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 the domestic market. This means understanding how productive diffusion of ‘oriental’ goods on innovation, consumption and distribution were connected. One way of understanding this is to examine how shopkeepers were neither new advertised their ‘new’ products (which sometimes 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
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
5.5_coquery.docx