Barbara Johnson’s Material Life: An Eighteenth Century Vicar’s Daughter’s Biography

Fascinating online lecture from the Church Conservation Trust on a scrapbook by an 18th century woman recording her clothing from the age of 8 to 80.

Dr Serena Dyer from De Montfort University and author of “Material Lives: Women Makers and Consumer Culture in the 18th Century” explained how Barbara’s mother had educated her children to keep accounts and document their lives, encouraging her daughter to start this album with her first sac dress at the age of 8.

She also talked about how this reflected the growth in consumerism at the time leading to the need to keep good accounts as with this came the advent of ready credit. Barbara was a woman of independent means and never married.

Most interesting to me was how Barbara pinned samples of all the material of her dresses in the book as well as recording its price, the amount used, who made it and if it was for a particular occasion. She also added small fashion engravings from pocketbooks.

The album is now kept at the Victoria and Albert Museum and I would love to see it and maybe an exhibition around it or has there already been one?

 

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