The Embroidery Trade in 18th-century France

This PhD project aims to investigate the products, skills and networks of the embroiderers of 18th-century France. Embroidery was not only a polite accomplishment but also a well-established trade by the 18th-century, subject to the fluctuations of fashions in secular and ecclesiastical clothing and furnishings. Embroidery provides a useful case study of a trade that did not require sophisticated machinery or large capital investment, and was not involved in major technological change during the century.

Most current accounts of embroidery in this period rely on the treatise L'art du brodeur published by Charles-Germain de St Aubin, self-proclaimed embroiderer to the King, in 1770, and on the entry in the Encyclopédie. While individual 'masterpieces' or collections of objects - both designs and embroideries - have been the focus for research, it is their technical or iconographical sophistication that tends to be considered.

There is, however, no major socio-economic study of the trade, comparable with those for other fashion-related trades such as textile designers, shoemakers and seamstresses. This PhD bridges this gap, building on current research on the Magoulet family (1660s-1730), on the life-cycle of a group of late 18th-century embroidery patterns in the National Museum in Dublin, the collection of late 18th-century embroidered waistcoats at the Musée Galliera, and provides a comparator for work on 18th-century English embroidery.