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Research paper thumbnail of http://spinning-wheel.org

Papers by John Styles

Research paper thumbnail of Gender, taste and material culture in Britain and North America, 1700–1830 – Edited by John Styles and Amanda Vickery

The Economic History Review, 2007

REVIEWS • 159 such as the different ways in which various gender-race pairings were treated. On t... more REVIEWS • 159 such as the different ways in which various gender-race pairings were treated. On the whole, however, Schafer has done her fellow historians an admirable service once again with her bibliography of over two hundred cases from the First District Court archive and has brought to life with rich description an understudied era in the long history of New Orleans prostitution.

Research paper thumbnail of Spinners and the Law: Regulating Yarn Standards in the English Worsted Industries, 1550–1800

Research paper thumbnail of What were Cottons for in the Early Industrial Revolution

Fashion’s Favourite, the title of Beverley Lemire’s 1991 book on the cotton trade and consumer re... more Fashion’s Favourite, the title of Beverley Lemire’s 1991 book on the cotton trade and consumer revolution in England, reminded us that in the eighteenth century cotton was a fashionable fabric. During the second half of the century, decorated cottons like sprigged muslins, printed calicoes and white tufted counterpanes established a remarkable currency as desirable fabrics for dress and furnishing at all levels in the market. They became an indispensable element of fashion. Of course we can debate exactly what ‘fashion’ means in this context. Is it fashion in the economist’s sense of regular changes in visual appearance of any type of good intended to stimulate sales? Is it fashion in the dress historian’s sense of annual or seasonal manipulation of normative appearance through clothing? Or is it fashion in the fashion pundit’s sense of those forms of selfconscious, avant-garde innovation in dress pursued by an exclusive social or cultural élite – the fashion of royal courts, the ei...

Research paper thumbnail of Fashion and Innovation in Early Modern Europe

John Styles, 'Fashion and Innovation in Early Modern Europe' in Evelyn Welch Ed., Fashion... more John Styles, 'Fashion and Innovation in Early Modern Europe' in Evelyn Welch Ed., Fashioning the Early Modern: Dress, Textiles, and Innovation in Europe, 1500-1800, (Oxford:Oxford University Press, 2017) ISBN: 9780198738176

Research paper thumbnail of Enlightened Princesses between Germany and Britain

John Styles, 'Enlightened Princesses between Germany and Britain', in Joanna Marschner, D... more John Styles, 'Enlightened Princesses between Germany and Britain', in Joanna Marschner, David Bindman and Lida Ford, eds., Enlightened Princesses: Caroline, Augusta, Charlotte, and the Shaping of the Modern World (London: Yale University Press, 2017) ISBN:9780300217100

Research paper thumbnail of Threads of Feeling': Exhibition

Research paper thumbnail of What was Cotton? Fibers, Markets and Technology in the British Industrial Revolution

Both books employ a distinction between micro-and macroinventions, identifying James Hargreaves' ... more Both books employ a distinction between micro-and macroinventions, identifying James Hargreaves' spinning jenny of 1764-6 and Richard Arkwright's water frame, patented in 1769, as key macro-inventions in cotton spinning, along with Samuel Crompton's later spinning mule of 1779 which integrated the principles of the first two machines. However, the two books provide very different approaches to explaining macro-invention. Mokyr insists that macro-inventions (in contrast to micro-inventions) are only very weakly related to economic forces, if at all. He presents macro-inventions as radical new ideas that emerge without clear precedent, but have dramatic economic consequences. 6 The roots of the key macro-inventions of the British Industrial Revolution, insists Mokyr, lay in what he calls 'the great synergy of the Enlightenment: the combination of the Baconian program in useful knowledge and the recognition that better institutions created better incentives'. 7 In other words, their origins were cultural, intellectual and institutional-they are to be found in a distinctively British combination of competitive markets and scientific research linked to practical applications. Mokyr's broad emphasis on the importance of 'useful knowledge' is unexceptionable, but in the process he appears to abandon the possibility of explaining the origins of particular macro-inventions, while sidelining evidence for pre-Enlightenment inventiveness. Robert Allen, by contrast, offers an explanation for the key macro-inventions that is narrowly economic, rooted in the theory of induced innovation. He insists that technological change is directed by the relative prices of the factors of production. Eighteenth-century Britain was, he argues, an economy characterized by high wages, but cheap capital and very cheap energy, which rendered worthwhile the high costs of developing labour-saving macro-inventions and converting them into commercially useful technologies. To apply this approach to technical innovation in textiles, Allen focuses not on Richard Arkwright's water frame, but on James Hargreaves' spinning jenny, invented in Oswaldtwistle, Lancashire in the mid-1760s, which he characterizes as 'the Industrial Revolution in miniature'. In his book and an associated article, Allen offers a heroic cliometric comparison of the jenny's potential to reduce spinning costs in Britain, France and India. 8 He concludes the jenny more than paid for itself given high British wages for hand spinning and

Research paper thumbnail of The Rise and Fall of the Spinning Jenny: Domestic Mechanisation in Eighteenth-Century Cotton Spinning

In February 1777, Imbert de St Paul, the French government’s inspector of manufactures at Nimes, ... more In February 1777, Imbert de St Paul, the French government’s inspector of manufactures at Nimes, witnessed a spinning jenny at work for the first time. An experienced member of the state industrial bureaucracy, he had already heard about the jenny, which had been introduced into France by one of his colleagues in 1771. Nevertheless, he had to confess it ‘is a very ingenious machine, though very simple, and seeing it work, we were all simply astonished we had failed to guess its secret’. Invented in England in the mid-1760s by the Lancashire weaver James Hargreaves, this simple but ingenious machine remains a familiar icon of the Industrial Revolution, its origins and its impact repeatedly interrogated in the search for explanations of Britain’s eighteenth-century economic transformation. The jenny features as a key technical breakthrough — a ‘macroinvention’ — in the two most influential recent interpretations of the Industrial Revolution: Robert Allen’s The British Industrial Revol...

Research paper thumbnail of Fibres, Fashion and Marketing: Textile Innovation in early modern Europe

Research paper thumbnail of Manufacturing, Consumption and Design In Eighteenth-Century England

Consumption and the World of Goods, 1993

Research paper thumbnail of Object in focus 14

Writing Material Culture History

Research paper thumbnail of Consumption

Research paper thumbnail of An Ocean of Textiles

The William and Mary Quarterly

Research paper thumbnail of Custom or Consumption? Plebeian Fashion in Eighteenth-Century England

Luxury in the Eighteenth Century, 2003

Research paper thumbnail of Threads of Feeling : The London Foundling Hospital’s Textile Tokens, 1740-1770

When mothers left babies at London's Foundling Hospital in the mid-eighteenth century, the H... more When mothers left babies at London's Foundling Hospital in the mid-eighteenth century, the Hospital often retained a small token as a means of identification, usually a piece of fabric. These swatches of fabric now form Britain's largest collection of everyday textiles from the ...

Research paper thumbnail of Sir John Fielding and the Problem of Criminal Investigation in Eighteenth-Century England

Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, Dec 1, 1983

Eighteenth-Century England witnessed an extraordinary transformation in the capacity to dissemina... more Eighteenth-Century England witnessed an extraordinary transformation in the capacity to disseminate information. Improvements in communications, particularly the turnpike roads and the postal service, together with the multiplication of printing presses and newspapers, underpinned what has been described as an ‘information explosion’. The changes which these developments wrought in the political and commercial life of the nation are increasingly familiar to historians. Their impact on eighteenth-century crime and policing is less so.

Research paper thumbnail of Threads of Feeling': Exhibition

Research paper thumbnail of Time Piece: working men and watches

John Styles considers whether the fashion for wearing pocket-watches flourished among working men... more John Styles considers whether the fashion for wearing pocket-watches flourished among working men in the eighteenth century because it was stylish, because they needed to know the time accurately, or for some other reason." It went ill. I kept it four years, then gave that ...

Research paper thumbnail of A New Gallery at the V&A

Research paper thumbnail of http://spinning-wheel.org

Research paper thumbnail of Gender, taste and material culture in Britain and North America, 1700–1830 – Edited by John Styles and Amanda Vickery

The Economic History Review, 2007

REVIEWS • 159 such as the different ways in which various gender-race pairings were treated. On t... more REVIEWS • 159 such as the different ways in which various gender-race pairings were treated. On the whole, however, Schafer has done her fellow historians an admirable service once again with her bibliography of over two hundred cases from the First District Court archive and has brought to life with rich description an understudied era in the long history of New Orleans prostitution.

Research paper thumbnail of Spinners and the Law: Regulating Yarn Standards in the English Worsted Industries, 1550–1800

Research paper thumbnail of What were Cottons for in the Early Industrial Revolution

Fashion’s Favourite, the title of Beverley Lemire’s 1991 book on the cotton trade and consumer re... more Fashion’s Favourite, the title of Beverley Lemire’s 1991 book on the cotton trade and consumer revolution in England, reminded us that in the eighteenth century cotton was a fashionable fabric. During the second half of the century, decorated cottons like sprigged muslins, printed calicoes and white tufted counterpanes established a remarkable currency as desirable fabrics for dress and furnishing at all levels in the market. They became an indispensable element of fashion. Of course we can debate exactly what ‘fashion’ means in this context. Is it fashion in the economist’s sense of regular changes in visual appearance of any type of good intended to stimulate sales? Is it fashion in the dress historian’s sense of annual or seasonal manipulation of normative appearance through clothing? Or is it fashion in the fashion pundit’s sense of those forms of selfconscious, avant-garde innovation in dress pursued by an exclusive social or cultural élite – the fashion of royal courts, the ei...

Research paper thumbnail of Fashion and Innovation in Early Modern Europe

John Styles, 'Fashion and Innovation in Early Modern Europe' in Evelyn Welch Ed., Fashion... more John Styles, 'Fashion and Innovation in Early Modern Europe' in Evelyn Welch Ed., Fashioning the Early Modern: Dress, Textiles, and Innovation in Europe, 1500-1800, (Oxford:Oxford University Press, 2017) ISBN: 9780198738176

Research paper thumbnail of Enlightened Princesses between Germany and Britain

John Styles, 'Enlightened Princesses between Germany and Britain', in Joanna Marschner, D... more John Styles, 'Enlightened Princesses between Germany and Britain', in Joanna Marschner, David Bindman and Lida Ford, eds., Enlightened Princesses: Caroline, Augusta, Charlotte, and the Shaping of the Modern World (London: Yale University Press, 2017) ISBN:9780300217100

Research paper thumbnail of Threads of Feeling': Exhibition

Research paper thumbnail of What was Cotton? Fibers, Markets and Technology in the British Industrial Revolution

Both books employ a distinction between micro-and macroinventions, identifying James Hargreaves' ... more Both books employ a distinction between micro-and macroinventions, identifying James Hargreaves' spinning jenny of 1764-6 and Richard Arkwright's water frame, patented in 1769, as key macro-inventions in cotton spinning, along with Samuel Crompton's later spinning mule of 1779 which integrated the principles of the first two machines. However, the two books provide very different approaches to explaining macro-invention. Mokyr insists that macro-inventions (in contrast to micro-inventions) are only very weakly related to economic forces, if at all. He presents macro-inventions as radical new ideas that emerge without clear precedent, but have dramatic economic consequences. 6 The roots of the key macro-inventions of the British Industrial Revolution, insists Mokyr, lay in what he calls 'the great synergy of the Enlightenment: the combination of the Baconian program in useful knowledge and the recognition that better institutions created better incentives'. 7 In other words, their origins were cultural, intellectual and institutional-they are to be found in a distinctively British combination of competitive markets and scientific research linked to practical applications. Mokyr's broad emphasis on the importance of 'useful knowledge' is unexceptionable, but in the process he appears to abandon the possibility of explaining the origins of particular macro-inventions, while sidelining evidence for pre-Enlightenment inventiveness. Robert Allen, by contrast, offers an explanation for the key macro-inventions that is narrowly economic, rooted in the theory of induced innovation. He insists that technological change is directed by the relative prices of the factors of production. Eighteenth-century Britain was, he argues, an economy characterized by high wages, but cheap capital and very cheap energy, which rendered worthwhile the high costs of developing labour-saving macro-inventions and converting them into commercially useful technologies. To apply this approach to technical innovation in textiles, Allen focuses not on Richard Arkwright's water frame, but on James Hargreaves' spinning jenny, invented in Oswaldtwistle, Lancashire in the mid-1760s, which he characterizes as 'the Industrial Revolution in miniature'. In his book and an associated article, Allen offers a heroic cliometric comparison of the jenny's potential to reduce spinning costs in Britain, France and India. 8 He concludes the jenny more than paid for itself given high British wages for hand spinning and

Research paper thumbnail of The Rise and Fall of the Spinning Jenny: Domestic Mechanisation in Eighteenth-Century Cotton Spinning

In February 1777, Imbert de St Paul, the French government’s inspector of manufactures at Nimes, ... more In February 1777, Imbert de St Paul, the French government’s inspector of manufactures at Nimes, witnessed a spinning jenny at work for the first time. An experienced member of the state industrial bureaucracy, he had already heard about the jenny, which had been introduced into France by one of his colleagues in 1771. Nevertheless, he had to confess it ‘is a very ingenious machine, though very simple, and seeing it work, we were all simply astonished we had failed to guess its secret’. Invented in England in the mid-1760s by the Lancashire weaver James Hargreaves, this simple but ingenious machine remains a familiar icon of the Industrial Revolution, its origins and its impact repeatedly interrogated in the search for explanations of Britain’s eighteenth-century economic transformation. The jenny features as a key technical breakthrough — a ‘macroinvention’ — in the two most influential recent interpretations of the Industrial Revolution: Robert Allen’s The British Industrial Revol...

Research paper thumbnail of Fibres, Fashion and Marketing: Textile Innovation in early modern Europe

Research paper thumbnail of Manufacturing, Consumption and Design In Eighteenth-Century England

Consumption and the World of Goods, 1993

Research paper thumbnail of Object in focus 14

Writing Material Culture History

Research paper thumbnail of Consumption

Research paper thumbnail of An Ocean of Textiles

The William and Mary Quarterly

Research paper thumbnail of Custom or Consumption? Plebeian Fashion in Eighteenth-Century England

Luxury in the Eighteenth Century, 2003

Research paper thumbnail of Threads of Feeling : The London Foundling Hospital’s Textile Tokens, 1740-1770

When mothers left babies at London's Foundling Hospital in the mid-eighteenth century, the H... more When mothers left babies at London's Foundling Hospital in the mid-eighteenth century, the Hospital often retained a small token as a means of identification, usually a piece of fabric. These swatches of fabric now form Britain's largest collection of everyday textiles from the ...

Research paper thumbnail of Sir John Fielding and the Problem of Criminal Investigation in Eighteenth-Century England

Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, Dec 1, 1983

Eighteenth-Century England witnessed an extraordinary transformation in the capacity to dissemina... more Eighteenth-Century England witnessed an extraordinary transformation in the capacity to disseminate information. Improvements in communications, particularly the turnpike roads and the postal service, together with the multiplication of printing presses and newspapers, underpinned what has been described as an ‘information explosion’. The changes which these developments wrought in the political and commercial life of the nation are increasingly familiar to historians. Their impact on eighteenth-century crime and policing is less so.

Research paper thumbnail of Threads of Feeling': Exhibition

Research paper thumbnail of Time Piece: working men and watches

John Styles considers whether the fashion for wearing pocket-watches flourished among working men... more John Styles considers whether the fashion for wearing pocket-watches flourished among working men in the eighteenth century because it was stylish, because they needed to know the time accurately, or for some other reason." It went ill. I kept it four years, then gave that ...

Research paper thumbnail of A New Gallery at the V&A

Research paper thumbnail of Volume 8: West Europe

Fashion Theory: The Journal of Dress, Body & Culture, 2012

Research paper thumbnail of Titus Salt and Saltaire: Industry and Virtue

The village of Saltaire, built by the industrialist Titus Salt between 1851 and 1872, lies tucked... more The village of Saltaire, built by the industrialist Titus Salt between 1851 and 1872, lies tucked in the valley of the river Aire, three miles from the centre of the city of Bradford. Its situation is a surprisingly discreet one. Neither the vast mill complex in the valley bottom, six stories high and one hundred and eighty yards long, nor the twenty-five acre model village, laid out on a rectilinear plan across the southern slopes of the valley above the mill, entirely dominate the local landscape. Their Italianate architecture is striking, sometimes monumental, yet they do not command their surroundings in the manner of Samuel Cunliffe Lister's equally massive Manningham Mill, built in the 1870s, which rears up on the Bradford skyline from the rooftops of row above row of terraced houses. At Saltaire the city seems far away.

Research paper thumbnail of Threads of Feeling: The London Foundling Hospital’s Textile Tokens, 1740-1770 (London, The Foundling Museum, 2010)

When mothers left babies at London’s Foundling Hospital in the mid-eighteenth century, the Hospit... more When mothers left babies at London’s Foundling Hospital in the mid-eighteenth century, the Hospital often retained a small token as a means of identification, usually a piece of fabric. These swatches of fabric now form Britain’s largest collection of everyday textiles from the eighteenth century. They include the whole range of fabrics worn by ordinary women, along with ribbons, embroidery and even some baby clothes. Beautiful and poignant, each scrap of material reflects the lives of an infant child and its absent parent. The enthralling stories the fabrics tell about textiles, fashion, women’s skills, infant clothing and maternal emotion are the material of Threads of Feeling.

Research paper thumbnail of The Dress of the People: Everyday Fashion in Eighteenth-Century England (London, Yale University Press, 2007)

Material things transformed the lives of ordinary English men and women between the restoration o... more Material things transformed the lives of ordinary English men and women between the restoration of Charles II in 1660 and the Great Reform Act of 1832. Tea and sugar, the fruits of British mercantile and colonial expansion, transformed their diets. Pendulum clocks and Staffordshire pottery, the products of British manufacturing ingenuity, enriched their homes. But it was in their clothes that ordinary people enjoyed the greatest transformation in their material lives. In calico gowns and muslin neckerchiefs, in wigs and silver-plated shoe buckles they flaunted the fruits of the nation’s commercial prosperity. The Dress of the People retrieves the unknown story of ordinary consumers in eighteenth-century England. It tells us what they wore, how they acquired it and what they and their social superiors thought about it.

Ownership of new fabrics and new fashions was not confined to the rich. It extended far down the social scale to the small farmers, day labourers, and petty tradespeople who formed a majority of the population. The Dress of the People uses unfamiliar kinds of evidence – from descriptions of stolen clothes in the records of criminal trials to small pieces of fabric left at the London Foundling Hospital by impoverished mothers who abandoned their babies – to show that humble men and women could be beneficiaries of the new commercial society arising in eighteenth-century England. They were not just its victims. Their everyday fashion was rooted in a world of popular custom, of fairs and holidays, of parish feasts and harvest homes. Popular custom, often portrayed as a conservative force hostile to commercial innovation, emerges as the midwife of popular consumerism.

Research paper thumbnail of Gender, Taste and Material Culture in Britain and North America, 1700-1830 (with Amanda Vickery, New Haven, Yale University Press, 2006)

Between 1700 and 1830, men and women in the English-speaking territories framing the Atlantic gai... more Between 1700 and 1830, men and women in the English-speaking territories framing the Atlantic gained unprecedented access to material things. The British Atlantic was an empire of goods, held together not just by political authority and a common language, but by a shared material culture nourished by constant flows of commodities. Diets expanded to include exotic luxuries such as tea and sugar, the fruits of mercantile and colonial expansion. Homes were furnished with novel goods, like clocks and earthenware teapots, the products of British industrial ingenuity. This groundbreaking book compares these developments in Britain and North America, bringing together a multi-disciplinary group of scholars to consider basic questions about women, men, and objects in these regions. In asking who did the shopping, how things were used, and why they became the subject of political dispute, the essays show the profound significance of everyday objects in the eighteenth-century Atlantic world.

Research paper thumbnail of Design and the Decorative Arts: Victorian Britain 1837-1901 (with Michael Snodin, London, V&A Publications, 2004)

This volume tells the story of design and the decorative arts in Britain during the reign of Quee... more This volume tells the story of design and the decorative arts in Britain during the reign of Queen Victoria. With an empire that embraced a fifth of the earth's land surface and a quarter of its people, Britain was the workshop of the world. London was rivalled only by Paris as a focus for international interest in design and the decorative arts and British products could be found across the globe, from museums and palaces to the living rooms of ordinary people. Victorian self-confidence seemed boundless, but optimism about the human capacity to transform the material world was matched by a spiritual disquiet that found powerful expression in design and the decorative arts. Victorians despaired at the endless production of mass produced material goods as well as the social conditions in which they were produced. Yet in their efforts to confront these problems, they produced some the masterpieces of Victorian design. Lavishly illustrated and unmatched in its coverage, this book explores design and the decorative arts from a number of points of view. It assesses their place in the wider history of Victorian Britain. It examines style, the question of how things looked. It asks who led taste; who decided what was to be considered beautiful, fashionable and desirable. It looks at how fashionable things – from houses to clothing – were used. It asks what was new, examining new products and innovations in the ways they were made. Together, the chapters provide a fascinating picture of design and the decorative arts in Victorian Britain.

Research paper thumbnail of Design and the Decorative Arts: Georgian Britain 1714-1837 (with Michael Snodin, London, V&A Publications, 2004)

The word Georgian is more than just a label for this period in British history – it has come to s... more The word Georgian is more than just a label for this period in British history – it has come to signify the design and decorative arts of an era regarded by many as the pinnacle of elegance and refinement. This reputation enjoyed by designers like Thomas Chippendale, Robert Adam and Thomas Sheraton was hard won however. The work of British designers and craftspeople earned international acclaim only gradually during the Georgian years. This growing international respect went hand-in-hand with Britain's rise to prominence as a world power and the transformations in production methods associated with the Industrial Revolution. Lavishly illustrated and unmatched in its coverage, this book explores design and the decorative arts from a number of points of view. It assesses their place in the wider history of Georgian Britain. It examines style, the question of how things looked. It asks who led taste; who decided what was to be considered beautiful, fashionable and desirable. It looks at how fashionable things – from houses to clothing – were used. It asks what was new, examining new products and innovations in the ways they were made. Together, the chapters provide a fascinating picture of design and the decorative arts in Georgian Britain.

Research paper thumbnail of Design and the Decorative Arts: Tudor and Stuart Britain 1500-1714 (with Michael Snodin, London, V&A Publications, 2004)

This volume tells the story of design and the decorative arts in Britain from the end of the Midd... more This volume tells the story of design and the decorative arts in Britain from the end of the Middle Ages to the beginning of the eighteenth century. From the focus of international design lying in other European centres, this book follows the path of Britain becoming Europe’s most successful commercial economy. British design and decorative art were no longer provincial and British designers and craftspeople began to succeed their most eminent European rivals. Lavishly illustrated and unmatched in its coverage, this book explores design and the decorative arts through the examining of the contemporary style, taste and vogue. It provides a unique, well-rounded study on design and the decorative arts in Tudor and Stewart Britain.

Research paper thumbnail of The Crime Wave: Recent Writing on Crime and Criminal Justice in Eighteenth-Century England

Journal of British Studies, Jan 1, 1986

One of the most exciting and influential areas of research in eigh-teenth-century history over th... more One of the most exciting and influential areas of research in eigh-teenth-century history over the last fifteen years has been the study of crime and the criminal law. It is the purpose of this essay to map the subject for the interested nonspecialist: to ask why historians have ...

Research paper thumbnail of The Three Piece Suit and Modern Masculinity: England 1550–1850 by David Kuchta

Fashion Theory: The Journal of Dress, Body & Culture, 2005

Research paper thumbnail of Dress in History: Reflections on a Contested Terrain

Fashion Theory: The Journal of Dress, Body & Culture, 1998

The title of the conference that gave rise to this collection of articles was “Dress in History.”... more The title of the conference that gave rise to this collection of articles was “Dress in History.” In the course of the conference a great deal was said about dress, but rather less about history. These concluding comments are concerned with the difficulties, conceptual and method- ...

Research paper thumbnail of Criminal Records

The Historical Journal, 1977

Albion's Fatal Tree: crime and society in eighteenth century England [AFT]. Edited by Dougla... more Albion's Fatal Tree: crime and society in eighteenth century England [AFT]. Edited by Douglas Hay, Peter Linebaugh and EP Thompson. London: Allen Lane, 1975. Pp. 352. £7.50 cloth, £3.25 paper. Whigs and Hunters: the origin of the Black Act [ WH]. By EP Thompson. London: ...

Research paper thumbnail of A New Gallery at the V & A

History Workshop Journal, 1995

Although it is not always clear to the visitor, the Victoria and Albert Museum has two principal ... more Although it is not always clear to the visitor, the Victoria and Albert Museum has two principal types of galleries: Art and Design galleries and Materials and Techniques galleries. Currently the Museum's Art and Design Galleries dealing with Britain in the period 1660 to 1760 are ...

Research paper thumbnail of Towards a History of Parliamentary Legislation, 1660­­1800

Parliamentary History, Jan 1, 2008

(Oxford, 1991), and P. DG Thomas, The House of Commons in the Eighteenth Century (Oxford, 1971). ... more (Oxford, 1991), and P. DG Thomas, The House of Commons in the Eighteenth Century (Oxford, 1971). The conmbution of legal historians has also been significant, eg, W. Holdsworth, A Hisfory OfEnglish Law (17 vols., 1922-72). ... We believe that a concerted ...

Research paper thumbnail of ‘Spinners and the Law: Regulating Yarn Standards in the English Worsted Industries, 1550-1800,’ Textile History, 44 (2013), 145-170. FREE DOWNLOAD via maneyonline.com link - click here.

To download the full article, click on the article title above and go to the link to maneyonline,... more To download the full article, click on the article title above and go to the link to maneyonline, where a pdf is available on Open Access. Abstract: "The Worsted Acts, passed between 1777 and 1791, established semi-official industrial police forces in nearly a third of the counties of England, charged with detecting and prosecuting fraudulent reeling of worsted yarn by hand spinners. The Acts have been interpreted as the response of late eighteenth-century employers to new and growing problems of labour discipline associated with the putting-out system. But frauds by spinners in reeling yarn were not new. They had characterised the worsted industry since its rapid expansion began at the end of the sixteenth century. Over the subsequent two centuries, employers addressed the problem repeatedly. How they tackled it depended crucially on the way the different regional worsted industries were organised and on dramatic changes in the willingness and capacity of the state to regulate manufacturing. The Worsted Acts emerge as the product of a distinctive eighteenth-century approach to industrial regulation, reactive and particularistic, but bureaucratically innovative. "

Research paper thumbnail of ‘Indian Cottons and European Fashion, 1400-1800,’ in Glenn Adamson, Giorgio Riello and Sarah Teasley (eds), Global Design History (London, Routledge, 2011), 37-46.

Research paper thumbnail of ‘Patchwork on the Page,’ in Sue Prichard (ed.), Quilts (London, V&A Publications, 2010), 49-50.

Research paper thumbnail of ‘Age of Money,’ in David Dimbleby (ed.), Seven Ages of Britain (London, Hodder and Stoughton, 2010), 151-182.

Research paper thumbnail of ‘What were Cottons for in the Industrial Revolution?’ in Giorgio Riello and Prasannan Parthasarathi (eds), The Spinning World: A Global History of Cotton Textiles, 1200-1850 (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2009), 307-326, republished in India in 2012 by Primus Books, Delhi.

Research paper thumbnail of ‘Picturing Domesticity: The Cottage Genre in Late-Eighteenth Century Britain,’ in Jeremy Aynsley and Charlotte Grant (eds), Imagined Interiors: Representations of the Domestic Interior from the Renaissance to the Present (London, V&A Publications, 2006), 154-5.

Research paper thumbnail of ‘An Essential Guide to British Painting: Hogarth,’ in Gilane Tawadros (ed.), Changing States: Contemporary Art and Ideas in an Era of Globalization (London, Institute of International Visual Arts, 2004), 72-7.