Quality descriptions of auction shares (lots) by object category in % (objects without
description excluded)
100%
80%
60%
40%
20%
0%
Other
Schoon (beautiful)
Curieus (curious)
Kostelijk (precious)
Mode (fashionable)
Modern
New
Kunstig (ingenious)
Uitmuntend (outstanding/excellent)
More surprising is the fact that textiles and clothing, the usual hunting ground for the tyranny
of fashion, were not the most common objects to be described in such terms. ‘Modern’
formed a small minority of descriptions used for textiles in the Antwerp data (Figure 3) and
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‘fashionable’ appeared on a few occasions in English advertisements. Rather, it was
silverware, the ‘old luxury’ par excellence, that was mostly circumscribed as modern or
fashionable, though modernity also migrated to furniture and fashionability to coaches and
carriages that entered secondary markets. Thus we see the inclusion of ‘several lots of modern
plate’ in the metropolitan sale of Mr Serjeant Leigh’s possessions and of ‘upwards of two
Hundred Ounces of fashionable Plate’ in an auction in Nantwich (Daily Advertiser, 23 June
1772; Adams Weekly Courant, 17 March 1778). Intriguing as it seems, the crediting of an ‘old
luxury’ with ‘modernity’ and ‘fashionability’ is less contradictory. Increasingly indeed, the
added value of silverware played a large role in discriminating between owners with and
owners without taste (Blondé 2009). Silverware, for obvious reasons, appealed to centuriesold patterns of conspicuous consumption, but thanks to its high intrinsic value and its
potential for melting and remaking, it also borrowed from the feverish and volatile eighteenthcentury culture (Baatsen and Blondé 2011). Broadly similar arguments might be made for
coaches, the pars pro toto of an elite lifestyle. Here, the elegance of the vehicle and quality of
manufacture were both emphasised, but so too was the fact that they were ‘little used’ or ‘very
little the worse for wear’ (Northampton Mercury, 6 June 1743; Berrow’s Worcester Journal,
24 September 1772). Aesthetic qualities were thus combined with practical considerations,
but also with notions of modernity, coaches also being described as modern built – a phrase
which suggests stylistic considerations as well as mere age. In Antwerp, readers were
informed of a beautiful, new and modern carriage that was furbished with mock-velvet of
three different colours (Gazette van Antwerpen, 8 February 1791). As key positional goods,
therefore, fashion and modernity mattered when buying a coach second-hand as much as it
did when the vehicle was new.
The age of an object could also important when taken in the opposite direction. While auction
goods overall were never described as old, this term was sometimes attached to furniture and
especially porcelain. This was more evident in England than Antwerp and may reflect the
earlier development of a taste for antiques, which was sufficiently prevalent by the early
nineteenth century to support a substantial cluster of specialist shops in Soho. Even then,
however, auctions remained an important source for such goods (Wainwright, 1984; Stobart,
2011). In Antwerp, advertisements sometimes labelled porcelain and also textiles as ‘curious’,
a description which might allude to their attraction to collectors. English advertisements were
more specific. There was ‘rare old’ china; a ‘set of magnificent old Japan Jars and Beakers’,
and ‘Cabinets, Chests and Screens of the rare old Japan’ (Daily Advertiser, 14 March 1772;
Daily Advertiser, 7 February 1772). These allusions to scarcity underlined the attraction and
potential value of the objects both in cultural and economic terms. Such old and rare items
might form additions to collections which, as McCracken argues, reflected the taste,
knowledge and wealth of the owner (McCracken 1990, 45-50).
Even with these object groups, however, it was aesthetic qualities that predominated.
Descriptions of furniture could be especially rich, with elegant, handsome, neat or fine being
used alongside the materials from which the pieces were made. Thus we read about neat
Mahogany furniture, fine feather beds and beautiful rosewood cabinets. Indeed, the combined
aesthetics and materials of particular pieces could prompt lengthy descriptions, one London
9
advertisement waxing lyrical about a ‘most matchless Ladies India Commode of Rose Wood,
richly inlaid with Ivory of curious Workmanship’ (Daily Advertiser, 14 March 1772). Used in
this way, language reinforced some of the key characteristics of such luxury goods: the
quality of materials, intricacy of design, complexity of manufacture and, above all, aesthetic
appeal.
Conclusions
This exploration thus leads to several provisory conclusions. Contrary to the claims forwarded
by Lyna and Van Damme, it is hard to distinguish between the informative and persuasive
nature of auction advertisements. While consumer and material culture historiography tends
to stress general, homogenising concepts such as fashion, industriousness, etc. in the context
of the eighteenth century a very nuanced and multi-layered set of values was woven around
objects that were often defined by very object-specific markers. Overall, however, it was
aesthetics that dominated the discourse on the secondary markets. The emphasis on aesthetic
qualities was firmly rooted in a centuries-old renaissance canon that favoured not only the
intrinsic qualities but especially the decorative potential, design, taste and added value of
luxuries. Though the aesthetic canon in itself obviously changed rapidly with changing
fashion, it was not fashion or novelty per sé that appealed to eighteenth-century customers. In
this way, the emphasis on beauty which requires a judgment of taste, hence knowledge,
helped to reproduce social inequalities in the eighteenth century. Indeed, even though the
transition to new luxuries implied a greater affordability of semi-luxuries by ever greater parts
of the population, in the end it was taste, a savoir-vivre, that discriminated between the real
“haves” and the “have nots”.
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