Plan and control: Design and the competitive spirit in early and mid-eighteenth-century England

Journal of Design History

Volumn 12, Issue 3, 1999, Pages 187-216

  Craske, Matthew ^a  

^a OXFORD BROOKES UNIVERSITY   (United Kingdom)

Author keywords

Design; Economy; Eighteenth century England; Manufacture; Trade

Indexed keywords

EID: 0006234026     PISSN: 09524649     EISSN: 17417279     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1093/jdh/12.3.187     Document Type: Conference Paper

References (96)

1. A. Forty, Objects of Desire: Design and Society 1750-1980, London, 1986, Introduction.
2. The most important texts here are N. McKendrick, J. Brewer & J. H. Plumb, The Birth of a Consumer Society, London, 1982
3. and J. Brewer & R. Porter (eds.), Consumption and the World of Goods in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries, London, 1993.
4. John Styles has been most associated with the creation of this revisionist position. I am grateful to him for allowing me to view a draft of his paper 'Product innovation in early modern London'.
5. B. Fine & E. Leopold, The World of Consumption, London, 1994, p. 63.
6. This impression is reinforced by Jules Lubbock in his The Tyranny of Taste: The Politics of Architecture and Design in Britain, London, 1995.
7. It can also be seen in E. Robinson, 'Eighteenth century commerce and fashion: Matthew Boulton's marketing techniques', Economic History Review, vol. 16 (1963-4), pp. 39-60
8. and E. Robinson, 'Matthew Boulton and Josiah Wedgwood, apostles of fashion', Business History, vol. 28 (1986), pp. 98-114.
9. L. Colley, Britons: Forging the Nation 1707-1837, London, 1992;
10. G. Newman, The Rise of English Nationalism: A Cultural History 1740-1830, London, 1987.
11. A useful introduction to the rise of this projecting spirit can be found in D. Armitage, 'The projecting age: William Paterson and the Bank of England', History Today, vol. 44, 5 June 1994.
12. A representative literature is: E. Tonge, The New Designs of the Papists Detected, London, 1671;
13. W. Smith, News from Ireland: Touching the Damnable Designs of the Papists in that Kingdom to Forge a Sham Plot upon the Presbyterians, London, 1682;
14. R. Wilkins, A Chain of Facts in the Reign of King James the Second, with a Particular Account of his Design to Establish a Popish Successor to the Throne, London, 1741;
15. A. Harbenelf, The Grand Designs of the Papists, London, 1740;
16. Z. Cradock, The Great End and Design of Christianity, London, 1740.
17. C. Saumarez Smith, 'Eighteenth century man', Designer, March 1987, pp. 19-22.
18. The English public were first alerted to the strong advantage given to French trade by Louis XIV's policies of encouragement by Joshua Gee in his once authoritative The Trade and Navigation of Great Britain, London, 1729.
19. A very interesting and unknown commentary on the suitability of the French model for emulation occurs in a review of John Gwynn's Essay on Design printed in the Monthly Review for June 1749, pp. 89-91 and 162-71.
20. De Lairesse's book appears to have run to a number of editions, although examples of all editions do not survive. The edition of 1739 describes itself as the third edition. In 1738 a translation of another of Lairesses's manuals appeared in print under the title, The Art of Painting, Methodically Demonstrated, trans. J. F. Fritsch, 2 vols.
21. The first eighteenth-century English translation of Debreuil's text was published by Ephraim Chambers in 1726.
22. An anonymous work entitled The Arts of Painting and Architecture, Dublin, 1768 is clearly plagiarized from De Lairesse.
23. Gywnn, An Essay on Design, pp. 32-43.
24. One innovation of such 'made easy' publishing was books on anatomy for designers in which only those aspects of anatomy strictly necessary for painting were reviewed. This allowed those interested in design not to have to go through all the complexities of learning medical terminology. The first example of this type of book was An Anatomy Improv'd and Illustrated with Regard for Uses in Designing, Charles Eward & John Senex, London, 1723.
25. Probably the finest example of this genre is John Brisbane's The Anatomy of Painting: A Short View of Picturesque Anatomy, London, 1769. This book has a very interesting text concerning design and fine illustrations by Thomas Caldwell.
26. John Hoofnaile and Joshua Kirby seem to have made much of their business from 'made easy' books on perspective. Hoofnaile produced The Method of Drawing in Perspective Made Easy in 1732 and The Art of Drawing in Perspective in 1755 and 1757.
27. Kirby was undoubtedly the greatest figure concerned in the teaching of perspective to eighteenth-century designers. He delivered three lectures at the St Martin's Lane School which launched him to fame. He was, at this stage, drawing master to Frederick, Prince of Wales. Kirby's Dr Brook Taylor's Method of Perspective Made Easy, which was first published in 1754, was the most popular perspective manual of the eighteenth century and ran to many editions. Kirby received high praise even from the heirs of Dr Brook Taylor whose works he popularized.
28. In the introduction to Contemplatio Philosophica: A Posthumous Work of the Late Brook Taylor, London 1793, Taylor's grandson, Sir William Young, announced that Kirby's texts had 'been the vade mecum of artists whereas the original hath been chiefly confined to the closet of mathematics'.
29. J. Highmore, The Practice of Perspective: On the Principles of Dr Brook Taylor, in a Series of Examples Written Many Years Since But Now First Published, London, 1763. Only one copy of this book survives which is deposited in Cambridge University Library.
30. A plethora of 'made easy' design texts in the mid-eighteenth century were produced to allow builders to enter the business of architecture. A typical text is B. & T. Langley's The Builder's Jewel which promised to open architectural design to those of the 'meanest capacity for drawing'. This book was produced in cheap pamphlet form presumably to cater for readers of modest income.
31. This device as promoted by Joshua Kirby in a book entitled The Description and Use of a New Instrument called an Architonic Sector. By which any part of Architecture may be Drawn with Facility and Exactness, London, 1767.
32. Pinchbeck's advertisement can be found in the London Daily Post of 28 June 1738. Pinchbeck, a Toyman, was somewhat of a specialist in gimmick inventions which promised quick, cheap and easy solutions. He advertised in the Daily Post of 28 November 1732 that he had discovered 'the secret of a new invented metal which looks like gold' which he was prepared to divulge at a price.
33. Halfpenny recommended Thomas Heath, Mathematical Instrument Maker at the Hercules and Globe, Strand.
34. Cheselden in the Osteographia claims that: 'This work is executed in a Camera Obscura contrived on purpose by the author which renders it more exact and complete than anything of the kind whatsoever, one view of such prints showing more than the fullest and best description can possibly do., The Preface of Cheselden's The Anatomy of the Human Body (XIII edition, London, 1792) includes a declaration that all the plates were drawn by the author with the aid of a camera obscura. This edition includes a print, different from that in the Osteographia, of the surgeon drawing with such a device. This and the other forty plates made from drawings produced from a camera obscura are engraved by G. Vandergucht.
35. R. Campbell, The London Tradesman, London, 1747.
36. See the article on the trade of 'The timber-merchant', pp. 167-9.
37. This trade card is preserved in the collection of the British Museum, Heal 28.121.
38. Particularly in the 1750s Cheere began to spread his market towards gentry families with London houses in the proximity of his Westminster shop. He supplied sculpture to neighbours from aspirant gentry backgrounds such as the Durells of Jersey and the Newtons of Fifehead Magdelene. Cheere had strong family links in the legal profession which gave him access to a great number of 'new rich' professional lawyers, men such as Thomas Borrett and George Cooke of the Court of Common Pleas. Cheere's onetime assistant Robert Taylor planned his business on similar lines, serving the City of London's professional and business community with sculpture of opulent appearance.
39. This book is preserved in the prints and drawings collections of the Victoria and Albert Museum, No. D. 715-1887.
40. This was the case in garden architecture as well as interior design. See, for instance, W. & J. Halfpenny, The Country Gentleman's Pocket Companion and Builder's Assistant, Containing Designs in the Augustine, Gothick and Chinese Taste, London, 1753.
41. Hayman's The Surrender of Montreal to General Amhurst was unveiled in 1761 and his Lord Clive Receiving the Homage of the Nabob in the following year. They were exhibited in conjunction with temporary architectural props symbolic of imperial dominion such as an obelisk, surrounded by chained figures representing the four quarters of the globe.
42. Far the best account of changing attitudes to pleasure in this period may be found in Roy Porter's introductory chapters of R. Porter (ed.), Pleasure in the Eighteenth Century, London, 1996.
43. See in particular the Spectator, 409, 19 June 1712; 411, 21 June 1712; 412, 23 June 1713.
44. For Addison on cheerfulness, see the Spectator, 17 May 1712 and 24 May 1712.
45. An interesting account of the value systems of Latitudinarian theology in the mid-eighteenth century is M. C. Battestin, The Moral Basis of Fielding's Art, Connecticut, 1975. In particular, see the debate on the providence of God in Chapter IV, 'Vanity, fortune and the classical ideal'.
46. Typical positions concerning the threat of imports and fashions are aired in Bishop Berkeley's The Querist, London, 1735. Here Berkeley asks the public questions such as: 'Whether the imitating of those neighbours in our fashions, to which be bear no likeness in our circumstances, be not one cause of the distress of our nation?' and 'Whether women of fashion ought not to be declared a public enemy?' (a question based on the belief that women loved foreign imported fabrics and brought about most losses to the balance of trade).
47. Defoe, Vol. I, p. 318.
48. I base these observations on thorough study of the collection of trade cards in the John Johnson collection of printed ephemera in the Bodlean Library, Oxford. A good selection of cards can be seen in Ambrose Heal's London Tradesman's Cards of the XVIII Century, London, 1924.
49. Defoe, Vol. II, pp. 162-3.
50. Abbé Le Blanc, Letters on the English and French Nations, London, 1747. Letter LX entitled 'Observations on the Complaints against Luxury in England; and its Advantages and Disadvantages to a State'. This is an infrequently cited but important account of the English luxury debate in the 1730s.
51. These competitions were announced in the Public Advertiser of 17 April 1756.
52. A promotion of Lord Houth's marble quarries appears in the London Daily Post of 8 December 1738 which declared that Irish marble appeared 'finely variegated' and in a variety of 'different colours' which 'bears a finer polish and is harder than any that comes from Italy and Egypt'.
53. See in particular the 19 October and 26 November 1711 editions of the Spectator.
54. For the practical application of Petty's theories in the political administration of Walpole's England, see Michael Jubb's article 'Economic policy and economic development' in J. Black (ed.), Britain in the Age of Walpole, London, 1984, pp. 121-42.
55. The starkest statement of this position occurs in J. Gee's The Trade and Navigation of Great Britain, 1729. Here Gee simply lists the quantity and type of products that Britain imports from countries against the list of exports. His point is made by the very much longer lists of imports than exports. This was probably a true statement of affairs in the late 1720s.
56. F. Moore of Cheapside, The Contrast or A Comparison between our Woollen, Linen, and Silk, Manufactures; Showing the Utility of Each, Both in a National and Commercial View, London, 1782, p. 21.
57. The 'balance of trade' argument was applied to the polite arts even by painters, sculptors and architects. It can be found in a manifesto published by an association of artists led by Henry Cheere under the title, The Plan of an Academy for Better Encouragement of Painting, Sculpture, Architecture and the Arts of Design in General, London, 1755. The group lament: 'The prodigious sums England has laid out at foreign markets for painting is but a trifle compared to the more prodigious sums expended by English travellers for the bare sight of such things as they are despaired of seeing at home.'
58. John Brisbane in his Anatomy of Painting seems to capture this sense of martial aggression when he claims that the function of design was to improve the calibre of the 'noble youth' and 'strengthen the body and mind either for war or for peace'.
59. A very interesting example of this tendency is Batty Langley's Gothic Architecture Improved by Rules and Proportions in Many Grand Designs, London, 1747. This unjustifiably mocked work shows clearly the tendency in English culture to value that which was considered ordered. Gothic architecture is made worthy of serious observation by being shown to be a system of order.
60. For a typical statement of Shaftesburyite attitudes to order and harmony in design, see Anon., An Essay on Design and Beauty, Edinburgh, 1734. This includes verse tributes to the order of nature such as: The love of order, sure from nature springs, A taste adapted to the state of things. Nature the power of harmony displays And Truth and Harmony shine through all her ways.
61. The most cogent statement of this position occurs in the review of Gwynn's Essay on Design printed in the Monthly Review for June 1749, in particular p. 85.
62. The Monthly Review of 1749, for instance, complained of Le Blanc: 'Our Neighbours have spoken of us contemptuously without reserve and the few Englishmen who have indisputably excelled, were rewarded with honest and impartial approbation from their own countrymen' (p. 85).
63. At the root of Le Blanc's criticisms is the distinction between the mechanic and polite arts, the latter having the higher social status. As would appear from Peter Shaw's notes to the translation of Boerhaave's Elementa Chemiae (A New Method of Chemistry, London, 1741, Vol. 1, p. 178), drawing which centred upon the accurate rendition of 'right angles and circles' could be ranked among the 'mechanical arts'.
64. Little is known of Carwithan. He is probably the 'Mr Carwardine' who exhibited at the Incorporated Society of Artists annual exhibitions in the mid-1760s. The drawing of grotesque and mutated heads had, since the time of Leonardo Da Vinci, been associated with the exercise of capricious fancy.
65. Malcolm Baker ('Sculpture' in Rococo, Art and Design in Hogarth's England, London, 1984, pp. 277-309) makes the valid point that Robert Taylor's extravagance of design exceeded all other sculptors of the day.
66. The tensions which emerged between the aesthetics of variety and those of plainness and simplicity in English design of the 1750s were highly complex. Attempts to incorporate the two values in an aesthetic dictum can be found in Hogarth's Analysis of Beauty (1753), a text prominently dedicated to the virtues of 'variety'. In particular, see Chapter III, 'Uniformity, regularity or symmetry' and the painter's commentaries on the antique topos of concordia discourse.
67. Whilst the architectural profession in early and mid-eighteenth-century England did provide employment for a few foreign architectural practitioners, Leoni being perhaps the most successful of them, the great majority of the notable practitioners were of English or Scottish birth. This contrasts strongly with, for instance, the sculpture trade where the majority of high-profile shops were run by men of foreign birth until the 1760s.
68. A. Chalmers, The General Biographical Dictionary, London, 1812, Vol. XXXI, p. 209.
69. See article on Boulton in ibid., Vol. 6, pp. 215-17.
70. There is a huge literature concerning the export and import of woollen products and raw wool. Anon., The Naked Truth, or the Wool Trade in England, London, 1713;
71. Anon., Remarks on English Woollen Manufacturing, Dublin, 1730;
72. S. Smith, The Golden Fleece, London, 1737;
73. J. London, Some Considerations on the Importance of Woollen Manufacture, London, 1740;
74. Anon., An Essay on the Improvement of Woollen Manufacture, London, 1741;
75. Mr D...., Considerations on the Woollen and other Manufactures intended to supplement Mr Gee's Discourse on Trade, London, 1751.
76. Quote from the Public Advertiser for 17 April 1756.
77. J. Rouquet, The Present State of the Arts in England, Chapter XIII, 'Of silk manufacture', p. 71.
78. Wallpaper production is, perhaps, the definitive field in which to chart the closure of the 'design deficit'. In the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, the English market was heavily dominated by French and Eastern products. The appearance in the trade of individuals such as John Baptiste Jackson (1701-7), who learned to draw and engrave in Paris and Venice, led to an extraordinary improvement in the quality of English production. This, combined with important technical innovations, led by the 1760s, to the English becoming strong exporters of such papers.
79. In 1764, a typical year, the Society of Arts, Manufacture and Commerce awarded its marble statuary prize to Nicholas Read, a former assistant of Roubiliac who was one of the most successful mature sculptors of London and the prize for basso-relievo to John Eckstein, an assistant of Thomas Carter who already had a fine monument in Westminster Abbey to his name.
80. See. J. Styles, Goldsmith's and the London Luxury Trades, 1550-1750
81. and H. Clifford, 'The King's Arms and Feathers, a case study exploring the networks of manufacture operating in the London goldsmith's trade', in D. Mitchell (ed.), Goldsmiths, Silversmiths and Bankers: Innovation and Transfer of Skills, 1550-1750, Gloucester and London, Allan Sutton and the Centre for Metropolitan History, 1995, pp. 84-95.
82. Defoe devotes a whole section, Vol. II, Part I, Section II, of his The Complete English Tradesman, London, 1726-7 to warning tradesmen 'against oppressing one another by engrossing'.
83. J. Nicols (ed.), Anecdotes of William Hogarth Written by Himself, London, 1822 p. 18.
84. J. Gifford, William Adam, 1689-1748: A Life and Times of Scotland's Universal Architect, Edinburgh, 1989, p. 149.
85. Campbell, London Tradesman, p. 168.
86. My commentaries on Henry Cheere are based on my work for a forthcoming book entitled Death and Decorum. He is also discussed at length in my Ph.D. thesis, 'The London sculpture trade and the development of the imagery of the family in funerary monuments of the period 1720-60', Westfield College, London, 1992.
87. J. M. Rysbrack's contractual documents for the monument to Watkin Williams Wynn (d. 1749) in the National Library of Wales show a substantial proportion of total costs to be marble and marble polishing polishing, leaving one half of total costs in skilled carving and modelling work: Value of marble £176; Statue £150; Boy and medal £50; Ornaments £33; Masonry £28; Polishing £48.
88. Colbert Woods appears as one of those who most consistently paid lump sums in Cheere's bank accounts at Hoares and Drummonds. Wood's will describes him as a 'Marble Polisher of Little Cloisters, Westminster'.
89. This type of process certainly occurred in the portrait-painting business where the most powerful figures seem to have kept the best drapery painters on continuous retainers, thus preventing them from working for others.
90. Henry Cheere subscribed to the first edition of Chippendale's Director.
91. Campbell, The London Tradesman, pp. 169-71, 'The upholder'. Campbell presents the upholder as the master of other trades and suggests that the tradesman who managed to convert himself into an upholder was sure to exert power over a range of other skilled practitioners. My own researches indicate that, like the undertaker, the upholder was a trade which came into its own in the 1730s. Whilst the trade of undertaker, a sort of upholder in the sphere of death, was established by the late seventeenth century, I can find no indication of the existence of a large number of prosperous upholders until well into the eighteenth century.
92. A typed copy of these speech is preserved in the Royal Society of Arts archive. A version of the speech was, in fact, printed. There are, however, very few surviving imprints. I only know of one in the Bodlean, Oxford entitled The Plan of an Academy for the Better Cultivation, Improvement and Encouragement of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture and the Arts of Design in General, London, 1755. Most of the committee involved in the project were associated with the St Martin's Lane group.
93. A. Ramsay, A Dialogue on Taste, Part IV of the Inspector, London, 1762, p. 51. Written in 1754.
94. For further discussion of the problem of copying in mid-eighteenth- century English society, see Helen Clifford's article in this volume.
95. A. Finer & G. Savage (eds.), The Selected Letters of Josiah Wedgwood, London, 1965, pp. 82-3. Wedgwood wrote to Bentley of his intention of making 'such machines of the men that they cannot err'.
96. Gwynn, An Essay on Design, pp. 65-6.