Crafting identities

Artisan culture in London, c. 1550–1640

Jasmine Kilburn-Toppin, Christopher Breward, James Ryan

• Publisher: Manchester University Press
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781526147691
• Topic: Design
• Subtopic: Design History & Criticism

Crafting identities explores artisanal identity and culture in early modern London. It demonstrates that the social, intellectual and political status of London's crafts and craftsmen were embedded in particular material and spatial contexts. Through examination of a wide range of manuscript, visual and material culture sources, the book investigates for the first time how London's artisans physically shaped the built environment of the city and how the experience of negotiating urban spaces impacted directly on their distinctive individual and collective identities. Applying an innovative and interdisciplinary methodology to the examination of artisanal cultures, the book engages with the fields of social and cultural history and the histories of art, design and architecture. It will appeal to scholars of early modern social, cultural and urban history, as well as those interested in design and architectural history.

1
Introduction: crafting identities

In a detailed inventory of the company hall on Lime Street, in the City of London, dated 1490, the Pewterers’ Company clerk listed all the material possessions owned by the guild, and the various rooms in which these objects and fixtures were located. An inventory taken a century and a half later, in 1640, shows that in this intervening period the guild had substantially enlarged their hall, creating new chambers and additional storeys, and had also accumulated a far larger collection of material culture. This included textiles and soft furnishings, furniture, plate, cooking apparatus, armour, books, and manuscripts.¹ Examination of the Pewterers’ Company court records reveals a particularly intense period of rebuilding and decorative improvement to their livery hall between the early 1550s and late 1580s, including the construction of a new parlour, gallery, and court chamber.²

The example of Pewterers’ Hall, though unusually well-documented, was far from unique. It speaks to a broader pattern of structural and material change to guild buildings across early modern London. During the 1560s, for example, the governors of the Tallow Chandlers’ Company decided that their parlour ‘shalbe raysed higher and buylded of new ageyne’.³ Similarly, between 1572 and 1614 the Carpenters’ Company transformed their hall, building a new parlour, counting house, gallery, staircase, and stables. The Carpenters also enlarged their internal hall chamber and commissioned a new decorative scheme for the high end of the hall to represent the biblical and historic ancestry of their craft.⁴ The Armourers’ Company erected a new gallery, from which their extensive collection of full suits of armour, gifted by makers and patrons, could be viewed by all visitors to the company building.⁵ These examples of adaptation and material enhancement could be multiplied many times over. Furthermore, we are dealing not just with alterations to existing built fabrics. Between 1549 and 1638 the Cordwainers’, Clothworkers’, Goldsmiths’, and Ironmongers’ Companies demolished their halls, and constructed entirely new institutional buildings on the same sites. The assistants of the Goldsmiths’ Company declared in 1635 that the new Goldsmiths’ Hall, which took half a decade to complete and involved intensive, sometimes fraught negotiations with civic and royal authorities, was ‘a publique work for a never dyeing body’.⁶ The degree to which the ‘publique’ nature of this project infringed upon the Goldsmiths’ autonomy was a matter which preoccupied the guild for the remainder of the 1630s.

This book explores artisanal identity and culture in early modern London. Craftsmen were integral to the social, political, and economic organisation of the city, and thus played an essential role in the meteoric rise of London's status in Europe and the wider world. Yet there is a surprising absence of literature on artisanal cultural practices. This book argues that the social and intellectual status of London's crafts and craftsmen was embedded in particular material and spatial contexts. The focus of this study is the institutional buildings and material cultures of London's craft companies. Artisans physically shaped the built environment of the city, but the experience of negotiating urban space also impacted directly upon their own distinctive identities. In the pages that follow we take seriously the perspectives and voices of London's artisans, rather than simply reiterating what was said about craftsmen by those with greater economic and social capital. Crafting Identities recaptures the social experiences and knowledge cultures of artisans in England's early modern metropolis.

Crafting identities

A major aim of this book is to identify and examine a significant cultural development hitherto overlooked by social and architectural historians: a City-wide movement to enlarge, beautify, and rebuild company halls from the mid-sixteenth century to the start of the English civil wars. These were expensive, highly visible, and time-consuming projects in which London's leading artisans played key roles as commissioners, advisors, and practitioners. The period witnessed a substantial expansion in the number, size, and complexity of guild structures. But the book also has a larger ambition and a far wider scope. By exploring these re-building projects in depth – including design processes, construction works, and the multifarious spatial practices which took place within and around these architectures – it throws new light on artisanal cultural production and self-presentation in England's most diverse and challenging urban environment. The book's novel focus on artisanal spaces and material collections reveals a culture that was undergoing re-definition and change from the mid-sixteenth century, while still retaining important links to its late medieval heritage. Moreover, the spatial framework of analysis exposes a number of shared trends across London's artisanal communities concerning knowledge cultures and the representation of expertise, the organisation of social relations, the negotiation of identity and status, and the establishment of distinctive memorial cultures.

The first common theme across London's artisanal population relates to building sites and their knowledge cultures. Establishing the parameters and depth of artisanal epistemologies is especially important against a historical (and historiographical) backdrop in which craftsmen were frequently reduced by their social superiors to no more than unthinking operators.⁷ Historians have often been guilty of repeating the same prejudices.⁸ Skilled craftsmen were central to all building schemes throughout the city and its growing suburbs. But uniquely in the case of these hall rebuilding projects, artisans were patrons, designers, material suppliers, and construction workers. The interactions between craftsmen on these sites, r...