Global trade and the rise of luxury

From the sixteenth century onwards, global trade transformed the market for luxury goods in Europe. Imported materials and consumer goods, such as silk, muslin, mahogany and tea, were rare and expensive in the early modern world, and the physical distance these items travelled enhanced their value and desirability. Royal and imperial courts were the primary markets for luxury goods in the early years of global trade, but by the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the market widened to include new classes of wealthy, non-titled consumers. Developments in commerce, trade networks and naval transportation made goods from Asia, including textiles and porcelain, and materials from the Americas and Pacific, including sugar and precious timbers, more readily available.

Merchants and traders marketed these goods based on taste and fashion, building the association between imported luxury goods and a sophisticated, cosmopolitan way of life. European-made imitations of luxury goods from Asia generated more new products and markets. The refined consumer culture made possible by global trade was underpinned by exploitive labour systems, including the use of enslaved labour and colonial expansion. The rise of luxury was central to the economic and design developments of the modern era, as well as a potent symbol of imperial power and control.

Silk was among the earliest luxury traded commodities, giving its name to the world’s most famous trading route: the Silk Road. Persia’s strategic position – midway between China, India and Byzantium Empire – made it the centre of the silk trade between the East and West from the start of the first millenium. Woven Chinese silk was transported by caravan via Persia to Alexandria at the time of Alexander the Great and entered the Roman Empire under the reign of Augustus (27–14 CE). At this time, a pound of silk was equal in value to the same weight in gold. The secretive technology behind silk production – and the tightly held supply of silkworms in China – made silk incredibly precious and desirable. Silkworm cultivation was introduced into Persia around 500 CE, and silk production became a major industry in the region. The oldest silk work in the NGV Collection, Textile, 1000–1050, shows hunting scenes in beaded circles, which were characteristic of Persians designs of this era and were imitated by Byzantine and Chinese weavers.

Silk cloth entered Europe at the time of the Mongol Empire (1206–1368) and by the end of the 1200s, silk thread from China was being woven by European weavers in Italian centres, such as Lucca in Tuscany. Italian-made silk and silk velvets was purchased by churches and members of noble families, who wore garments made from the fabric on special occasions as a sign of both honour and prestige. The French King Charles III, for example, was welcomed to Lucca by ‘merchant princes who … as a rare honour, were accoutred and dressed in fine cloths of gold and velvet’.¹Jacques Anquetil, Silk, Flammarion, New York, 1995, p. 31.

Silk weaving spread to the important Italian port cities of Genoa and Venice. Due its early commercial links with Constantinople, Venice was the European gateway for trade, products and artistic traditions from the Byzantine Empire, and it became a manufacturing hub during the Renaissance, supplying markets in Europe and the East with luxury products, including silk. Venetian weavers adapted Chinese and Persian methods to develop new types of silks and silk velvets, feeding consumer demand for the luxury product.

The luxurious green and gold velvet canopy in the background of the painting The Virgin and Child, mid to late fifteenth century, is an example of ciselé velvet. This Venetian invention involved manipulating the heights of the fabric’s warp threads to create textured patterns and also features loops of metal thread that produce a sparkling effect, referred to as allucciolati. Renaissance-era painters in Italy, as well as northern Europe, kept collections of these textiles in their studios to use as reference material, and integrated silk velvet into their compositions as a symbol of status, honour and wealth. The pomegrenate motif on the velvet in The Virgin and Child was a symbol of fertility, eternity and resurrection, introduced into European culture through trade with the Ottoman Empire.

Domestic European consumer markets showed different tastes and preferences for luxury goods. Frederick van Velthuysen (d. 1658) was a Dutch merchant who traded extensively with Italy. His mercantile connections are reflected in the Italianate town landscape that forms the backdrop of the marriage portrait Frederick van Velthuysen and his wife, Josina, 1636, by Thomas de Keyser, which shows off the wealth and social status of its sitters. Josina’s black ensemble represents the sombre luxury favoured by the Dutch elite. The patterned textile of her dress is likely velvet from Venice or Genoa, made using silk thread – imported from modern-day Syria and Iran and drawing on weaving techniques introduced into Italy by Persian exiles – after first originating in China at the beginning of the first millennium. Both Genoa and Venice used their positions as seaports to export cloth to both the European and Eastern markets – sending finished textiles back to the Ottoman ports from which they sourced their thread.

In the eighteenth century, a new form of luxury consumer culture emerged. While what historian Jan de Vries termed ‘old luxury’ was a type of consumption that thrived in royal courts and was used to show social status, ‘new luxury’ was a more social and inclusive culture of luxury enjoyed by urban consumers.²Jan de Vries, ‘Luxury in the Dutch Golden Age in theory and practice’, in Maxine Berg & Elizabeth Eger (eds), Luxury in the Eighteenth Century: Debates, Desires and Delectable Goods, Palgrave, Basingstoke, 2002, pp. 41–56. Imported materials, as well as domestically made luxuries, became more readily available throughout the eighteenth century due to technological and economic advances. The first fashion magazines, featuring illustrated plates of garments worn by nobles in the French court, were circulated in this era. These developments meant that changes to fashion became more dynamic and there was greater pressure among elites to conform to new styles. However, luxury textiles remained expensive, so refashioning garments into updated styles was a practical solution. The c. 1770 Dress in the NGV Collection shows evidence of being remade several times over a span of approximately 100 years, finding its final form in the mid nineteenth century. As the Industrial Revolution ushered in an era of mass-produced textiles in the 1800s, there was also a preference among some luxury consumers for the handwoven fabrics of the past century. Remaking garments to complement fashion trends was a step towards the ‘affordable luxury’ that further democratised the luxury industry in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, as mass production and further expansion to global trade further embedded luxury into mainstream consumer culture.

The NGV Collection works discussed in this essay feature in the exhibition The Global Life of Design at NGV International, which presents works created from or as a response to materials that have become available because of global trade from 1000 CE to the current day.

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