Towards a bourgeois public sphere of consumption: the language of consumption as found in auction advertisements in late eighteenth-century Paris (1760–1778)

ABSTRACTThis article revisits the world of goods of late eighteenth-century Parisian households through the lens of auction advertisements which offer a unique and challenging view on early-modern material culture and consumption. The advertisements' relative disadvantages are outweighed by the presence of additional layers of information such as the appearance of descriptive adjectives that associate these objects with broader concepts of value. In order to explore the potential of these sources for re-examining the question whether a ‘bourgeois public sphere of consumption' guided by ‘notions of civic equality' was arising in eighteenth-century France, this case study has looked at the evolution of Parisian auction advertisements between 1760 and 1778, focusing on three elements: the objects featured in the advertisements, the social distribution of auctioned estates and the descriptions given to the advertised goods as they often convey sensibilities other than those expressed by inventories. The findings reveal the presence of a hybrid consumer model, in which bourgeois and aristocratic households displayed increasingly converging consumer habits, an evolution that was, moreover, accompanied by an advertising discourse that gradually shifted from being based on elite-based, distinction-promulgating aesthetic values to emphasising more bourgeois and middling sorts’ sets of consumer values of quality-consciousness and prudence.KEYWORDS: Material cultureconsumer revolutionauctionsadvertisingenlightenmentFrance AcknowledgementsThe author thanks Natacha Coquery, the guest editors of this special issue and the anonymous peer reviewers for reading and commenting on earlier drafts of this paper.Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s ).Notes1 Blondé and Ryckbosch, “Material Cultures,” 184.2 McKendrick, Brewer, and Plumb, The Birth of a Consumer Society, 19–22 and 31.3 Blondé and Ryckbosch, “Material Cultures,” 183.4 Roche, “Vingt ans après,” 27.5 See for a recent and nuanced reappraisal of the works of Daniel Roche: Kwass, The Consumer Revolution, 6–7 and 105.6 Roche, People of Paris, 128.7 Roche, History of Everyday Things, 2–5.8 See for a comprehensive overview of the existing literature on the political consequences of the early-modern consumer revolution: Kwass, The Consumer Revolution, chapter 7.9 Pardaillhé-Galabrun, Naissance de l’intime; Roche, Histoire des choses banales; Coquery, Tenir boutique.10 Blondé and De Laet, “New and Old Luxuries,” 51.11 De Munck and Lyna, “Locating and Dislocating Value,” 9. For a more elaborate discussion and overview of the historiography of the concept of ‘regimes of value’ originating in the work of Arjun Appadurai see: Murakami, “Materiality, Regimes of Value,” 60–1.12 The method of distant reading applied in this study consisted of a quantitative content analysis, counting the occurrences of objects and their material finishes that have been identified by existing scholarship as having a major importance within French eighteenth-century material culture through keyword searches throughout the digital text transcriptions of the printed sources.13 Jourdan, Decrusy, and Isambert, Recueil général des anciennes lois françaises, vol. 26, 42–3.14 Ibid.15 Coquery, “Luxury Goods Beyond Boundaries,” 289; Affiches, 3 Jan. 1752, s.p.16 Comparable dynamics have been described for pre-1750 English middling and lower status rural household sales: Pennell, “All but the Kitchen Sink,” 40–2.17 De Munck and Lyna, “Locating and Dislocating Value,” 8–12.18 Fontaine, “The Circulation of Luxury,” 94.19 Van Damme and Vermoesen, “Second-Hand Consumption as a Way of Life,” 276–8.20 See for the original theoretical development of the concept of ‘signifier’: de Saussure, “Cours de linguistique générale,” 98–100.21 Krampl, “La presse d’annonces parisienne,” 13.22 Doyle, Officers, Nobles and Revolutionaries, 57–62.23 Roche, La Culture des apparences, 77–78.24 Coste, Les Bourgeoisies en France, 1.25 Vardi, “The Abolition of the Guilds,” 705.26 Roche, People of Paris, 127–59.27 Goodman and Norberg, “Introduction,” 1–2.28 The idea of distinct consumption habits charachterizing these two social groups dates back to contemporary accounts contrasting the aristocratic expenditures with the ostentatious underconsumption of the bourgeoisie: Roche, History of Everyday Things.29 The differentiation between more function or display-oriented pieces of furniture has been made in: Roche, People of Paris, 149–50.30 In the category of multi-person settees are included the couches described as canapé, sopha or ottomane. Whereas the first two terms are synonyms for the same type of couch, the first descriptor having Latin etymological origins and the second Arabic, the ottoman was distinguished by the rounded forms of their backs and armrests: Verlet, Les Meubles français du 18e siècle, 80.31 Féraud, Dictionaire critique, vol. 1, 569.32 Ross, “Linguistic Class-Indicators in Present-Day English,” 120.33 Féraud, Dictionnaire critique, vol. 1, 597; Roche, People of Paris, 132.34 Blondé and Van Damme, “Fashioning Old and New,” 1–2.35 This type of mohair velvet was invented by emigrant Huguenots in the late seventeenth century, but in 1754 a manufacturer of Amiens launched an alternative production centre: Molitor, “Les industries d'Amiens,” 450.36 Roche, People of Paris, 149–50.37 The importance of desks in bourgeois households constructed within advertising discourse reflects not merely semantic conventions, as design-related specificities codified the difference between desks and writing desks at the time: Dictionnaire de l’Academie Française, vol. 2, 552. Richard Flamein’s research on the social ascension of the Norman banker family of Le Couteulx throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries reveals, moreover, the symbolic importance of desks in the bourgeois material universe, as offices centred around desks despite their functionality were prestigious rooms within the mansion, overlooking the inner courtyard and filled with family portraits and busts contributing to the image of the family as an entrepreneurial dynasty: Flamein, “Au coeur des choses,” 107 and 115.38 Goodman, “The Secrétaire,” 188; Goodman, “Furnishing Discourses,” 76.39 Coutin, L’art d’habiter, 112.40 On moire and the failure of its production in France: Ballon, “L’affaire de la calandre,” 37; on cotton cloth and the French manufactories founded in the 1760s in Jouy and Orange: Hébert, Almanach parisien, 232–3; Raveux, “Jean-Rodolphe Wetter, manufacturier d’indiennes.”41 Henderson, “The Anglo-French Commercial Treaty of 1786,” 106.42 De Vries, “Luxury in the Dutch Golden Age,” 41–3.43 Coutin, L’art d’habiter, 112. On the royal ssociations of certain tapestry manufactures: Brosens, “The Organisation of Seventeenth-Century Tapestry Production,” 264–5.44 Coutin, L’art d’habiter, 248.45 De Vries, “Luxury in the Dutch Golden Age,” 52; Styles, “Product Innovation,” 125–6.46 Coquery, “The Language of Succes,” 72 and 85.47 Voth, “Time and Work,” 43–4.48 McKendrick, Brewer, and Plumb, The Birth of a Consumer Society, 100.49 Dauterman, Sèvres Porcelain, 15–20; Blondé, “Conflicting Consumption Models?,” 71.50 Smith, Consumption and the Making of Respectability, 3; Fennetaux, “Toying with Novelty,” 24–6.51 Berg and Eger, “The Rise and Fall of the Luxury Debates,” 9.52 Gregorietti, “The History of Jewelry Design,” consulted on 4 January 2022.53 Fontaine, “The Circulation of Luxury Goods,” 94–5.54 Fennetaux, “Toying with Novelty,” 24–6.55 Sewell, “Connecting Capitalism,” 40.56 Ibid., 43.57 Ibid.58 Jennings, “The Debate about Luxury,” 82 and 89.59 Kwass, “Ordering the World of Goods,” 108.60 Paige, “La France galante,” 254.61 Savage, “Status, Lifestyle and Taste,” 559.62 Holden, “The Evolution of Desire,” s.p.63 Blondé and Stobart, “Aesthetics, Language and the Marketing,” 5.64 Coquery, Tenir boutique, 273–4.65 Lyna and Van Damme, “A Strategy of Seduction?,” 114.66 Lyna, “Words of Value?,” 64–6.67 Blondé and Van Damme, “Fashioning Old and New,” 4.68 The phrase ‘almost new’ occurred six times in the 1760 advertisements and five times in those of 1778.69 Coquery, “The Social Circulation,” 17.70 Stobart and Van Damme, “Introduction,” 7.71 Kwass, The Consumer Revolution, 105–9.72 Bond, The Writing Public, 51.73 Russo, Styles of Enlightenment, 2–3.74 Féraud, Dictionaire critique, i. 256; Berg, Luxury and Pleasure, 6.75 DeJean, The Age of Comfort, 10.76 Pennell, “All but the Kitchen Sink,” 48–9; Van Damme and Vermoesen, “Second-Hand Consumption,” 291.77 Stobart, “In and Out of Fashion?,” 138.78 Lyna and Van Damme, “A Strategy of Seduction?,” 112.79 Wall, “The English Auction,” 20–1. On the middle-class habit observed in Britain and Sweden to use auctions 'as a means to acquire furniture from people of higher social rank': Murhem, e.a. “Underevaluation in probate inventory values”, 100.80 Blondé and Stobart, “Aesthetics, Language and the Marketing,” 7.81 Coquery, L’hôtel, 187–209.82 Nenadic, “Middle-Rank Consumers and Domestic Culture,” 132–3.83 Stobart, “Clothes, Cabinets and Carriages,” 233.84 Sewell, “Connecting Capitalism.”85 Féraud, Dictionaire critique, vol. 1, 286.86 Smith, Consumption and the Making of Respectability, 224.87 De Smet, “Marketing the French.”88 Kwass, The Consumer Revolution, 132.89 Coquery, “The Language of Succes,” 85.90 Lemire, “Consumerism”; Fontaine, Alternative Exchanges; Stobart and Van Damme, Modernity and the Second-Hand Trade; Blondé and Van Damme, Fashioning Old and New; Fennetaux, Junqua, and Vasset, The Afterlife of Things.91 We have argued elsewhere in favour of a discursive approach to the study of politics of consumption in the modern age: De Smet, Van Damme, and Beyen, “The Politics of Consumption.”92 A similar plea to ‘understand this period mainly on its own terms … according to cultural value schemes, conventions and norms that are different to our own’ is made in: Van Damme, “Reinterpreting Shopping in the Enlightenment,” 197 and 201.93 See also: Trentmann, Empire of Things.Additional informationFundingThis work was supported by Fonds Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek [FWO202962]; SofinaBoël Fund for Education and Talent [V426520N]; University Research Fund (BOF) [Fashioning ‘old and new’].Notes on contributorsCharris De SmetCharris De Smet is a PhD Candidate at the Centre for Urban History and the Centre for Political History at the University of Antwerp enrolled in a joint PhD with the Université Lumière Lyon 2. For her undergraduate project, she has studied the transformations of the revolutionary auction market in Paris during the Terror from a political perspective. Her current research focuses on French parliamentary discourses about consumption between 1789 and 1851.