ABSTRACT
In November 1575, the Augsburg merchant Hans Fugger was busy. He excitedly received two hundred loose, black ostrich feathers alongside two bound feather panaches in the “current Saxon manner” from Nuremberg and returned feathers to Munich as they were not up to date in style. Three months later, Fugger wrote to his Nuremberg agent about further fashionable new Saxon hats for his servants. He continued to inspect deliveries from Nuremberg to control their quality and sent patterns for hats he wanted to have made and accessorized. Each time he noted how much the feathers which adorned them pleased him. His esteem of feathers was no passing passion. In January 1578, Fugger noted the “incredibly beautiful and delicate” material of the new hats from Nuremberg. By 1585, he went to even greater efforts to source eighty to one hundred “really long, delicate and beautiful” heron feathers from either Venice or Vienna, where they were traded via Constantinople and Hungary. 1 Hans Fugger was one of many contemporaries deeply fascinated by the sensual qualities of materials. Fifty years later, Lewes Roberts told readers of his merchant’s handbook that “All commodities are known by the senses.” He added: “experience tells us that all commodities are not learned by one sense alone, though otherwise never so perfect; not yet by two, but sometimes by three, sometimes by foure, and sometimes by all.” 2 During the same period, artists all over Europe strove to represent newly achieved qualities of transparency in glass, the translucency of veil fabrics, the vibrancy and shimmer of feathers, or the mystery of imitating and mimicking the lustre of gold and silver in painting. 3 Artisans learned about innovative techniques, perfected their practical skills, and multiplied their offerings when dealing with materials from the New and Old Worlds to an unprecedented extent. Pursuing ingenious materials and fashions, consumers likewise cultivated new sensibilities for material qualities, which in turn stimulated their buying behaviour. Political and cultural elites engaged in practices of distinctive representation as well as competitive collecting. They furthermore involved themselves in intense debates on luxury and conspicuous consumption, worked out in an ever-growing discourse on materiality and its everyday use in a whole cluster of specific genres such as memoirs, mandates, drawings, paintings, and plays.
