ABSTRACT
International exhibitions were urban showcases in which luxury goods were displayed to articulate a gendered dynamic that linked an ephemeral event to such permanent sites of consumption and spectacle as department stores and museums. Though they were phenomena of the later nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, international exhibitions built on developments of the century before, seen particularly in the idea of luxury and consumption. Continuities were also apparent in the relationship between gender, exotic luxury goods imported into Europe from the East and urban contexts for exhibition or display. Looking in detail at some of the traditional goods that were manufactured and displayed in Scotland and Ireland alongside such living exhibits, and at the Irish Villages that were mounted in London, further highlights connections between gender and luxury, oriental and domestic, past and present. It was these displays that formed the basis of later developments in Irish luxury craftwork, including lacemaking.
