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.

Exhibition material

Shops and Goods

"What is't you buy?"

The new and fashionable attracted shoppers, from the country girl who wanted to buy "London silk" from her local draper and haberdasher to the well-to-do who demanded and increasingly diverse range of luxury goods from abroad. Merchants used their knowledge to tailor goods such as Venetian glass and Chinese porcelain to the home market. As business prospered, they extended credit to those shoppers without cash on hand. At the same time, contemporary representations of shopping in sermons, plays, courtesy literature, and court cases dwelt on the dangers of shopping and the bargaining away of virtue and estate.

Tokens from the Seven Stars, the White Hart, and Mary Long's at the Sign of the Rose, were issued by tradesmen in part because of the scarcity of small coins, but they also served to advertise the businesses they represented. In the 1650s and 1660s, hundreds of shopkeepers issued and distributed such tokens, enabling eager shoppers to purchase items like the luxurious fur muffs shown in Czech artist Wenceslaus Hollar's engraving.

The muffs, lace collars, gloves, and fans so skillfully depicted by Hollar were also celebrated in the grand portraits of the period. Men and women sitting for portraits were sure to be depicted wearing the most sumptuous and fashionable clothes and surrounded by rich fabrics, tapestries, and other goods that signaled their wealth and nobility.

Items included

  • Wenceslaus Hollar. A Group of Muffs and Articles of Dress on a Table. Etching. Antuerpiae: 1647. ART 250- 011 (size S). LUNA Digital Image.
  • Tradesman's tokens from the Seven Stars, the White Hart, and the Mary Long in Russell Street Covent Garden, 17th century. ART H-P A1b nos.6, 8, 32.

Shopping in London

In the Middle Ages, the English bought goods at fairs, from peddlers, or from pushcarts. By the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, shops were often in craftsmen's houses. London was the major center for shopping, the focus of consumers all over the country who shopped themselves or through an agent. Houses on London Bridge contained small shops, while other markets boasted shops for goldsmiths, mercers, and sellers of leather goods. Both the Royal Exchange and, later, the New Exchange brought new shopping practices, creating boutiques where the well-to-do could shop in private and parade publicly. Shopping had become a new form of entertainment.

London's Markets

Thirteen London open-air markets are depicted in Hugh Alley's book of drawings, which he created to call attention to the abuses of market regulations. The drawings show both common markets, where non-citizens sold food produced outside of the city, and citizen markets. You can view his manuscript in its entirety at the Folger's Digital Image Database

London's Latest Fashions

Sir Hugh Smith of Long Ashton, near Bristol, a well-to-do country gentleman, had been knighted by King James I in 1603. Renowned for his melancholic disposition, it is said that he cared for nothing but breeding horses and equipping himself with the latest London fashions. His god-son, Stephen Smith, lived in London and acted as his personal shopper, keeping him up-to-date on the contemporary styles.

This manuscript is a communique between the two relatives concerning Sir Hugh's previous requests for scarlet hose to show of his "good leg," a scarlet suit, and Spanish boots. Stephen also writes of the latest fashions in summer doublets: "Your Taylor and I considered that canvas was only fit for summer....Canvas doublets are now much in request and they are all made plain or trimmed with white lace...."

The Folger has a series of nine autographed letters signed by Stephen Smith to his god-father, largely concerning fashionable goods he was purchasing or having made for Sir Hugh, including a dagger and a hanger for a wood-knife.

This watercolor is only one of a large collection of illustrations once in an album amicorum, or "book of friendship." These albums are comprised of autographs, writings, and paintings collected from friends and bound together by the owner.

Travelers and students often kept these albums, collecting illustrations that documented the manners and costumes of different classes and countries.

Royal Exchange

Thomas Gresham's Royal Exchange, which had opened in 1570, broke new ground in luxury consumption. Modeled after the Antwerp Bourse, it brought together merchants in international trade, those who sailed to Russia, North Africa, American, and elsewhere in search of luxury goods. There were two floors of small shops, each only five feet by seven and one-half feet. At first Gresham had trouble filling them, but by the end of the century there was a waiting list of merchants eager to set up shop at the Exchange.

Items included

Continental Architecture

Profitable Pleasures

The Royal Society

Rarities as Luxury Goods

East and West

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