Material Lives

Conventional histories of the 18th century - and the industrial revolution and the birth of the consumer society - have distorted our understanding of the complex dynamics of material production and consumption and the ways in which these were experienced by both men and women. With its illuminating stories of women's experiences, and their material literacy and agency as producers, Material Lives offers a new way of looking at this period, challenging previously held views and assumptions. Using deep archival research to tell these stories, Material Lives shifts the conceptual framework by which women are perceived as passive consumers - those who bought things - to active producers - those who made things.

Dyer focusses on genteel women, whose engagement with production has traditionally been characterised as decorative, trivial and superficial, and reveals the strategies used by women to negotiate and record their interactions with the increasingly sophisticated world of goods. Exploring the material archives of four women of the period - fabric samples, 'dress of the year' watercolours, doll-sized versions of women's garments and adorned prints - as forms of lifewriting, or material biographies, the book reveals how women used the material culture of making to record and navigate their lives. In so doing, Material Lives challenges our previously held understanding of 18th-century society and the history of gender, making and consumption, placing women centrally as 'makers' in this new consumer society. For researchers and students of material culture, dress history, consumption, gender and women's history, it offers a rich resource of stories to illuminate the past.