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Conversation piece [ Art & Luxury ]

… started to offer a new mode of portraiture expressive of this culture. After a tentative start in the 1720s, the ‘conversation piece’ took off around 1730, thanks to artists such as William Hogarth, Gawen Hamilton, and Charles Philips. … flourished in early eighteenth-century Britain, so a new mode of portraiture was developed to encapsulate them: the conversation piece. 1   Whilst this category became more capacious as the century progressed, and key characteristics of … of sociability from the period. 1 . This DIGIT.EN.S entry draws on material from my book. Kate Retford, The Conversation Piece: Making Modern Art in Eighteenth-Century Britain (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2017). …

Tea-table [ Furniture & Interior decoration / Rituals & Ceremonies / Eating & Drinking ]

… encounter, including both men and women, occasioned by the consumption of tea, and typically characterized as focused on conversation and gossip. Objects > Furniture & Interior decoration Practices > Rituals & Ceremonies Practices > Eating & Drinking Keywords Tea Tea-table Polite sociability Public sphere Domesticity Conversation Gossip The tea-table is an object, an event, and an idea: that is to say, it is at once an item of … tea-table’ increasingly referred not only to the piece of furniture, but also the company assembled at tea, the kind of conversation established there, and the social gathering in general.   Tea-table as idea The tea-table as an idea is …

Musical evenings (Dr Burney's) [ Dance, Music & Songs / Sports & Leisure ]

… There was ample room, figuratively at least, for sociability, since music-making was only part of the entertainment, and conversation also took up a fair amount of time. As in the Bluestocking salons, members of the aristocracy freely mixed … participated on an equal footing with the men. Practices > Dance, Music & Songs Places > Sports & Leisure Keywords Conversation Music Salon Artist Dr. Burney Among those who visited the Sunday evening musical parties at the Burneys’ on … was generally two-fold: first, musical performances were enjoyed by at least some parts of the audience and afterwards conversation followed, facilitating sociability ( The Early Journals and Letters of Fanny Burney,  I, xxi-xxii). In his …

Solitude [ Feelings and Emotions ]

… be highly complementary of one another. Concepts > Feelings and Emotions Keywords loneliness Religion Social relations Conversation Gender roles Politeness melancholy privacy In 1711 Joseph Addison spoke of his vision for his new … not the pleasures of solitude, but the ‘pride and self-ignorance’ of those willing to elevate themselves above the conversation of others. Baxter warned that ‘many are led into solitude by their infirmities or vices’, noting that … contemplative activities, many of which enhanced individual sociability, for example by furnishing men (and women) with conversation pieces. Dudley Ryder described multiple instances in his diary where he had read a specific text for the …