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Exotic mania [ Taste & Manners ]

… the Orient attracted the interest of collectors resulting in the exotic modes of chinoiserie and turquerie . Concepts > Taste & Manners Keywords Exotic manias Exotic flora and fauna Menagerie Chinoiserie Turquerie During the long eighteenth … mode of Chinoiserie fostering politeness Another eighteenth-century exotic mania forging social relationships is the taste for chinoiserie porcelain, one of the artistic manifestations of Le Rêve chinois , which reached its height thanks … by art and design from China, Japan and other Asian countries in the eighteenth century. As a signifier of sophisticated taste, chinoiserie was a fundamental part of polite society in which aristocratic and socially important women used to …

Female beauty [ Taste & Manners ]

… used to advocate and challenge established moral virtues, cultural beliefs and women’s self-creation. Concepts > Taste & Manners Keywords Women Appearance Beauty Aesthetics Manners Conduct ‘Female beauty’, wrote Oliver Goldsmith in  … Martin has suggested that ‘the physical and moral nature of femininity’ allowed women to ‘function at the height of taste’. 6 With the rise of the bourgeoisie and the growing emphasis on taste and manners , women were seen as  the ideal templates of grace, beauty and social etiquette. However, they were …

Saint Domingue [ Trade / Politics & Society ]

… Paris and London boasted lively public spheres as well as influential intimate ones, such as salons, where ideas, taste and politics were shaped. But did sociability also play a historically significant role in the remote French colony … referred to Cap français as ‘the Paris of our island’ 3  many complained about its lack of refinement: ‘Creole taste is not good taste,’ insisted the baron Wimpffen, ‘it still smells a bit of the buccaneer’ (Clay 209). Such statements expressed a …

Dress [ Clothing & Fashion / Taste & Manners ]

… and extreme styles, was met with ridicule and yet a fervent social demand. Objects > Clothing & Fashion Concepts > Taste & Manners Keywords Dress Fashion Sociability Society Women Rank Class Clothes Fashion, much like its influence … reason would teach us to contemn’. 3  Dress not only offered a visual symbol of rank and wealth, but could also emanate taste, allow the wearer an air of refinement, or even distinguish one from the fashionable competition. However, the … for virtue and modesty to accompany one's clothing, but also a forewarning against forming ideas of respect and taste – two crucial factors of Enlightenment sociability – based on something as immaterial, and as easily imitated, as …

Beau Brummell (George Bryan) [ Fashion ]

… elegant dressing style and mannerisms, already at a time when he was still acting as the acknowledged arbiter of taste. Brummell rose to prominence among London’s social elite very quickly. Although not born into one of the great … manner’ exclaimed: ‘Bedford, do you call this thing a coat?’ (Jesse I: 63). The anecdote exemplifies the importance of taste (the search for the ‘right’ item of clothing), Brummell’s immense power (a duke begging a commoner for a judgement of taste), and his brash, cheeky style of speech (manifested through a reply calling the duke’s power of judgement into …

Ranelagh [ Sports & Leisure ]

… – the use of an Italian term being in itself evocative of the sociability of fashionable visitors sharing Italianate tastes. It was possible to cross the Thames on a wherry to reach Vauxhall on the opposite bank. The layout and ornaments … formal garden where visitors could take walks in the alleys, and a canal with a Chinese pavilion reflecting the growing taste for exoticism; at night, the garden was illuminated with lanterns. From 1767 there was a garden orchestra. The most … of volcanic explosions with Vulcan’s forge was added in 1792. Spectacle was thus a social bond, drawing on the current tastes for exoticism, on the popularization of recent science such as research on volcanoes and spectacular disruptive …