Our Parliaments, Politics and People seminar is back for the autumn term! At next week’s seminar Kerry Love of the University of Northampton will discuss material culture and the everyday experience of politics between 1780 and 1832.
The seminar takes place on 3 October 2023, between 17:30 and 19:00. It is fully ‘hybrid’, which means you can attend either in-person in London at the IHR, or online via Zoom. Details of how to join the discussion are available here
Political and parliamentary history has, for the most part relied on written sources. Whether this be in a very traditional sense, using parliamentary proceedings, or in interpretations of the press and the impact of printing technology on the spread of political ideas, visual or material sources are mainly used to illustrate texts and not as the primary source material.
Historians of material culture often feel the need to preface their work with a disclaimer about how the field is developing, and new (although it has been ‘new’ for quite some time now) in order to provide justification for taking objects seriously. However, looking at the rich and varied range of objects produced in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries can help us to understand how people experienced politics, rather than just how they wrote about it.
In order to draw some comparisons across these visual and material sources, I have chosen three main categories of objects to study: ceramics, textiles and numismatics. My talk for the Parliament, Politics and People seminar will illustrate each of these groups in more depth, and the three examples below illustrate some of the key themes that I’ll discuss.
Textiles
The use and function of handkerchiefs have greatly fluctuated over time, but there is significant evidence to suggest that they became more popular in the 18th century, particularly the dark and heavily printed examples designed to be used when taking snuff. Printed handkerchiefs had been popular in the early modern period as entrepreneurial map-sellers and printers sought to expand their offering of products, even highlighting how they could be used in a number of ways.
Maps, coach timetables and almanacks were printed onto fabric, lasting longer than their less durable paper equivalents. However, the development of copper-plate printing in the 1750s enabled new possibilities in textile design, spawning a broad range of commemorative goods.
The fashionable trompe l’oeil design shown above is a good example of the integration of popular political subjects into everyday life. It copies sections of other prints to provide a snapshot of the time it was produced. Scattered among the portraits and playing cards are items including a portrait of John Wilkes, ‘The Brentford Election,’ the opening bars of ‘The Origin of English Liberty,’ portions of a lottery ticket and ‘A Grown Gentleman Learning to Dance’.
The material depicted suggests it was likely aimed at men, given the popularity of the dance master and that gambling would be more frowned upon for a middle-upper class woman, but the handkerchief is well suited to a cultured gentleman who was probably pro-Wilkes, given the references to liberty and the date. It also demonstrates how print and material cultures took inspiration from each other.
Ceramics
Stirrup cups were so-called because they do not have a base, and were designed to pass to guests who had their feet in stirrups, typically before leaving on a hunt. There are many silver examples in the shape of fox heads or hunting dogs, but some were ceramic. Fine ceramic goods made of porcelain featuring transfer-printed topical designs, including direct copies of caricatures, were produced, but political references were not always as obvious as the one pictured below, which depicts the pope.
Several different colour variations of this stirrup cup can be found across the V&A, British Museum, Brighton Museum and private collections. This suggests it was popular, and although manufacturers can not always be traced, it must have either been re-produced by the same factory or copied by others. When placed upside down, the cup depicts the pope wearing the triple crown. When inverted, the cup depicts a smiling devil, and the inside of the cup bears the inscription ‘While pope absolves / the devil smiles.’ This is likely a reference to anti-Catholic sentiment that may have grown since the first Catholic Relief Act in 1778, accelerated after the Act of Union (Ireland) and culminated in Catholic Emancipation.
Numismatics
The metalworking industries in Birmingham expanded dramatically between 1780 and 1832, helped in part by Matthew Boulton’s Soho manufactory. By 1775 the token coinage – copper coins in low denominations – mostly used by the lower classes, had been debased so much that the government had decided to stop producing them. As a result, the private token industry boomed, and anyone with the means to do so could produce copper tokens, featuring anything they wanted.
Because they became popular with collectors, many copper coins produced purely for the middle-class collectors’ market, and not used for their original function as a substitute for money. They are one of the most varied categories of objects, used to celebrate election victories, featuring toasts as inscriptions or roughly countermarked with slogans, like those made by Thomas Spence. There is also an overlap with the production and social function of medals, or smaller and lighter ‘medalets,’ that were also worn.
Commemorative medals and collectables, featuring figures like John Wilkes, were produced prior to the 1800s, like the one pictured above, which was produced as a part of a set for The Sentimental Magazine in 1773. In 1815, the Waterloo Medal was the first medal given to all men present during a campaign, regardless of rank. A significant moment in the history of the Royal Mint, as well as medallic art, this event also served to reinforce the idea that medals could be conferred upon men who were honourable and that the object demanded respect.
As I have written about elsewhere, this idea was later used by the Birmingham Political Union to promote the worthiness of their members when pushing for political reform. The BPU’s appropriation of the symbolic form of the medal demonstrates that political pressure groups understood and recognised the impact that visual and material culture had. When viewed in conjunction with written sources, political material culture provides a rich source base for the study of how industrial developments furthered and changed political communication for the producers and consumers of political goods.
KL
The seminar takes place on 3 October 2023, between 17:30 and 19:00. It is fully ‘hybrid’, which means you can attend either in-person in London at the IHR, or online via Zoom. Details of how to join the discussion are available here
