France at the Crystal Palace

Bourgeois Taste and Artisan Manufacture in the Nineteenth Century

Whitney Walton

• Publisher: University of California Press
• Year: 2023
• Print ISBN:
  9780520076921
• Edition: 1
• eBook ISBN:
  9780520912144
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: European History
• Index: History

Whitney Walton approaches the nineteenth-century French industrial development from a new perspective—that of consumption. She analyzes the French performance at the Crystal Palace Exhibition of 1851 to illustrate how bourgeois consumers influenced France's distinctive pattern of industrial development. She also demonstrates the importance of consumption and gender in class formation and reveals how women influenced industry in their role as consumers. Walton examines important consumer goods industries that have been rarely studied by historians, such as the manufacture of wallpaper, furniture, and bronze statues. Using archival sources on household possessions of the Parisian bourgeoisie as well as published works, she shows how consumers' taste for fashionable, artistic, well-made furnishings and apparel promoted a specialization unique to nineteenth-century France.
Whitney Walton approaches the nineteenth-century French industrial development from a new perspective—that of consumption. She analyzes the French performance at the Crystal Palace Exhibition of 1851 to illustrate how bourgeois consumers influenced France

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Illustrations
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction French Taste and Manufacturing at the Crystal Palace Exhibition
• Chapter One Constructing the Bourgeoisie through Consumption
• Chapter Two “To Triumph before Feminine Taste” Female Consumption, Gender, and Women at the Exhibition
• Chapter Three Symbols of Status, Signs of Change Furnishings in the Bourgeois Household
• Chapter Four The Success of Hand Manufacturing in Consumer Goods Industries
• Chapter Five Flexible Specialization in Luxury and Art Industries
• Chapter Six Art for Industry’s Sake Leon de Laborde’s Plan for Transforming Taste
• Chapter Seven Political Economists and Specialized Industrialization
• Conclusion Taste and Consumption in Industrial Development
• Selected Bibliography
• Index