Consuming Splendor: Luxury Goods in England, 1580–1680

Consuming Splendor: Luxury Goods in England, 1580-1680 was part of the Exhibitions at the Folger, opened September 15, and closed on December 31, 2005. The exhibition was curated by Linda Levy Peck and Rachel Doggett.

Demand for luxury goods—rich fabrics, lacquered furniture, tapestries, chimneypieces, silver, porcelain, crystal, paintings, watches, and fine jewels—grew dramatically in England during the first half of the seventeenth century. Exotic products, such as tobacco, coffee, chocolate, and tea from the Indies, Asia, and Africa penetrated the English market, creating new public spaces and private rituals. People at many levels of society more time and more money dressing themselves, decorating their houses, and whetting their appetites. To meet increasing demand, the first London shopping malls were created. New goods from home and abroad marked their purchasers as fashionable, cosmopolitan, and, in the words of contemporaries, "modern."

Consuming Splendor examined the ways in which the consumption of luxury goods transformed social practices, royal policies, and the economy in seventeenth-century England. It told the story of new goods, new aspirations, and new ways to shop; new building, furnishing, and collecting; and the new relationship of luxury, technology, and science. Over the course of the seventeenth century, luxury consumption and the appropriation of artifacts and skills from abroad transformed England into a center of European growth and innovation.

Supplemental materials

Learn more from Linda Levy Peck's fascinating book, from Cambridge University Press, about the emergence of a consumer society in seventeenth-century England.

Peck, Linda Levy. Consuming splendor: society and culture in seventeenth-century England. Cambridge, UK; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005.

Folger Call Number: DA380 .P43 2005