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An Economy of Delight: Court Artisans of the Eighteenth Century

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 June 2012

Michael Stürmer
Michael Stürmer
Affiliation:
Professor of Medieval and Modern History, Friedrich Alexander Universität
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Abstract

Where virtuoso talents were required by the courts, great and small, of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Europe, the protectionist system of guilds was suspended, according to Dr. Stürmer. In a society where status had to be attested to by conspicuous consumption, of which the sovereign himself was the most avid practitioner, the finest artisans in the fields of interior decoration and furnishings often attained the status of “court artisans,” in which they enjoyed many of the freedoms of laissez-faire that members of the guilds denied themselves as well as their competitors. In the end, however, the Revolution that swept away the guild economy also destroyed this expedient whereby excellence and entrepreneurship had been fostered.

Type
Research Article
Information
Business History Review , Volume 53 , Issue 4 , Winter 1979 , pp. 496 - 528
Copyright
Copyright © The President and Fellows of Harvard College 1979

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References

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21 Himmelheber, “Puchwiser, Boulle und die ‘Boulle-Möbel’ für München,” in Max Emanuel, Bayern und Europa, 210–264.

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24 When the Fürstbischof of Würzburg Friedrich Karl von Schönborn had refused to buy a baroque secretaire saying “das derlei machines zu fürstlicher Meublierung nicht mehr schicklich,” the unfortunate maker applied to Schönborn's successor, pointing out that he had been recently converted to Catholicism, and asking the Prince Bishop to buy the piece “und solchergestalten ihn von dem trohenden Untergang fürstmildest zu retten.” Quoted in von Freeden, M. H., Aus den Schätzen des Mainfränkischen Museums, 2nd ed. (Wurzburg, 1973), 28.Google Scholar

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43 Himmelheber, “Puchwiser” 261.

44 See, e.g., the Royal declaration of November 17, 1717, which expressly referred to the chain reaction of impending bankruptcies in the luxury trades and followed the same principle that had been expressed by the supreme court over all merchant affairs in its ruling of May 6, 1678, printed in full in Code Marchand. Nouvelle édition des conférences des ordonnances de Louis XIV (Paris, 1762), 164–170 and 254–258.

45 For the prospectus of the Hamburg lottery, see, Huth, Abraham and David Roentgen, plates 3a and 3b. See also Himmelheber, “Beobachtungen an unbekannten Roentgen-Möbeln.” (See fn 35, above.)

46 Huth, Abraham and David Roentgen, passim.

47 Book III, ch. 6.