Small Things in the Eighteenth Century: The Political and Personal Value of the Miniature

345 Pages·2022·25.623 MB·English

by  Chloe Wigston Smith, Beth Fowkes Tobin

Small Things in the Eighteenth Century
Offering an intimate history of how small things were used, handled, and worn,
this collection shows how objects such as mugs and handkerchiefs were entan-
gled with quotidian practices and rituals of bodily care. Small things, from tiny
books to ceramic trinkets and toothpick cases, could delight and entertain,
generating tactile pleasures for users while at the same time signaling the limits
of the body’s adeptness or the hand’s dexterity. Simultaneously, the volume
explores the striking mobility of small things: how fans, coins, rings, and pot-
tery could, for instance, carry political, philosophical, and cultural concepts
into circumscribed spaces. From the decorative and playful to the useful and
performative, such small things as tea caddies, wampum beads, and drawings
of ants negotiated larger political, cultural, and scientific shifts as they trans-
ported aesthetic and cultural practices across borders, via nationalist imagery,
gift exchange, and the movement of global goods.
Chloe Wigston Smith is the author of Women, Work, and Clothes in
the Eighteenth-Century Novel (2013) and editor, with Serena Dyer, of Material
Literacy in Eighteenth-Century Britain: A Nation of Makers (2020). Her current
research, supported by a British Academy fellowship, centers on material cul-
ture and the Atlantic world.
Beth Fowkes Tobin, a recipient of National Endowment for the Human-
ities (NEH) and National Science Foundation (NSF) fellowships, is the author
of The Duchess’s Shells: Natural History Collecting in the Age of Cook’s Voyages
(2014), Colonizing Nature: The Tropics in British Arts and Letters, 1760–1830
(2005), and Picturing Imperial Power: Colonial Subjects in Eighteenth-Century
British Painting (1999).
Published online by Cambridge University Press
Published online by Cambridge University Press
Small Things in the Eighteenth
Century
The Political and Personal Value of the Miniature
Edited by
Chloe Wigston Smith
University of York
Beth Fowkes Tobin
Arizona State University
Published online by Cambridge University Press
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Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9781108834452
DOI: 10.1017/9781108993296
© Cambridge University Press 2022
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First published 2022
A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Smith, Chloe Wigston, editor. | Tobin, Beth Fowkes, editor.
Title: Small things in the eighteenth century : the political and personal
value of the miniature / edited by Chloe Wigston Smith, University of
York; Beth Fowkes Tobin, Arizona State University.
Description: Cambridge ; New York, NY : Cambridge University Press, 2022. |
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2022004100 | ISBN 9781108834452 (hardback) |
ISBN 9781108993296 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Miniature objects – Social aspects. | Material
culture – Social aspects.
Classification: LCC NK8470 .S63 2022 | DDC 306.4/6–dc23/eng/20220611
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022004100
ISBN 978-1-108-83445-2 Hardback
Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of
URLs for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this publication
and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain,
accurate or appropriate.
Published online by Cambridge University Press
Contents
List of Figures [page viii]
Notes on Contributors [xii]
Acknowledgments [xv]
Introduction: The Scale and Sense of Small Things [1]
Chloe Wigston Smith and Beth Fowkes Tobin
Part I Reading Small Things
1 “The Sum of All in All”: The Miniature Book
and the Nature of Legibility [15]
Abigail Williams
2 Nuts, Flies, Thimbles, and Thumbs: Eighteenth-Century
Children’s Literature and Scale [31]
Katherine Wakely-Mulroney
3 Gothic Syntax [47]
Cynthia Wall
4 Small, Familiar Things on Trial and on Stage [64]
Chloe Wigston Smith
Part II Small Things in Time and Space
5 On the Smallness of Numismatic Objects [79]
Crystal B. Lake
6 Crinoidal Limestone and Staffordshire Teapots: Material
and Temporal Scales in Eighteenth-Century
Britain [95]
Kate Smith
7 “Joineriana”: The Small Fragments and Parts of Eighteenth-
Century Assemblages [109]
Freya Gowrley v
Published online by Cambridge University Press
vi Contents
8 “Pray What a Pox Are Those Damned Strings
of Wampum?”: British Understandings of Wampum
in the Eighteenth Century [125]
Robbie Richardson
Part III Small Things at Hand
9 “We Bought a Guillotine Neatly Done in Bone”:
Illicit Industries on Board British Prison Hulks,
1775–1815 [143]
Anna McKay
10 “What Number?”: Reform, Authority, and Identity in Late
Eighteenth-Century Military Buttons [158]
Matthew Keagle
11 Two Men’s Leather Letter Cases: Mercantile Pride
and Hierarchies of Display [172]
Pauline Rushton
12 The Aesthetic of Smallness: Chelsea Porcelain Seal Trinkets
and Britain’s Global Gaze, 1750–1775 [187]
Patricia F. Ferguson
13 “Small Gifts Foster Friendship”: Hortense de Beauharnais,
Amateur Art, and the Politics of Exchange
in Postrevolutionary France [204]
Marina Kliger
Part IV Small Things on the Move
14 Hooke’s Ant [225]
Tita Chico
15 Portable Patriotism: Britannia and Material Nationhood
in Miniature [240]
Serena Dyer
16 Revolutionary Histories in Small Things: Louis XVI
and Marie Antoinette on Printed Ceramics,
c. 1793–1796 [257]
Caroline McCaffrey-Howarth
Published online by Cambridge University Press
Contents vii
17 A Box of Tea and the British Empire [274]
Romita Ray
Afterword: A Thing’s Perspective [291]
Hanneke Grootenboer
Select Bibliography [295]
Index [309]
Published online by Cambridge University Press
Figures
1.1 William Moodie, Old English, Scots and Irish Songs with Music
(Glasgow, 1890), The Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford,
Johnson g.315, 104 × 54 mm [page 18]
1.2 Anacreon, Sappho, and Erinna, Hai Tou Anakreontos Odai, Kai Ta
Sapphous, Kai Erinnas Leipsana (Edinburgh, 1766), The Bodleian Libraries,
University of Oxford, Morton 120, H: 88 mm; W: 62 mm; D: 13 mm [25]
1.3 Jeremiah Rich, The Whole Book of Psalms in Meter. According to
the Art of Short-Writing written by Jeremiah Rich, Author and Teacher
of the Said Art (London, 1659), The Bodleian Libraries, University of
Oxford, Arch. A g.19 (1), 60 × 40 mm [26]
3.1 Horace Walpole, The Castle of Otranto: A Gothic Story, 2nd ed.
(London, 1765), 35. Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections
Library, University of Virginia [56]
6.1 Side view of white stoneware teapot and cover with enamel
and salt glaze, Staffordshire, c. 1760. H.: 10.8 cm; Diam.
(body): 10.5 cm; Diam. (handle-spout): 17.5 cm.
Photo credit: Gavin Ashworth. © The Chipstone Foundation,
Milwaukee, 1997.19.a–b [97]
6.2 Teapot and cover, c. 1785. Creamware: 13 × 20 (with handle
and spout) × 10 cm (diam). Photo credit: Gavin Ashworth.
© The Chipstone Foundation, Milwaukee, 1995.1.a–b [101]
6.3 View of base of white stoneware teapot with enamel and salt glaze,
Staffordshire, c. 1760. H.: 10.8 cm; Diam. (body): 10.5 cm; Diam.
(handle-spout): 17.5 cm. Photo credit: Gavin Ashworth. © The
Chipstone Foundation, Milwaukee, 1997.19.a–b [105]
7.1 View of the library window, Plas Newydd, Llangollen. Photograph,
the author [115]
7.2 Jane and Mary Parminter, Specimen table, Exmouth, Devon, 1790s. Glass,
mineral, shell, paint, paper, and wood. 1312249, National Trust Collections,
A la Ronde, Devon. © National Trust Images/James Dobson [118]
7.3 Patchwork needle case, made from printed and woven fabrics,
embroidered with a heart and the initials SC, and cut in half, made in
viii c. 1767. Foundling 16516. © Coram [123]
Published online by Cambridge University Press
List of Figures ix
8.1 The Indians Giving a Talk to Colonel Bouquet in a conference at a
Council Fire Near his Camp on the Banks of Muskingum in America,
Benjamin West, c. 1765. Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon
Collection, B1975.4.798 [134]
8.2 Tee Yee Neen Ho Ga Row, Emperour of the Six Nations, mezzotint
by John Simon c. 1755, after Johannes Verelst, 1710. Yale Center
for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection, B2001.2.1509 [136]
9.1 Domino box, watch stand, and straw work casket, AAA0002,
AAA0004, AAA0005. © National Maritime Museum, Greenwich,
London. Sutcliffe-Smith Collection [147]
9.2 Convict-made objects recovered from the Dromedary hulk
in Bermuda, 1824–1863. Photograph courtesy of the National
Museum of Bermuda [154]
10.1 British military buttons recovered at Fort Ticonderoga in the United
States, 1768–1781. Fort Ticonderoga Museum Collection.
Photo: Gavin Ashworth [165]
11.1 Letter cases of John Bridge, 1750 (top), and Harold Hillam,
1767 (bottom). Photograph courtesy of National Museums
Liverpool [175]
11.2 Letter case of Hesketh Yarburgh, Bristol, 1738. Photograph courtesy
of the Borthwick Institute for Archives, University of York [184]
12.1 Two seal-trinkets of a dalmation and a cupid with dalmation, soft-
paste porcelain, St. James’s factory, c. 1751–1759, suspended from an
équipage made by Daniel Marchand and Company, Hanau, Germany,
c. 1762–1764, with a pocket watch by Jean Baptiste Baillon, c. 1755.
Length 4.5 cm. BK-NM-11238. © Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam [191]
12.2 Gilbert Ernest Bryant (1878–1965), watercolor, depicting twenty-four
seal trinkets, reproduced in The Chelsea Porcelain Toys (London: Medici
Society, 1925), Plate 38, 31 × 25 cm. Photograph, the author [195]
12.3 Three seal trinkets, “Indian boy with handscreen,” “Grotesque Punch,”
“Cupid disguised as an Eunuch,” soft-paste porcelain, Charles Gouyn,
proprietor, St. James’s factory, London, c. 1751–1760. Height 3.75 cm
and smaller [1887,0307,II.209 at 3.75 cm; 1887,0307,II.229 at 3 cm;
1887,0307,II.198 at 3.10 cm]. © Trustees of the British Museum,
London [199]
13.1 Hortense de Beauharnais, after Fleury Richard, Madame de La Vallière
Carmélite, c. 1813–1824. Miniature mounted on a leather toothpick
case. 3 × 2.5 cm (miniature), 9 × 3.8 cm (case). The collections of H.M.
the King of Sweden, Stockholm. Inv. no. MR 526. © The Royal Court,
Sweden, photo Lisa Raihle Rehbäck [206]
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