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The Styling and Transmission of Fashions Historically Considered

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 February 2011

Dwight E. Robinson
Dwight E. Robinson
Affiliation:
University of Washington
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Extract

In a review of a recent play by T. S. Eliot, the critic sums up the action as “a tragedy of non-communication between parent and child.” We may be sure the reviewer did not intend to raise a doubt in the reader's mind as to whether the father or son in question had difficulty in getting to a telephone, finding a telegraph office or deciphering one another's handwriting. The level of communication he must have had in mind lies deep in the human dependency on expressive symbols. These primary factors of human experience—primary in the sense that nothing stands between them and the raw sensations and impulses—are made up of words, gestures, and images which are, in turn, invariably organized in systems or complexes. These we call by such names as aims, standards and ideals or, more generally, attitudes.

Type
Communication and Economic Development
Information
The Journal of Economic History , Volume 20 , Issue 4 , December 1960 , pp. 576 - 587
Copyright
Copyright © The Economic History Association 1960

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References

1 Meteyard, Eliza, The Life of Josiah Wedgwood (London: Hurst and Blackett, Publishers, 1866), Vol. II, p. 378Google Scholar. Letter to Bentley, July 19, 1779.

2 For masterly analysis of symbolic behavior, the writings of the late Edward Sapir may be consulted. See especially his Culture, Language, and Personality, Selected Essays (Mandelbaum, David G., Ed., University of California Press, 1958)Google Scholar.

3 The late Simkhovitch, Vladmir G.presented an extremely profound and original examination of the dependency of social and historical thought upon changing cultural attitudes in a series of essays, “Approaches to History I-VI,” which appeared in The Political Science Quarterly, Vols. XLIV, No. 4 (1929)Google Scholar, XLV, No. 4 (1930), XVII, No. 3 (1932), XVIII, No. 1 (1933), XLIX, No. 1 (1934) and LI, No. 1 (1936).

4 For an attempt to account for the nature and timing of alternations in style and taste see the present writer's “Fashion Theory and Product Design,” Harvard Business Review, Vol. XXXVI, No. 6 (Nov.-Dec. 1958), 126–38Google Scholar.

5 Winckelmann, Johann Joachim, Gedanken über die Nachahmung der Griechischen Werke in der Mahlerey und Bildauerkunst (Sämtliche Werke. Hrsg. von Joseph Eiselein. Donauoschigen: Verlag deutscher Classiker, 1825–1829), Part I, p. 7Google Scholar. Cited by Hatfield, Henry Caraway, Winckelmann and His German Critics, 1755–1781 (New York: King's Crown Press, 1943), p. 6Google Scholar.

6 For biographic and background information on Winckelmann, see Hatfield, Winckelmann and His German Critics, 1755–1781 and Trevelyan, Humphry, The Popular Background to Goethe's Hellenism (London, New York and Toronto: Longman's, Green and Co., 1934)Google Scholar.

7 Simultaneous, parallel invention shows up in art history just as it does in the physical sciences. The most significant claim rivalling Winckelmann's to independent “discovery” of the Greeks is that of James “Athenian” Stuart (1713–1788). Stuart, interested primarily in architecture, braved the risks of exploring Turk-ruled Greece in the years 1751–1754. In 1762, he published his Antiquities of Athens.

8 Porcelain, As an Art and a Mirror of Fashion, Thorpe, W. A., Trans, and Ed. (London: George G. Harrap and Company, Ltd., 1932), p. 212Google Scholar.

9 Edwards, Edward, Lives and Founders of the British Museum (London: Trubner and Company, 1870), Part I, p. 350Google Scholar.

10 Ibid., p. 352.

11 Ibid., p. 353.

12 Meteyard, Life, Vol. II, p. 611.

13 As quoted by Graham, John Meredith II and Wedgwood, Hensleigh Cecil in Wedgwood (The Brooklyn Museum, New York, 1948), p. 43Google Scholar.

14 See, among others, Thomas, J.. “The Pottery Industry and the Industrial Revolution,” Economic History (A supplement of the Economic Journal) HI, No. 12 (Feb. 1937), 339–414Google Scholar.

Most fortunately, a deeply researched article on Wedgwood which, in my opinion, both complements and tends to reinforce the approach pursued in the present paper, has recently been published. It is McKendrick's, M.“Josiah Wedgwood: An Eighteenth-Century Entrepreneur in Salesmanship and Marketing Techniques,” The Economic History Review Second Series, XII, No. 3 (April 1960), 408–33CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Professor McKendrick's main concern relative to my present exposition is with Wedgwood's methods of exploiting the prestige affects of fashionable patrons rather than with the morphology of tastes. His article came to my attention only after my own had nearly reached its present form and I made no changes, even of excision, because of it. Our independent arrival at mutually supporting positions seems to me to lend a good deal to the plausibility of our findings concerning consumer initiative.

15 Cited by Graham and Wedgwood, Wedgwood, p. 82.

16 Meteyard, , Life, VII, p. 69. Invoice to Cox, September 3, 1768Google Scholar.

17 Ibid., p. 175. Letter to Bentley, January 1770.

18 I am indebted to Professor Arthur H. Cole for bringing this pertinent consideration to my attention.

19 Professor Morris L. Morris, University of Washington. Soap consumption for domestic use in England rose from 292 million to 643 million pounds between 1787–88 and 1819–21. See Talbot Griffith, G., Population in the Age of Malthus (Cambridge University Press, 1926), p. 258Google Scholar.