Smith, Kate Esther (2010) The potter’s skill : perceptions of workmanship in the English ceramic industries, 1760-1800. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

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Abstract

This thesis focuses on perceptions of workmanship in the English porcelain
and earthenware industries between 1760 and 1800. Research by Berg and
Clifford has demonstrated a new interest in and valuation of workmanship
by contemporaries in the eighteenth century. Yet little is known of what
contemporaries understood workmanship to mean, or be. This thesis
argues that understandings of workmanship affected both the consumption
and production practices of eighteenth-century contemporaries. It does so
by concentrating on six groups of people – industrial tourists, consumers,
retailers, designers, manufacturers and workers. It demonstrates the
different ways in which contemporaries perceived hand skills and tacit
knowledge by examining a range of sources such as letters, prints, trade
cards, travel accounts and objects.
This thesis concludes that meanings of ‘workmanship’ - that combination of
effort, work and skill - were shifting in the second half of the eighteenth
century. For those not employed in manufacturing, reading manuals,
seeing production in action and handling objects all challenged their ideas
of workmanship. These experiences encouraged contemporaries to
question the meaning of innovative products and the manufacturing
techniques used to make them. Similarly, in manufacturing the
development of the design process and the demands of novelty and
standardisation forced manufacturers, designers and modellers to ask how
to achieve ‘excellent workmanship’. At the same time, workers understood
and valued their work in different terms – as a hard-won, social and
physical skill. This thesis argues that for eighteenth-century contemporaries
‘workmanship’ was a complex idea, under challenge from developments in
production and consumption. In so doing it moves the interlinked history
of manufacturing and consumption away from the extant debates of
economic historians and into a different sub-disciplinary space, namely
cultural history; a space that has tended to neglect the cultural aspects of
production.

Item Type:	Thesis (PhD)
Subjects:	D History General and Old World > DA Great Britain H Social Sciences > HD Industries. Land use. Labor
Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH):	Ceramic industries -- Great Britain -- History -- 18th century, Workmanship -- Great Britain -- History -- 18th century
Official Date:	May 2010
Dates:	Date Event May 2010 Submitted
Institution:	University of Warwick
Theses Department:	Department of History
Thesis Type:	PhD
Publication Status:	Unpublished
Supervisor(s)/Advisor:	Berg, Maxine, 1950-
Sponsors:	University of Warwick ; Henry Francis du Pont Winterthur Museum ; Royal Historical Society (Great Britain) ; Economic History Society ; University of Warwick. Humanities Research Centre ; University of Warwick. Dept. of History
Extent:	v, 292 leaves : ill.
Language:	eng

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