France at the Crystal Palace: Bourgeois Taste and Artisan Manufacture in the Nineteenth Century

About the Author

Whitney Walton is Associate Professor of History at Purdue University.

Whitney Walton

France at the Crystal Palace: Bourgeois Taste and Artisan Manufacture in the Nineteenth CenturyBy Whitney WaltonUniversity of California PressCopyright © 1992 Whitney WaltonAll right reserved.ISBN: 0520076923 Chapter One Constructing the Bourgeoisie through ConsumptionThe most common response of French women and men to the Crystal Palace exhibition of 1851 was profuse praise for the unrivaled good taste of French manufactured goods, particularly in comparison with those from England. The political economist Adolphe Blanqui asserted: "The main result of the exhibition for the French is the universal, absolute, uncontested recognition of their superiority in matters of art and taste."1 Only two weeks after the opening of the exhibition, a reporter for the weekly La Semaine stated that in the plastic arts France had won the palm of victory at the Crystal Palace.2 Another French journalist contended that "French superiority in artistic industries is no longer in doubt, even in the eyes of the English."3 Indeed, British commentators, though sometimes skeptical about the quality of French taste as manifested in manufactured products, acknowledged its widespread influence upon the design and styles of goods from various parts of Europe and North America.4 The frequent references to good taste in French accounts of the exhibition amount to almost an obsession, yet scholars have largely . Adolphe Blanqui, Lettres sur l'Exposition universelle de Londres (Paris: Capelle, 1851), 107. . La Semaine , 16 May 1851, 308. . Le Musée des familles , July 1851, 319. . Ralph Nicholson Wornum, "The Exhibition as a Lesson in Taste," in The Art Journal, The Art Journal Illustrated Catalogue: The Industry of All Nations, 1851 . London: J. Virtue, 1851. Reprinted as The Crystal Palace Exhibition Illustrated Catalogue (New York: Dover, 1970), vi . See also Tobin Andrews Sparling, The Great Exhibition: A Question of Taste (New Haven: Yale Center for British Art, 1982). ignored this concern in their analyses both of the exhibition and of French industry at that time.5 What did "good taste" mean to mid-nineteenth-century French bourgeois, and why was it so important? What insights into the bourgeoisie and into French social conditions in general can an analysis of bourgeois taste reveal? How did the exhibition affect this particular version of good taste? Answers to these questions come from an examination of exhibition reports by the French jury, newspaper accounts of the exhibition, articles in the feminine press, and novels. Almost all of the writers of these works were bourgeois—educated professionals who valued the talent, ambition, and economic accomplishments of their class. Their audience was also bourgeois—a literate public interested in industrial development and in French politics, culture, and entertainment. Most commonly discussions of taste appeared in the feminine press because French bourgeois generally agreed that taste and consumption lay within the purview of women (see chapter 2). But on the occasion of the exhibition men, too, readily ventured to judge the tastefulness of manufactured goods on display in the Crystal Palace. From these materials it is possible to reconstruct the constituent elements of the bourgeois concept of good taste. But how should one interpret these pronouncements, and what can such an interpretation contribute to the understanding of French participation in the Crystal Palace exhibition?Historical and structural conceptualizations of consumer tastes suggest that specific social, political, and economic conditions underlie any particular set of taste criteria. Writing during the Gilded Age in the United States, the economist Thorstein Veblen noted that social and economic changes contributed to a new pattern of consumption and taste among the newly rich. These people indulged in unrestrained purchases of luxury goods and the ostentatious display of female idleness, according to Veblen, as a means of approximating leisure-class status. Since the newly rich acquired wealth through commercial or industrial activity, they could not completely adopt the refined manners and cultivated tastes of a true leisure class that inherited wealth. They therefore proclaimed their class status through . A notable exception is Émile Levasseur, Histoire des classes ouvrières et de l'industrie en France de 1789 à 1870 , 2d ed. (Paris: A. Rousseau, 1904) 2:522-25. 535-77. what Veblen termed conspicuous consumption—buying expensive and superfluous items that blatantly advertised great wealth.6 In contrast to this view—that a new standard of consumer taste and behavior accompanied the economic and social ascendancy of the bourgeoisie in the late-nineteenth-century United States—the sociologist Pierre Bourdieu has more recently explained variations in taste as part of social structuring. In his analysis of France in the 1970s, Bourdieu maintained that factors of occupation, income, and education contributed to social divisions that manifested themselves in different tastes in food, art, leisure activity, home decoration, and so on. In addition, these tastes reproduced themselves in the younger generation as the family, home environment, and neighborhood habituated children to the tastes of the group into which they were born, and rendered alternative tastes strange and undesirable. Though Bourdieu suggested that more education and income could change a person's taste, his concept of taste as a component of social structuring is static and does not readily accommodate change on either the individual or the social level.7 What Veblen's and Bourdieu's works indicate is that taste and consumption are not purely personal, aesthetic, or universal; they are also social, political, and mutable. They merit, even require, examination of their social, economic, and political origins in order to understand better the social group adhering to a particular standard of taste and the historical context of that standard. Thus, inquiring into the bourgeois notion of good taste in mid-nineteenth-century France should lead to an investigation of class relations and of the economic and political circumstances that informed them. The following analysis, based on French accounts of the Crystal Palace exhibition, argues that the bourgeois standard of good taste reflected this class's quest for ruling-class legitimacy and for distinction from both the aristocracy and the workers. It also argues that the Crystal Palace . Thorstein Veblen, The Theory of the Leisure Class (New York: Macmillan Co., 1899). . Pierre Bourdieu, La Distinction: Critique sociale du jugement (Paris: Éditions de minuit, 1979). For a critique of both Veblen and Bourdieu, see Daniel Miller, Material Culture and Mass Consumption (Oxford and New York: Basil Blackwell, 1987). For further analyses of taste and consumption see Arjun Appadurai, ed., The Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1986) and Chandra Mukerji, From Graven Images: Patterns of Modem Materialism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1983). exhibition furthered this process by demonstrating the existence of other taste standards and the challenge they represented to bourgeois social, political, and economic domination in France in the context of free-market capitalism and liberal government.The Uses of Good TasteThe Crystal Palace exhibition made clear that manufactured goods were increasing in number and variety, and so were consumers. This expansion of consumption represented great opportunities and certain difficulties for the bourgeoisie in France. In the middle of the nineteenth century bourgeois consumers could more readily acquire the styles and furnishings that in earlier times were accessible almost exclusively to the aristocracy. However, few bourgeois had incomes sufficient to buy the finest products of master craftsmen, such as were displayed prominently in the Crystal Palace. There was, then, something of a discrepancy between the exhibition's appeal to popular consumption and the extraordinarily costly items that were the pride of French manufacturing. Writers for the bourgeois press overcame this difficulty with a vocabulary of descriptive terms that both acknowledged the particular condition of bourgeois consumers and allowed them to share with wealthy elites an appreciation for expensive works of art.Consider Émile Berès's account, in the widely read periodical L'Illustration , of a silver dressing table by the silversmith Froment-Meurice (see fig. 5). This magnificent piece of furniture was commissioned by a group of Legitimist women for the exiled Bourbon princess, the duchess of Parma. The dressing table was almost priceless; it was made entirely of silver and crafted and decorated by several prominent artists and artisans. Berès indicated that the true value of the piece lay less in its "richness"—meaning raw material—than in its "art"—referring to the producers' skill. He went on to suggest that any "elegant young woman" could enjoy such furnishings in her dressing room by seeking "art rather than richness" in manufactured goods.8 A writer for La Semaine used essentially the same expression to refer to the superiority of French jewelry over that produced in England. Commenting on displays at the exhibition, he . L'Illustration , 12 July 1851, 27. criticized the English for preferring size and weight over workmanship, in contrast to the French tendency to emphasize art and ornamentation rather than the quantity of precious metal.9 Some years later, Emma Faucon, contributing to the feminine press, repeated the notion in advising readers to furnish their homes with "simple" works of art rather than goods made of expensive materials. "It is not luxury that presided over the decoration of my abode; on the contrary, all is simple. . . . What does the substance [of furnishings] matter to me, provided that my eyes rest with pleasure upon some work of taste, on some product that reflects the talent of a worker or the merit of an artist?"10 Terms like "simple," "elegant," "delicate," "charming," "harmony," "purity," "perfection of detail or finishing," as well as "tasteful," were ubiquitous in descriptions of the most costly and heavily decorated French products on show in the Crystal Palace. They invited the bourgeoisie to consider exhibition masterpieces as models for their own, less extravagant purchases of home furnishings and articles of dress. Such expressions suggested a set of consumer values distinct from those of the aristocracy: more restrained, less opulent—but nonetheless discriminating and elitist. Indeed, Constance Aubert, in an essay on home decorating that appeared in L'Illustration during the same year as the exhibition, made a virtue of the bourgeoisie's more limited income in contrasting the consumer objectives of the bourgeoisie and of the aristocracy.According to Aubert, the almost unlimited wealth of the aristocracy and their indulgence in luxury often led aristocratic men and women to exercise poor judgment in consumption. Too much money, she contended, was responsible for aristocrats' seeking personal distinction or originality through buying goods that were shockingly innovative or bigger, more elaborate, and more expensive than what their rivals possessed. Bourgeois consumers, by contrast, were generally restrained from such practices by limited funds. "Especially when immense resources are lacking, intelligent taste must seize the means at its disposal, and must know how to arrange all that decorates and embellishes the residence."11 "Tastefulness," then, was . La Semaine , 31 May 1851, 340. . Emma Faucon, Voyage d'une jeune fille autour de sa chambre: Nouvelle morale et instructive (Paris: Maillet, 1860), 22-23. . L'Illustration , 18 January 1851, 46. a substitute for "profligacy" that positively distinguished bourgeois from aristocratic consumers. It also separated them from consumers with even lesser incomes.Aubert and other writers were equally keen in counseling readers not to buy deceptively impressive articles at a low price, a tendency they associated with less cultivated and poorer consumers. Warning readers against purchasing cheap and gaudy goods, one writer asserted: "In general, everything that is flashy must be avoided. . . . Sensitive women, who are truly economical and have good taste, will flee from [the] display of false luxury."12 Similarly, on the topic of textiles, another writer maintained that "the appearance of poor-quality fabrics (des étoffes mauvaises ) is an abuse of industry whose results are often striking." These results, of course, were false economies, when women bought deceptive cloth to save money but looked vulgar and tawdry dressed in such "economical" fabrics. "The woman who is well groomed . . . does not try at all to surprise by the false and showy."13 All such expressions as "simple," "elegant," "pleasing," "well designed," and "tasteful" were really code words for the boundaries of bourgeois consumption. By describing products as tasteful, commentators appropriated them for bourgeois appreciation and aspiration, despite the fact that most of the goods displayed in the Crystal Palace by French manufacturers cost far more than ordinary consumers could ever afford. Bourgeois men and women would never buy a Fourdinois buffet, a Rudolphi bracelet, or a Froment-Meurice dressing table, but they could purchase a sideboard that was "simple," jewelry with more "art" than "mass," and furnishings that were modest and imitative of recognizable styles rather than original creations of artists for rich patrons or the state.Additionally, French commentators used these terms to connote political and national differences. When they were describing manufactured goods, "tasteful" meant "French," in the same way that "cheap," "heavy," "pretentious," or "monotonous" referred to English products. French writers on the exhibition conveyed their notions of national civilizations through the adjectives they used in . Le Conseiller des dames , May 1850, 218-19. . L'Illustration , 6 January 1844, 302. connection with different countries' displays. A certain tension is obvious in the insistence upon France's capacity for up-to-date technology—its leading role as a modern, industrializing nation—along-side the more frequent references to the artistic tradition of French manufacturing. France was indeed industrializing differently from England, and the Crystal Palace exhibition was an opportunity for French industrial experts and politicians to make this difference a positive, national distinction. The repeated use of the term "tasteful" to describe French manufactured goods bridged the gap between aristocratic tradition and bourgeois progressivism. It also connoted the specific characteristics of consumer goods that appealed to the concerns and values of the bourgeoisie in the middle of the nineteenth century: historical styles, extensive ornamentation, heavy padding and drapery, and domestic comfort.Style and OrnamentationFrench men and women who wrote about taste at the time of the exhibition were fairly consistent in their admiration for certain historical styles of furnishings. Renaissance style, for example, was extremely popular among French consumers and was very much in evidence among displays of manufactured goods from France at the exhibition. Equally attractive, according to consumers, jury members, journalists, and writers, were Gothic, Louis XIV, and Louis XV styles. Indeed the height of fashion at this time was to decorate each room of an apartment in a different historical style.14 The wealthiest of consumers might even procure real antiques for this purpose, but such pieces were rare and terribly expensive. Instead, most bourgeois families bought furniture made by nineteenth-century cabinetmakers imitating the old styles.15 Critics have deplored this practice as manifesting a lack of imagination and a decline in craft traditions among cabinetmakers, and a deficiency of true taste and originality among . La Gazette des salons , 7 November 1838, 984; Le Conseiller des dames et demoiselles , September 1851, 348-49; Theodore Zeldin, Taste and Corruption , vol. 4 of France, 1848-1945 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1980), 74. . Zeldin, Taste , 74-77; Adeline Daumard, La Bourgeoisie parisienne de 1815 à 1848 (Paris: SEVPEN, 1963), 136, asserts that most married couples bought new furniture rather than inheriting old pieces; Le Musée des familles , October 1851, 31. consumers.16 But merely to condemn a society for failing to create a distinctive style is to ignore the reasons behind its imitation of older styles.Why should styles so disparate as spiritual Gothic, stately Renaissance, ornate Louis XIV, and delicate Louis XV all appeal to bourgeois consumers? Probably because they were all old and were associated with periods of French history when social hierarchies seemed stable and the authority of ruling elites seemed unquestioned. Styles from the glory years of feudal lords, Renaissance princes, and absolute monarchs may have attracted a nineteenth-century bourgeoisie still insecure in their fairly new and hard-won ruling-class status. Though the French Revolution removed the shackles that had inhibited bourgeois men from attaining positions of power, aristocrats and workers continued to challenge bourgeois leadership throughout the first half of the nineteenth century. Moreover, in 1851 this aspiring ruling class had not yet fully developed its own culture or style.17 It is likely that in adopting the styles of ruling elites during periods when their power was expanding, bourgeois consumers were trying to legitimize their own replacement of (or amalgamation with) the aristocracy as the ruling class of France. For them, the tastes and trappings of power signified power itself. This was evident also in the bourgeois predilection for ornamentation in furnishings, a tendency that was consistent with the preference for the old styles mentioned . Lee Shai Weissbach, "Artisanal Responses to Artistic Decline: The Cabinetmakers of Paris in the Era of Industrialization," Journal of Social History 16 (Winter 1982): 67-81; Zeldin, Taste , 77-79; Mario Praz, L'Ameublement: Psychologie et éolution de la décoration intérieure (Paris: Tisné, 1964), 350-51; Nikolaus Pevsner, High Victorian Design: A Study of the Exhibits of 1851 (London: Architectural Press, 1951). It is worth noting here that in his contribution to the Encyclopédie , "The Art of the Joiner," André Jacob Roubo (1739-91) already—in a period considered the zenith of French cabinetmaking—"reproached eighteenth-century craftsmen with being slaves to routine, and for their lack of imagination." French Cabinetmakers of the Eighteenth Century (New York: French and European Publications, 1965), 326. . Arno Mayer, The Persistence of the Old Regime: Europe to the Great War (New York: Pantheon, 1981), esp. chaps. 2 and 4; Rosalind H. Williams, Dream Worlds: Mass Consumption in Late Nineteenth-Century France (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982), 49-50, 108-10; Charles Morazé, The Triumph of the Middle Classes , trans. George Wiedenfeld (Cleveland: World Publishing Co., 1966), 125; Roger Magraw, France, 1815-1914: The Bourgeois Century (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986), 51-68. above and that connoted leisure, discrimination, and hierarchical social relations.In general, the amount and kind of ornamentation on furniture and furnishings distinguished articles as modest or luxurious. A writer for the feminine press explained that a consumer could transform simple furnishings into a sumptuous interior through the addition of ornamentation—by "changing the upholstery fabric, having gilded bronzes of more artistic workmanship, and adding knickknacks (curiosités )."18 The level of simplicity or luxury in a household should, according to this writer, correspond to the wealth and social status of the family: "Let us have the courage of our positions. We shall be simple if that is all we can afford. We shall be rich, surrounding ourselves with luxury, if that weighty task is imposed upon us."19 Choosing luxurious furnishings was indeed a weighty task, since consumers—usually women—had to distinguish between the vulgar and the tasteful among highly ornamented objects. For example, an expensive mantel clock usually included sculpted figures of gilded bronze; but gracefully arranged figures from classical mythology might be more tasteful than a heavy allegorical representation, depending on the style of the room for which the clock was intended and on the quality and originality of the workmanship.As with old styles, consumers probably favored highly decorated items because ornamentation represented both wealth and social distinction. Ornamentation was a clear sign of wealth because it used expensive materials like gold, silver, precious gems, and exotic woods. Ornamentation also reflected the skill, creativity, and labor of craftspersons—and the consumer's cultivation and discrimination in selecting works of art, not just expensive furnishings. Bourgeois consumers considering the purchase of, say, a sculpted Gothic chair or a chased Louis XV tea service could feel like patrons of the arts judging the ability, taste, and amount of time that an artisan put into an original piece. In this way, they imaginatively reproduced the patron/artist relationship of the old aristocracy and the craftspeople they commissioned. To be an art patron, as opposed to a mere consumer of goods, required esoteric knowledge and appreciation . Les Modes parisiennes , 22 March 1851, 3009. . Ibid. that only persons of wealth and cultivation could acquire.20 As with the popularity of old styles, then, the taste for ornamentation linked bourgeois consumers with their aristocratic predecessors as members of the consuming, discriminating, and therefore ruling class.In the nineteenth century the ornamentation of furnishings often required artisan skill in the application of new techniques as well as in the carrying on of older methods of hand manufacturing. While bourgeois consumers sought the personal touch of a worker's hand and mind, they also appreciated producers' use of hand machines and scientific methods that constituted a form of industrial progress. Small hand tools often permitted workers to reproduce patterns with greater precision than with the unaided hand. Louis Wolowski, a jury member who reported on furniture at the exhibition, asserted that "great perfection, in the smallest details of execution," was an essential part of good taste.21 The dynamism that many art historians discern in mid-nineteenth-century decorative arts derived from a certain pride in modern technology and from producers' willingness to exploit that technology in the production of "old style" articles.22 There was also an exuberance in the bourgeoisie's enjoyment of completely decorated surfaces; the innovative decoration of old styles combined the new and the traditional in consumer goods.The effect of consumer demand upon production processes is discussed in more detail in part 2; selected examples from French exhibits at the Crystal Palace will serve here to illustrate the multiple meanings of ornamentation to mid-nineteenth-century consumers in France. An earthenware platter made by the potter Charles Avisseau won praise and a prize medal at the exhibition for its originality, tastefulness, and technique. The platter, totally covered with brightly colored marsh fauna and flora—lizards, snakes, fish, snails, leaves, seaweed, and lily pads—was useless as a serving dish. The numerous . Bourdieu, Distinction ; Brian Spooner, "Weavers and Dealers: The Authenticity of an Oriental Carpet," in Social Life of Things , ed. Appadurai, 195-235. . Commission française sur l'Industrie des Nations, Exposition universelle de 1851: Travaux de la Commission française sur l'Industrie des Nations (Paris: Imprimerie impériale, 1855) 7:2. . Philadelphia Museum of Art, The Second Empire, 1852-1870: Art in France trader Napoleon III (Philadelphia: Philadelphia Museum of Art, 1978), 15; John M. Hunisak, "Beyond Pomp and Circumstance: Another Look at Second Empire Art," Art in America (January-February 1979): 79-83. sculpted and glazed figures on the platter left no room for food or anything else; the object was clearly intended for display only. However, as imitations of nature the platter decorations are remarkable. They attest to Avisseau's careful study of plants and animals and to his ability to design and execute an extremely complex and detailed scene in three dimensions. Moreover, Avisseau had perfected several new techniques in glazing that enhanced the quality of the colors of the decorated piece. To modern eyes this platter may appear over-decorated, loud, and in utter violation of the principle that form should be related to function. However, French commentators found Avisseau's platter supremely tasteful because it was richly ornamented; it represented enormous skill, time, and originality on the part of the producer; its resemblance to nature was readily apparent and appreciated; and it was technologically a tour de force.23 The sideboard by the cabinetmaker Fourdinois (fig. 6) was also highly decorated and skillfully executed, though it differed from Avisseau's platter in adopting a distinctive historical style. This enormous work of carved walnut took its inspiration from the Renaissance, displaying variations on the scrolled shields and tracery characteristic of that period. Its function is suggested by the carved figures relating to food and drink, though it is difficult to determine from the illustration just how this piece of furniture could hold food or dishes. Holding up the sideboard are six chained, seated hounds, suggesting the theme of hunting as a means of procuring food for the table. This theme is repeated in higher layers of carvings, where a felled deer and game bird appear, as well as scenes of hunting and fishing. Above these representations stand four female figures symbolizing Europe, Asia, Africa, and America and holding fruits or products typical of each continent. At the top of the sideboard six putti are harvesting grain and making wine; between them sits the goddess Ceres holding two cornucopias. Journalists and jury members were impressed with this intricate design and appreciated its appropriateness to the function of the sideboard. This appropriateness made the Fourdinois masterpiece tasteful, in contrast to the many exhibits whose designs were incongruous with their intended functions, such as a silver cream ladle in the shape of a buttercup, or a silver vulture on the lid of a perfume bottle. Critics also praised the . Avisseau is discussed further in the last section of this chapter. sideboard's design for being original and imaginative while still true to the historical Renaissance style.24 Though few bourgeois consumers could actually buy such an elaborate and costly sideboard, it was an exemplar of tasteful ornamentation and style.Comfort and InsulationAn essential component of the bourgeois definition of good taste at the time of the exhibition was the comfort and suitability of furnishings. In his report on furniture at the exhibition, Wolowski wrote that "the piece of furniture must lend itself easily and without obstruction to the use it serves." He roundly condemned beds that were so monumental that no one could get a good night's rest in them, chairs so covered with ornamentation that people bruised their bodies when trying to sit in them, and tables that tore people's clothes when they passed.25 Madame Pariset, the author of a popular housekeeping manual revised and reprinted several times through the century, echoed Wolowski's call for accommodating furniture, and she added stipulations for harmony and practicality. She advised her female readers to select furnishings that were "useful, convenient, durable, and especially that go together well."26 In principle, even bourgeois families of modest means could follow these simple rules of tastefulness in home furnishing and could thereby guarantee a modicum of comfort as well.Comfort was a key word in mid-nineteenth-century pronouncements on taste and furnishings, for it was closely linked with an attachment to the home and an ideal of domestic happiness particular to the bourgeoisie of this period. Aubert defined the comfortable as "all that relates to daily usage. It is not luxury, it is not whimsy, nor is it objects of absolute necessity. It is the thousands of resources of which well-being and good living (savoir-vivre ) consist."27 Aubert was explicit in distinguishing the criterion of comfort , characteristic of the bourgeoisie in the nineteenth century, from luxury , which she maintained motivated aristocratic consumption in earlier times. For . Wornum, "Exhibition," xiii . . Commission française, Exposition 7:2-3. . Mme Pariset, Nouveau Manuel complet de la maîtresse de maison (Paris: Roret, 1852), 10. . L'Illustration , 18 January 1851, 46. Aubert, consumers who furnished their homes and dressed themselves with the goal of comfort in mind were exercising good taste; comfort and taste were interchangeable, according to Aubert, where bourgeois consumption was concerned. Moreover, she maintained that contemporary bourgeois consumers who adhered to her principles were more tasteful than the preceding consuming class—the nobility—because the former eschewed luxury. "Taste is superior to luxury, because what pleases is superior to what surprises," Aubert asserted.28 Similarly, the economist Émile Berès, also writing for L'Illustration , echoed Aubert's association of good taste with domestic comfort. In an article on the Crystal Palace exhibition he praised the nineteenth-century involvement in the home as an indication of high civilization: "One cannot be too happy seeing man seek, according to his means and in purifying his tastes, to give charm to his [household] interior. This taste is intimately linked to family happiness, the first, the most certain, as well as the most desirable of all tendencies."29 It is noteworthy that Berès referred to "man" in this context of home decoration. He may well have been using the term to represent humankind in general, for (as discussed later in this section) both men and women of the bourgeoisie concurred that women should be arbiters of taste and primary consumers for the home. But it is also likely that Berès quite deliberately encouraged male participation in domestic activities because the home, though commonly seen as a female or private sphere, was an essential foundation for the male-dominated, bourgeois social order of the nineteenth century.30 Bourgeois men could freely engage in productive, commercial, administrative, and political activities outside of the home precisely because women provided them with a "haven" from the stresses of public life at the end of the workday, and more importantly, women's domestic duties of housekeeping and child care ensured the reproduction of the social hierarchy with future generations. In addition, the home permitted bourgeois men and their families to evade the unpalatable conditions of social inequality and working-class poverty that were . Ibid. . Ibid., 19 July 1851, 39. . See also Leonore Davidoff and Catherine Hall, Family Fortunes: Men and Women of the English Middle Class, 1780-1850 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987). ubiquitous during the early stages of industrial capitalist development.Consider the following passage by Constance Aubert describing the ideal bourgeois living room.[It is] well enclosed by good door curtains, by cushions of silk, and by double draperies that hermetically seal the windows. There may be only a paper wall covering, but a good rug is underfoot; people sit in excellent small seats without roughness, where the body abandons itself and rests. A profusion of fabric adorns the windows, covers the mantel, hides the woodwork. Dry wood, cold marble, disappear under velvet or tapestry.31 Aubert went on to describe the writing desk, plant stands, and other furnishings necessary for the "material well-being" that she considered the hallmark of bourgeois comfort. The meaning of "comfort" in this instance was the elimination of all hard surfaces and sharp edges. The perfect housewife (Aubert explicitly assigned furnishing to the mistress of the home) disguised or hid real structures to make them soft, accommodating, and restful. Why should bourgeois householders be so intent upon hiding wood and marble beneath upholstery and fabric and "hermetically sealing" the household interior from the outside? To be sure, the door curtains, thick rugs, and double curtains sealing the windows protected the bourgeois family from the cold; and as chapter 3 will demonstrate, Parisian householders did indeed cover their windows, floors, and furniture with layers of fabric and padding. But it is possible to view the bourgeois penchant for insulation in the home as an effort to insulate the family from a reality much harsher than wood and marble.32 After all, . L'Illustration , 15 February 1851, 112. . There is remarkable similarity between the following analysis by the twentieth-century critic Walter Benjamin and Aubert's prescriptions for tastefulness in the bourgeois home. Benjamin interpreted the domestic interior of the July Monarchy as a deliberate effort on the part of the bourgeois householder to shut out the reality of social problems and to create a fantasy world of security, isolation, and comfort: "The private person who squares his accounts with reality in his office demands that the domestic interior be maintained in its illusions. This need is all the more pressing since he has no intention of extending his commercial considerations into social ones. In shaping his private environment he represses both. From this spring the phantasmagorias of the interior. For the private individual the private environment represents the universe." Walter Benjamin, "Paris, Capital of the Nineteenth Century," in Reflections: Essays, Aphorisms, Autobiographical Writings , trans. Edmund Jephcott (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1978), 154. See also Michelle Perrot et al., De la Révolution à la Grande Guerre , vol. 4 of Histoire de la vie privée , ed. Philippe Ariès and Georges Duby (Paris: Éditions Seuil, 1987), 308-23. Aubert wrote only three years after the working class had risen against the bourgeois state, the free market, the sanctity of private property, and the ethic of individualism. Though military force successfully repressed the proletarian challenge, Aubert and members of her class had reason to try to distance themselves from the unsolved problems of poverty and the radicalism it inspired. A comfortable apartment or house that created a space for the bourgeois family, separate from the public world of the marketplace and the streets, allowed for a sense of insulation from poverty, hostility, and violence. It also fostered illusions of bourgeois security and self-sufficiency, as in the disguising of hard surfaces and the barricading against the outside.The thick drapery, cushioned sofas, and curtained windows, as well as ornamented furniture, sharply distinguished bourgeois homes from those of workers. In general, working-class furnishings consisted of only the most basic items: beds, bedding, cookware, a table and chairs, and perhaps a wardrobe for clothes or a buffet for dishes. Since housing was scarce, and rents rose steadily throughout the nineteenth century, the habitations of workers were notoriously dilapidated, overcrowded, and unhealthy. Small wonder that much working-class family life and sociability occurred in public—in the streets and cafés—instead of in domestic privacy.33 Interior comfort and style were amenities that few workers could afford and that bourgeois families therefore prized all the more.Alternative Standards of Taste at the ExhibitionDefending the bourgeois standard of stylish ornamentation and domestic comfort was a political issue in the broad sense of the term, as . Perrot et al., De la révolution , 314-19, 361; Frédéric Le Play, Les Ouviers européens , 2d ed. (Paris: E. Dentu, 1878) 6:327-492. For a controversial interpretation of the wretchedness of workers and their miserable living conditions, which led to criminal behavior, see Louis Chevalier, Laboring Classes and Dangerous Classes in Paris during the First Half of the Nineteenth Century , trans. Frank Jellinek (New York: Howard Fertig, 1973). French commentators' negative responses to alternative demand criteria at the Crystal Palace exhibition made clear. Inside the Crystal Palace, French journalists and jury members noted many manufactured articles, especially from England but including some from France, that were deemed in poor taste or of inferior quality. In several instances, commentators blamed consumers for this problem, noting that manufacturers who catered to markets other than the French bourgeoisie risked violating the bourgeois standard in order to sell their wares. These writers discerned a direct link between consumer tastes and production processes, indicating that consumers who lacked the good taste typified by the bourgeois standard encouraged the manufacture of showy, cheap, and poor-quality products.Émile Berès, for one, was not particularly worried about the alternative demand criteria he noticed in 1851. In an article on French bronze making at the exhibition he criticized the products by a manufacturer named Miroy, asserting that "in Monsieur Miroy the genius of art is less predominant than the mind of the industrialist." Berès's explanation for the poor quality of Miroy's bronzes was the manufacturer's profitable trade with North and South American consumers whose tastes were "less cultivated, less exigent than our own." Berès went on to suggest how a certain type of demand forced manufacturers into compromising the bourgeois standard of good taste:The inhabitant of the Pampas, the planter on the banks of the Ohio, the Mexican Sybarite, the dashing girl of Havana want ROCOCO , POMPADOUR ; give them rococo and pompadour. The industrialist is not exactly a moralist, a philosopher; nor is he . . . a Benvenuto or a David. The CASHBOX has the most reverberating sound for him; let us not blame him for listening to it.34 In Berès's opinion, rococo and pompadour styles were in bad taste because they did not contribute to comfort in the home; they represented a period of aristocratic decadence inimical to the domestic and conformist values of nineteenth-century bourgeois. Berès protested that he understood and accepted Miroy's justification for betraying the bourgeois standard of good taste—entrepreneurial profit—but he also refused to admit that the poor taste of American consumers, and . L'Illustration , 19 July 1851, 39. commercial exigency in general, could dethrone the standard he espoused. "France . . . is rich enough in ideas and flexible talents to be able to respond at will to all needs, to all fantasies."35 For Berès, then, the bourgeois standard was the ultimate and universal measure of tastefulness, and not yet seriously threatened by alternative demand types. Nor did Berès express concern over Miroy's choice of profit over quality in his manufacturing operation. The implication was that bourgeois consumers in France would continue to uphold their class standard in demanding high-quality manufactured goods, despite the appearance of new markets and the lure of success in accommodating them. Other commentators, however, were less sanguine than Berès about the implications of alternative demand criteria, especially for the French economy and social stability.Two French commentators responded to the comparison of French and English industry at the Crystal Palace exhibition by berating English standards of consumption and production in favor of the French bourgeois standard, and implicitly of manufacturing methods in France. The baron Charles Dupin, head of the French jury and a respected statistician, contended that both consumers and producers in Great Britain considered profit more important than quality in manufacturing, with a negative effect on the production of British textiles.What did it matter to English and Scottish [consumers] whether [manufacturers] wished to spin a fine thread or weave a beautiful cloth! That they make a fortune if they can . . . will be their reward. But as for exhibitions, if they notice one spinner or weaver rather than another, the latter can pride himself on selling more than his competitors, which would sadden them.36 Clearly Dupin did not consider "making a fortune" to be the sole nor the best objective of manufacturing, and he was disturbed that this predilection on the part of British consumers and producers undermined the purpose and criteria of exhibitions. For the jury of the 1851 exhibition judged products primarily on the basis of design, utility, originality, and craftsmanship—criteria that corresponded . Ibid. . Commission française, Exposition 1:76. closely to the elements of bourgeois taste.37 By these criteria French manufactured goods showed well at the exhibition and gained worldwide recognition. However, in terms of profitability and efficiency, British manufacturing far outstripped its continental rivals.38 If such criteria were to replace the bourgeois standard, French manufacturing would compare much less favorably with that of Britain in world markets. Like Berès, Dupin did not express any immediate alarm at this prospect, but the exhibition did serve notice on France that not all consumers in the world sought the quality goods that distinguished French manufacturing. In economic terms, Dupin and Berès were correct in discerning no danger to the ability of France to dominate its chosen market in 1851. But in social and political terms, demand for cheap, mechanically made, standardized goods was more threatening to the bourgeoisie and the social order they upheld.According to French periodicals, British writers suggested that the French superiority in the manufacture of luxury goods belied France's pride in its democratic institutions and society.39 If France were truly democratic, the argument ran, then it should produce more low-priced goods for the working poor. The implication here was that Britain, with its factories and mass production of low-cost consumer goods was more "democratic" than France, where most workers engaged in the manufacture of luxury products they could never hope to buy. At least one French commentator considered this criticism to . Official exhibition criteria for judging certain categories of goods were as follows: "Timepieces—strength, durability, simplicity and economy of construction, the finish of workmanship in accordance with scientific conditions of execution; manufactured goods (fabrics)—increase in usefulness and new usages, superiority of quality and workmanship, design, taste, low cost; glass and porcelains—great usefulness combined with economy and elegance." La Semaine , 25 July 1851, 467. French jury members made much of the fact that the English organizers of the exhibition devoted the bulk of the proceeds to the establishment of art and design schools in London. Ministère de l'Intérieur de l'Agriculture et du Commerce, Annales du commerce extèrieur: Faits commerciaux , no. 20, Exposition universelle de Londres en 1851 (Paris: Imprimerie impériale, 1853), 25-26; Léon Emanuel de Laborde, De l'union des arts et de l'industrie (Paris: Imprimerie impé-riale, 1856) 1:390-91. . See the French jury report on French and English glassmaking, where the reporter extolled the quality of French glass while acknowledging the more efficient methods of production and marketing of English glassmakers. Commission française, Exposition 6:22, 30; Michel Chevalier, L'Exposition universelle de Londres (Paris: Mathias, 1851), 17, 24-25, 34; La Semaine , 31 May 1851, 339. . Le Musée des familles , July 1851, 319; Le Correspondant , 9 June 1851, 307-8; La Semaine , 13 June 1851, 372. be a rude insult to the French bourgeoisie and a sly encouragement of working-class unrest in France. A journalist for Le Musée des families exclaimed:We reply to John Bull that bread is still cheaper in Paris than in London. Charity in France gives three million daily for the poor. Our most miserable hovels are palaces compared to the slums of Saint Giles, and our luxury workers would be happy as lords if they did not have . . . the chronic illness of revolutions. Cured of it once and for all, they will have nothing to envy about your calico at four sous per meter.40 In defending the bourgeoisie in France, and implicitly the bourgeois standard of consumption, this author betrayed his bitterness and hostility toward the French working class and their recent revolution. In his view, further efforts toward mass production methods that would provide the French working classes with cheap manufactured goods were an unnecessary concession to unseemly and destabilizing rebellion. Like other members of his class, he believed that workers should be grateful to the bourgeoisie for demanding luxury goods and so providing jobs for skilled craftsmen and unskilled laborers alike. He resented the suggestion that the middle class in France failed to address the consumption needs of workers; although he mentioned cheap bread and bourgeois charity, he might also have referred to the expansion of the ready-made clothing industry that catered primarily to working-class customers.Were Berès's, Dupin's and this journalist's responses to the alternative demand criteria evident at the exhibition mere outpourings of patriotism? Were they rationalizations against the obvious superiority of Britain in the production of low-cost goods for working-class consumption and for export? Certainly chauvinism was not absent from any of the French accounts of the exhibition; this is not surprising given the rise of nationalism throughout Europe during the nineteenth century. Moreover, French commentators hoped their country's performance would show that the manufacturing crisis that both preceded and accompanied the 1848 revolution was over, and that foreign and domestic trade was again flourishing. But patriotism . Le Musée des families , July 1851, 319. See also Le Correspondant , 9 June 1851, 307-8. cannot be regarded as the sole explanation for the commentators' obsession with taste and their denigration of English manufacturing in this regard, for two reasons.First, the French were not the only viewers to judge French taste superior to that of other developing countries. The entire international jury essentially agreed on this point, and one English writer's report on precious metalwork displayed by England and France agreed with the French commentators as to the positive influence of consumer taste upon manufacturing in France:The English gold and silversmiths seemed to have valued their work by its weight of metal, while their foreign rivals wisely considering that art would give a more real and permanent value than more material, seemed to have attempted to attain perfection in design and workmanship. . . . From this we may infer that the blame is not to be attached so much to the producers of English Works of Art, as to those who, as large purchasers, keep the market stocked with articles suited to their own bad taste. . . . It cannot be denied that the taste of the class who purchase these works abroad must be higher than that of the corresponding class in this country.41 Thus the French bourgeois were by no means alone in praising the good taste of French consumers and manufacturers.Second, the patriotism argument cannot be divorced from a political interpretation of the French response to alternative demand criteria. French jury members and journalists, all bourgeois, were defending not only the bourgeois standard of taste in consumption and manufacturing in France but also bourgeois domination of the French economy, politics, and society. In rejecting alternative demand criteria, they reinforced the ascending position of their class. Their attitude was not unlike the attitudes behind the sumptuary laws of earlier centuries that prohibited all but aristocratic elites from wearing certain colors and apparel.42 To admit that foreigners, or French workers, had legitimate demands as consumers that differed from the bourgeois standard was to concede that certain social needs were not being met. Indeed the suggestion that workers were con- . Dickinson's Comprehensive Pictures of the Great Exhibition of 1851 (London: Dickinson Bros., 1854) (no page numbers). . Appadurai, "Introduction: Commodities and the Politics of Value," in Social Life of Things , 32, 57. sumers at all, and that they needed cheaper goods in order to enjoy a decent standard of living, called into question the existing social order in France and the liberal, individualistic ethos that supported it. Addressing workers' consumer needs would imply major changes in the organization of production and distribution of goods in France. This is precisely what workers demanded in 1848, and the bourgeoisie forcefully refused them. Were bourgeois men, either as political leaders or as individual entrepreneurs, willing to acknowledge the working-class demand for cheap consumer goods and the changes in manufacturing this demand entailed in 1851?Perhaps a minority were. A reporter for the Moniteur industriel , a periodical representing the interests of large-scale industrialists, asserted that although good taste in manufacturing was all very well, French producers should be doing more to open new markets for lower-priced manufactured products:We are always infatuated with our taste, a very great and precious thing in manufacturing, which has placed us in the high rank we occupy; but I think that we must now concentrate on methods to produce cheaply, to maintain foreign competition, and to put our production further at the disposal of the mass market that we have barely addressed. I believe that we have progress to make in this direction.43 Among both official and popular accounts of the exhibition, such judgments on French taste and manufacturing were infrequent. Moreover, this writer's comments could easily be interpreted as self-serving (or at least supportive of the big industry and/or protectionist lobby) more than concerned with the welfare of low-income consumers. For economic reasons most French commentators thought that French manufacturing should do what the exhibition showed it did best—produce tasteful, high-quality consumer goods for domestic and foreign markets (see chapters 6 and 7). Political concerns also squelched widespread advocacy of the production of . Moniteur industriel , 10 July 1851. Compare this modest and isolated plea for change in French industrial production with the flood of literature in the United States over the past few years urging American manufacturers to adopt Japanese methods of production organization; or even compare it to the English response to the Crystal Palace exhibition and the admission that England needed to improve its art and design in manufacturing. cheap goods for mass markets because "mass markets" usually meant workers, and workers' tastes were significantly different from those of the bourgeoisie. Indeed, Natalis Rondot's report of clay pipes at the exhibition (discussed in the next section) indicated that workers' "tastes" were downright subversive of bourgeois rule.Taste and Social RelationsAnalyzing clay pipes as part of his report on articles de Paris , Rondot bemoaned the inferiority of these products compared to other items displayed by French producers of articles de Paris (brushes, combs, decorative boxes, pins, toys, canes, umbrellas, buckles, buttons, etc.). His explanation for this problem was the bad taste of the growing number of working-class consumers, who forced manufacturers to produce cheap and ugly pipes.We are the first to regret that this immense consumption of clay pipes does not serve . . . to purify the taste and elevate the ideas of the masses; clearly the busts of great men or lovely statues would be better than these heads of revolutionary heros and broad caricatures. But the manufacturer must account for the habits of consumers, and one cannot hide the fact that the majority of peasants and workers prefer ephemeral figures or ugly models to the most charming subjects that Greek, Arab, or Egyptian art would inspire.44 Rondot's report raised two important issues regarding taste and manufacturing in France: taste as a means of political control or subversion, and the conflict for manufacturers between good taste and consumer demand. Rondot had obviously hoped that through consumption the working class would adopt the tastes, and thereby accept the social and political domination, of the bourgeoisie. But if great men and great art on clay pipes could impose bourgeois order, then pipes decorated with revolutionary heros and caricatures could conversely promote social unrest. Here, then, was an important reason for French writers to uphold the bourgeois standard of taste and to laud manufacturers who did so in their products. Though jury members and journalists never actually condemned manufacturers for violating the bourgeois standard and catering to the untutored tastes . Commission française, Exposition 7:129. of foreign or working-class consumers, their accounts nonetheless damned with faint praise the French producers who indeed cherished profit over good taste. Did these writers recognize a contradiction between maintaining the bourgeois standard of consumption and producing for a nonbourgeois market? Writers in Britain, where production was often more efficient and more modern than in France, were keenly aware of this problem on the occasion of the exhibition, and they responded to it by actively cultivating expertise in design and art among producers.45 The issue was not yet critical in France, but the very effort to disguise it suggested some awareness that elite tastes and a free market were not always compatible.French bourgeois took refuge from the difficulties of acknowledging the working-class consumers' preferences, and especially their needs, by fabricating a historical model of consumer and producer relations based on working-class, artisan production for bourgeois, elite consumption. This archetypal social relationship was exemplified in the biography of the pottery maker Charles Avisseau, who successfully exhibited at the Crystal Palace and who came to represent, for bourgeois readers of the popular press, the ideal French worker-producer. The role of the bourgeois in this feature story was, naturally, that of tasteful consumer. The roles of producer and consumer in this account of the middle of the nineteenth century paralleled the roles of skilled artisan and patron of the arts, respectively, from sixteenth-century France.Charles Avisseau was born in Tours in 1796, the son of a poor stonecutter who occasionally worked in a pottery establishment when he had no work in his own trade. To get the young Charles out of his mother's way, his father often took him to the pottery works, where Charles imitated the glaze makers. The owner of the works recognized young Avisseau's drawing talent and hired him to work in the shop. Avisseau quickly learned all about clays, firing, and glazing, and he moved on to a supervisory position at a fine faience works in Beaumont-lcs-Autels. There he initiated improvements in oven construction and clay and mineral mixtures, and he put his own ideas into pottery creations. At this point in his career, Avisseau saw an example of Bernard Palissy's glazed pottery, and he determined to discover the sixteenth-century potter's secret of applying colored . Sparling, Great Exhibition . enamel. With no formal education or help, Avisseau succeeded in his goal through dogged experimentation.Avisseau was driven to further experimentation in pottery coloring. Quitting his job and returning to Tours, he bought his own small shop and made a living by producing church ornaments and statues of saints, as well as repairing plaster. But he spent his nights searching relentlessly for a new palette of pottery colors that would fire at the same temperature. On his own Avisseau consulted learned treatises and studied nature to accomplish his goal, barely keeping poverty at bay during his artistic and scientific researches. Though he was again successful, he was still unsatisfied. He ultimately sought to incorporate gold into his glazes. In melodramatic terms, the biography described the Avisseau family engaged in the quest:Around the table . . . father and son, palette knife in hand, continue to work, after a full day, with the naive ardor of sixteenth-century artists. Under their direction two little sisters trace, with the patience of Benedictine monks, the scales of serpents and the veins of leaves modeled by the artists. Near the fire the mother of the family . . . pulverizes the glazes on a small grindstone.46 In the climax of this tale of artistic genius at work, the potter had exhausted all of his resources and had no more gold for his final glazing experiment, when his wife offered him her gold wedding band. The driven artist prevailed over the tender husband and honorable man; Avisseau accepted her sacrifice, and eventually produced the precious glaze.Despite these many personal triumphs Avisseau was unknown as an artisan until 1845, when a lawyer and dilettante bought and displayed one of his decorated bowls. At the lawyer's urging, Avisseau exhibited in local and regional shows, and finally at the 1849 Paris exhibition. The director of the national pottery manufacture at Sèvres, Brogniart, invited him and his family to live and work there on condition that Avisseau divulge the secret of his glazing processes. Acknowledging the honor, Avisseau declined, stating that he preferred the freedom of being his own master. Courted by artists, notables, and royalty he continued to live simply and devoted himself solely to the production of ceramic art. His noteworthy accomplish- . Le Musée des families , March 1851, 181. ments included vivid imitations of animals in their natural habitat, like his award-winning platter at the Crystal Palace exhibition representing swamp creatures and foliage.47 This story of Avisseau represented a perfect bourgeois ordering of consumption and production, modeled after the social and economic relations of the Renaissance. Avisseau, a skilled and dedicated artisan, succeeded because of individual effort, talent, and bourgeois patronage. He knew his place in the social hierarchy and aspired only to continue to supply bourgeois consumers with works of art for decorating their homes. The frequent references to the sixteenth-century—Palissy, naive artisans, Benedictine monks—suggested a simpler era, before industrialization threatened skilled labor, created urban slums, and impelled workers toward revolution. Bourgeois readers must have reveled in the presentation of an artisan totally devoted to his craft, who not only was satisfied with his station in life but also flattered the bourgeois desire to fill the sixteenth-century role of aristocratic patronage of the arts. In the story the representative bourgeois figure was not entrepreneurial but professional, and his main contribution to industrial achievement in France was cultivated taste and discriminating consumption. The lawyer and dilettante experienced no conflict between his taste as a consumer and his "productive" role in society. Consumers and producers were clearly divided here, just as they were during the Renaissance; and just as this ordering had contributed to France's reputation of artistic and tasteful manufacturing in the sixteenth century, readers could expect it would continue to do so in the 1800s. The proof was in the universal recognition of the fine French performance at the Crystal Palace exhibition.ConclusionWhat the exhibition showed, among other things, was that consumption was both a source and a characteristic of power. Bourgeois consumers promoted a standard of taste that effectively limited the acquisition of durable, stylish, comfortable furnishings and clothing to their own class. Possession of these goods was a visible sign of membership in the elite class, and accounts of the exhibition . Ibid., 179-84. suggested that the bourgeoisie was not eager to dispense with its almost exclusive hold on taste and consumption. French commentators greeted with derision the many displays in the Crystal Palace that reflected the tastes of consumers other than French bourgeois. And they decidedly scorned the suggestion that French manufacturers should address the requirements of a mass market, finding this a threat to bourgeois rule in France and an encouragement of working-class discontent with the existing economic and political order. Though jury members and journalists acknowledged the benefits that accrued to manufacturers who supplied foreign or working-class markets with cheap and "tasteless" goods, they did not view this as a desirable or even an inevitable direction for French industry in the future. Their positive assessment of the superior quality and taste of French manufactured goods reflected both economic and political motivations to maintain the status quo.Bourgeois taste encompassed aristocratic models of art and beauty, and a new criterion of domestic comfort. The ideal of tastefulness as conveyed in the popular press was a respectable conformity, promoting harmony and style without being extraordinary or garish. Women more than men had to fulfill the goal of tastefulness for themselves and their families, particularly since the element of domestic comfort placed consumption within the feminine domain of the home. Yet the consuming activity of bourgeois women was neither limited to the home nor a simple complement to the male realm of production, despite the idealized gendering of private and public in nineteenth-century middle-class society. Continues...Excerpted from France at the Crystal Palace: Bourgeois Taste and Artisan Manufacture in the Nineteenth Centuryby Whitney Walton Copyright © 1992 by Whitney Walton. Excerpted by permission. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.