Eighteenth-century Ceramics Products for a Civilised Society

Using documents, diaries, novels and conventions of the time, this volume describes the social uses and cultural meanings of fine ceramics in the 18th century: porcelain, blue and white earthenware and creamwares. Rather than placing the objects themselves at the centre, this approach focuses on the people who used, criticized, sold and stole them, and investigates the impact these products had on the practical and imaginative lives of the 18th-century middle class. These middling sort of people were now able to provide refined receptacles to support the social rituals of polite society and these artefacts were invested with values and emblematic meanings alongside their practical or ornamental functions.