A Taste for Luxury in Early Modern Europe : Display, Acquisition and Boundaries

Cover page -- Halftitle page -- Title page -- Copyright page -- Contents -- Figures -- Tables -- Contributors -- Acknowledgements -- Display, Acquisition and Boundaries of Luxury and Taste -- Thinking about luxury -- Defining taste -- Luxury and taste: some unanswered questions -- Key ideas -- Notes -- Part One Displaying Taste and Luxury -- 1 The Fabric of a Corporate Society: Sumptuary Laws, Social Order and Propriety in Early Modern Tallinn -- Who issued sumptuary legislation? -- Who did the sumptuary legislation address? -- The anatomy of appearances -- Conclusion -- Notes -- 2 New and Old Luxuries Between the Court and the City: A Comparative Perspective on Material Cultures in Brussels and Antwerp, 1650-1735 -- New and old luxuries -- Brussels, a capital city in comparative contrast14 -- Luxury patterns in an era of critical transition: Brussels and the 'new luxuries'? -- Luxury patterns in an era of critical transition: the ambiguity of 'new' and 'old luxuries' -- Navigating between the logic of old and new luxury -- Conclusions -- Notes -- 3 Luxury and Taste in Eighteenth-Century Naples: Representations, Ideas and Social Practices at the Intersection Between the Global and the Local -- Cosmopolitanism and the decor of everyday life -- French courtly taste and 'emulative' absolutism -- Taste as a means of social reform and the irreducible 'otherness' of Naples -- The failure of absolutism and the victory of (British) simplicity -- Conclusions -- Notes -- 4 What About the Moorish Footman? Portrait of a Dutch Nabob as a Dedicated Follower of Fashion -- The Bengal Sichterman: trade, social networks and luxury -- The 'significant other' in Sichterman's life of luxury -- Grand seigneur in Groningen: a 'town palace' and a country estate -- Conclusions -- Notes -- 5 Fashion and Luxury in Eighteenth-Century Germany.