ABSTRACT
This chapter speaks to literature that unpacks the historical trajectory of shops as kinship artefacts in Europe and beyond. In shops that were not part of homes, customers were anonymous. The advent of shops of this kind is an unusually concrete example of 'the economy [becoming] progressively disembedded from society economic relations become increasingly differentiated from other types of social relationships'. Mention of famed, highly visible establishments in the centre of town poses the question of how tucked-away home-based shops in usually unsignposted residential buildings without thoroughfare managed to garner customers. Home-based workshops possess stylistic features common to workshops on more traditional commercial premises. Sometimes this is because a furrier has carried over the paraphernalia of a commercial-area-based shop to their home-based premises headed notepaper from a shop where a furrier had worked previously. When running a business from home, the consequences of potential clients thinking that you are either always open or always closed are both calamitous.
