Selling India and China in Eighteenth-Century Paris Natacha Coquery In this chapter, I endeavour to show how Parisian shopkeepers played a crucial role in the diffusion of ‘oriental’ goods on the domestic market. This means understanding how productive innovation, consumption and distribution were connected. One way of understanding this is to examine how shopkeepers advertised their ‘new’ products (which sometimes were neither new nor genuine) to a broad range of clients. Another way is to track goods in their account books. Shopkeepers, as intermediaries between producers and consumers, were perhaps among market actors—as important as large trading companies, such as the Company of the Indies. And Paris was quite a good stage. Since the Middle Ages, the French capital has been one of the major centres of economic activity in Europe. It was, in the Eighteenth Century, a key place in the world luxury market, producing and marketing silverware and jewellery, fine timepieces, bookbindings, textiles and so on. Like London, Paris was celebrated for its high concentration of artists and craftsmen. Trade in Paris consists particularly of useful, fashionable and pleasant objects, such as furniture, jewellery, timepieces, bronzes, gilding, porcelain, and a mass of other precious objects that we shall describe as accurately as possible Carolyn Sargentson and Guillaume Glorieux have shown how diverse suppliers for individual consumers were, and how hundreds of objects were piled up in the most famous haberdasheries, such as Gersaint, Lazare Duvaux, Granchez, and Poirier & Daguerre. Their commercial success depended on their ability to meet different customers’ expectations or needs, and to react quickly and flexibly to changing market requirements. They were on the lookout for novelty and fashion. Gersaint, for example, began his commercial career in 1718 as an art dealer
What was new was that a number of them became dedicated to craft, industrial and commercial activities; trade almanacs appeared in the late 1760s. At the same time, another medium began to flourish, published in Paris and in approximately 50 provincial towns, entitled ‘Affiches, Annonces et Avis Divers’. These newspapers were no more than plain information lists, similar to classified ads and lacking in drafting quality. The local editor juxtaposed real estate advertisements, proceedings (of books, performances, scientific experiences, and so on), market prices, the latest inventions, and so on. A large part of the ‘Affiches’ was devoted to business and trade, particularly in the ‘Avis Divers’, an advertising list included in the last section. Even the guidebooks began to explore craft, industrial and commercial activities. Promoting economic information was a new phenomenon for guidebooks, which until then had focused on an archaeological and historical overview of cities. In the 1780s, guidebooks became interested in business information. All these sorts of media—almanacs, newspapers and many advertisements that made both shopkeepers and products visible. This feature reflected the expanding market and especially the growing impact of small trade and consumption. Shopkeepers quickly understood the growing broadcast role of media, since consumers might fear novelty. Indeed, new items struggled to find a market. It takes time and persuasive power to change the status of an object from a rare to an everyday purchase. Moreover, this process differs among different social levels. Therefore, production, trade adjustment measures, and the flow of information between producers, retailers and consumers are significant. For these reasons, advertising exemplifies how the market for Chinese and Indian goods moved and expanded. The frequency of terms such as ‘des Indes’ (from India), ‘Indiennes’ (Indian cloth), ‘de la Chine’ (from China), ‘à la chinoise’ (Chinese), and more rarely ‘japonais’ (from Japan), reveals the commercial success and the demand for these products. Names of exotic fabrics are often quoted: ‘Peking’, ‘Nanking’, ‘Persian’, ‘circaka’ or ‘canadaris’, as shown on an invoice by the mercier Thibaud, owner of ‘A l’empereur’ (Figure 14.1), and arrack or tea is often mentioned.
has just invented a Chinese Mill that, by way of its shape, can catch the wind in any direction. Imitation and invention were closely connected in luxury and semi-luxury production, as Maxine Berg has shown. Shopkeepers and craftsmen used advertising to proclaim skill, especially when creating imitations that were indistinguishable from the original, or even better: ‘[she] paints designs on silk and gauze much better than articles from China’. The porcelain and china sectors were particularly well-developed: Manufacture of porcelains. Located in the town of Sèvres; the wares that are produced perfectly imitate Chinese porcelain. runs a sizeable factory for platters, plates and other vases in Japanned faience, a sort of porcelain … Advertisements emphasised the links between dexterity, imitation, fakes and inventiveness. This reflected the thinking of both consumers and shopkeepers: runs a Royal Manufacture for Varnishes, on metals, to [...] embellish and give vases in tole and tin the appearance of precious furnishings from China owns a Chinese varnish that imitates moulded gold, which resists the harm of air and even acid, and which lasts over twenty years without changing Quite on the contrary, other dealers chose to emphasise a product’s authenticity, using words like ‘true’ or ‘genuine’, as did this haberdasher: ‘Sells […] genuine Persians from the Indies and England in pieces’. (Figure 14.4, ‘The Golden Apple’). Genuine yellow tea from China Shop deals in genuine Papers from the Indies in all sizes, with Landscapes, Figures, Flowers and Birds to decorate Dessert trays, Door coverings, Windscreens and Screens In fact, for the most part, what they actually meant was to insist upon was true invention, like this ‘true English varnish […] that perfectly imitates the most beautiful gilding […] and the most beautiful China black’. This was as fake as most ‘exotic’ products: True English Varnish from Sir Torogood […] that perfectly imitates the most beautiful
metal gilding, and the most beautiful China black. Sells the true and perfect Indian Crimson, whose Indian father gave him the secret before his death For craftsmen, repairs were an important part of their business activity, particularly for the use of porcelain from India and furniture from China. The same goes for second-hand goods (known as ‘hazard’): Perfectly puts back together Porcelains, […] as well as all sorts of Indian figures, however broken or damaged they are. he also cleans and puts back together those [Chinese furnishings] in old lacquer. Shop and a considerable assortment of platters, plates and vases in old Saxon porcelain, Japanese porcelain and other effects in gilded bronze, rare, curious and precious in different sorts of hazard Shopkeepers’ ledgers were part of the same reality, without a similar advertising language. Take Indian fabrics, for example. Calicoes and printed cotton fabrics were to be found in all households, used for beds, screens, seats, curtains or drapes. In the Marquis of Trémouville’s hôtel particulier, servants’ rooms also had cotton printed beds (‘lits en indiennes’). A gilder bought printed cotton quilts and curtains; a lawyer at the Châtelet bought a six-piece paper screen from India (‘paravent de six feuilles en papier des Indes’), and so on. However, at the same time, calico remained a distinctive sign, appreciated by aristocrats (dressing gowns, dresses and so on). As for other goods, producers and merchants managed to provide products for various niche markets (in quality, in price) and constantly developed new specific markets. Shopkeepers played a major role in diffusing new modes of consumption. Thanks to a wide range of choice and to their reactivity, they actively participated in the dissemination of Indian and Chinese goods. People became comfortable with these novelties, a key issue for understanding eighteenth-century consumer culture.