ABSTRACT
In failing to settle his bills promptly, in spending on household furnishings for entertaining and for display as well as on objets d'art for pleasure, and in regarding such behaviour as somehow incumbent upon a nobleman of taste anxious to avoid the imputation of 'mediocrity', Stainville was typical of the grander patrons with whom the skilled tradesmen and luxury dealers of 18thcentury Paris had to deal. By the late 18th century, however, as recent work in this field has shown, and as the papers in the present volume confirm, the clientele of such tradesmen had grown to include a broad band of consumers who were merely prosperous, and who bought (in shops open to the public) articles which were not only ready-made (as distinct from bespoke) but which had been produced by processes more or less industrial. 2
GILLIAN LEWIS
None of this was, in principle, new. Printed books, after all, had been manufactured in this way from the beginning, and even ready-made manuscripts had been on display to casual purchasers as long ago as the 15th century. In any case not all the products of skill and of highly organized cooperation were luxuries. It might take the efforts of a whole chain or producers and processors, from Polish farm-hands, via Baltic seamen, Frisian sea-captains, Zeeland warehousemen, Hollander bankers, Rhenish bargees and German bakers to turn Silesian grain into loaves of bread for the inhabitants of Cologne. Some university students had been able to afford globes or musical instruments even in 16th-century Oxford, ' and many specialized textiles all over Europe had been the product of industrial manufacture long before Oberkampf set up his factory at jouy.4
