Dressing up: a history of fancy dress in Britain

Abstract

Trades Unions in an attempt to afford themselves some protection. The book is peppered with little gems of information, and I read with particular interest that the great architect brothers, Robert and John Adam, were shareholders in the well-known Carron Iron Company of Falkirk. The company had brought workers from Coalbrookdale, Shropshire, to share their expertise in decorative cast iron. The Adam brothers being shareholders makes perfect sense when one considers the influence they had over the development of the styles and commissions in the growing number of stylish houses in Scotland. So many fireplaces were required, not to mention door furniture! In this book, Nenadic’s hypothesis is scrutinized and she concludes that, as the nineteenth century turned into the twentieth, traditional skills of the craftworkers were still thriving alongside factory production, as was the case in England and France. She had also detected similar patterns in Europe and Asia, not least as a growing tourism market kept many craftworkers in business.