Selling India and China in Eighteenth-Century Paris

Natacha Coquery

In this chapter, I endeavour to show how Parisian shopkeepers played a crucial role in the diffusion of oriental goods on the domestic market. This means understanding how productive innovation, consumption and distribution were connected. One way of understanding this is to examine how shopkeepers advertised their new products (which sometimes were neither new nor genuine) to a broad range of clients. Another way is to track goods in their account books.

Shopkeepers, as intermediaries between producers and consumers, were perhaps centre-stage among market actorsas important as large trading companies, such as the Company of the Indies.[endnoteRef:1] And Paris was quite a good stage. Since the Middle Ages, the French capital has been one of the major centres of economic activity in Europe. It was, in the Eighteenth Century, a key place in the world luxury market, producing and marketing silverware and jewellery, fine timepieces, bookbindings, textiles and so on.[endnoteRef:2] Like London, Paris was celebrated for its high concentration of artists and craftsmen. [1: See, in French historiography, Louis Dermigny, Cargaisons indiennes, Solier et Cie, 1781-1793, 2 vols (Paris, SEVPEN, 1960); Louis Dermigny, La Chine et lOccident. Le commerce Canton au XVIIIe sicle 1719-1833, 4 vols (Paris: SEVPEN, 1964); Andr Lespagnol, Cargaisons et profits du commerce indien au dbut du XVIIIe sicle. Les oprations commerciales des Compagnies Malouines 1707-1720, Annales de Bretagne et des pays de l'Ouest, 89 (1982), pp.31350; Philippe Haudrre, La Compagnie franaise des Indes au XVIIIe sicle (1719-1795) (Paris: Librairie de lInde, 1989); Philippe Haudrre, Les Compagnies des Indes orientales, trois sicles de rencontre entre Orientaux et Occidentaux (Paris: Desjonqures, 2006).] [2: Robert Fox and Anthony Turner (eds), Luxury Trades and Consumerism in Ancien Regime (Aldershopt: Ashgate, 1998).]

Trade in Paris consists particularly of useful, fashionable and pleasant objects, such as furniture, jewellery, timepieces, bronzes, gilding, porcelain, and a mass of other precious objects that we shall describe as accurately as possible[endnoteRef:3] [3: Tablettes royales de correspondance, (Paris: Royez, 1789), art. Mercerie, Orfvrerie, Clincaillerie.]

Carolyn Sargentson and Guillaume Glorieux have shown how diverse suppliers for individual consumers were, and how hundreds of objects were piled up in the most famous haberdasheries, such as Gersaint, Lazare Duvaux, Granchez, and Poirier & Daguerre.[endnoteRef:4] Their commercial success depended on their ability to meet different customers expectations or needs, and to react quickly and flexibly to changing market requirements. They were on the lookout for novelty and fashion. Gersaint, for example, began his commercial career in 1718 as an art dealer on the Pont Notre-Dame, derisively known as The Bridge of Bad Paintings (Le Pont aux croutes). Beginning in the mid-1730s, Gersaint shifted its commercial activities towards exotic products and curios, particularly Chinese ones; in the 1730s, the Chinese trend was well under way. Like others, Geraint changed his shop sign in 1740, from the conventional Au Grand Monarque (The Great Monarch) to the more attractive La Pagode (The Pagoda).[endnoteRef:5] Gersaints inventory included about 3,000 pieces of porcelain, amounting to approximately 30 types of objects, both functional and decorative. Among Chinese articles, some were rather cheap consumer goods (costing on average six livres each), such as Chinese figurines and pagodas, and utility chinaware: sugar boxes, milk jugs, vases or chamber pots. There were also high-price items, such as porcelain, tea, coffee or chocolate sets presented on a lacquered tray (100 livres), lacquered furniture (150 livres) and so on. Without being an expert in this sector, the goldsmith and jeweller Agard, another well-known dealer, also sold Chinese and Indian goods.[endnoteRef:6] His inventory lists four types of items: paintings; vases and terracotta figurines; prints, drawings, natural-history objects, including some Chinese clothes; porcelain and curios, such as Chinese or Indian dragons, cups and saucers, teapots, urns and so on. [4: Carolyn Sargentson, Merchants and Luxury Markets: The Marchands Merciers of Eighteenth-Century Paris (London: V&A Museum, 1996), pp.23-4 sqq; Guillaume Glorieux, lEnseigne de Gersaint. Edme-Franois Gersaint, marchand dart sur le pont Notre-Dame (1694-1750) (Seyssel: Champ Vallon, 2002), p.269 sqq. See also Hlne Belevitch-Stankevitch, Le got chinois en France au temps de Louis XIV (Geneva: Slatkine Reprints, 1970); Pagodes et dragons: exotisme et fantaisie dans l'Europe rococo, 1720-1770: Muse Cernuschi, Muse des arts de l'Asie de la ville de Paris, 24 fvrier-17 juin 2007 (Paris: Paris-Muses, 2007).] [5: Guillaume Glorieux, lEnseigne de Gersaint, pp.2634.] [6: Joseph Agards inventory, Archives Nationales (Paris), et/XI/571, 14 March 1750.]

Many nameless individualsshopkeepers, peddlers, dealers, stallholders and so onworked alongside celebrities, not to mention parallel networks.[endnoteRef:7] Such anonymous tradesmen were less well-know and less talented, but they nevertheless had a powerful impact in spreading new behaviours and consumer patterns, because they were numerous and active.[endnoteRef:8] Indeed, what is striking is how many shopkeepers sold Chinese and Indian goods: these products were not reserved for the few. Haberdashers and cloth dealers, as well as upholsterers, fan makers, jewellers, mechanics, wigmakers, perfumers, confectioners, grocers, papermakers, gilders, painters, founders, tabletiers and ivory workers, and wallpaper makers sold exotic goods. Numerous sources enable us to trace this contagious attraction with great accuracy. Like guidebooks and newspapers, almanacs became increasingly common throughout the second half of the Eighteenth Century.[endnoteRef:9] Almanacs were an old literary genre, dating back to medieval times. What was new was that a number of them became dedicated to craft, industrial and commercial activities; trade almanacs appeared in the late 1760s. At the same time, another medium began to flourish, published in Paris and in approximately 50 provincial towns, entitled Affiches, Annonces et Avis Divers.[endnoteRef:10] These newspapers were no more than plain information lists, similar to classified ads and lacking in drafting quality. The local editor juxtaposed real estate advertisements, proceedings (of books, performances, scientific experiences, and so on), market prices, the latest inventions, and so on. A large part of the Affiches was devoted to business and trade, particularly in the Avis Divers, an advertising list included in the last section. Even the guidebooks began to explore craft, industrial and commercial activities. Promoting economic information was a new phenomenon for guidebooks, which until then had focused on an archaeological and historical overview of cities. In the 1780s, guidebooks became interested in business information. All these sorts of mediaalmanacs, newspapers and guidebookscontained many advertisements that made both shopkeepers and products visible. This feature reflected the expanding market and especially the growing impact of small trade and consumption. Shopkeepers quickly understood the growing broadcast role of media, since consumers might fear novelty. Indeed, new items struggled to find a market.[endnoteRef:11] It takes time and persuasive power to change the status of an object from a rare to an everyday purchase. Moreover, this process differs among different social levels. Therefore, production, trade adjustment measures, and the flow of information between producers, retailers and consumers are significant. For these reasons, advertising exemplifies how the market for Chinese and Indian goods moved and expanded. [7: See, for example, Eugnie Margoline-Plot, Les circuits parallles de diffusion des toiles de l'Ocan indien en Bretagne au XVIIIe sicle, doctoral thesis, in progress, University of Bretagne-Sud (Lorient); Eugnie Margoline-Plot, Les circuits parallles des toiles de l'ocan Indien. Lorient au XVIIIe sicle, Histoire Urbaine, 30, Special Issue Consommation et exotisme, XVe-XVIIIe sicle (2011), pp.109126.] [8: Natacha Coquery, Tenir boutique Paris au XVIIIe sicle. Luxe et demi-luxe (Paris: ditions du Comit historique et scientifique, 2011).] [9: Natacha Coquery, The Language of Success: Marketing and Distributing Semi-Luxury Goods in Eighteenth-Century Paris, Journal of Design History, 17, Special Issue Disseminating Design: The French Connection (2004), pp.736.] [10: See the works of Gilles Feyel,: La presse provinciale au XVIIIe sicle: gographie dun rseau, Revue historique, CCLXXII (1984), pp.35374; La presse provinciale franaise dans la seconde moiti du 18e sicle: gographie dune nouvelle fonction urbaine, in Bernard Lepetit and Jochen Hoock (eds), La ville et linnovation en Europe 14e-19e sicles (Paris: Editions de lEHESS, 1987), pp.89111; Ngoce et presse provinciale en France au 18e sicle: mthodes et perspectives de recherches, in Franco Angiolini and Daniel Roche (eds), Cultures et formations ngociantes dans lEurope moderne (Paris: Editions de lEHESS, 1995), pp.438511; Presse et publicit en France (XVIIIe et XIXe sicles), Revue historique, CCCV/4 (2003), pp.83768.] [11: John Styles, Product Innovation in Early Modern London, Past & Present, 168 (2000), pp.132140.]

The frequency of terms such as des Indes (from India), Indiennes (Indian cloth), de la Chine (from China), la chinoise (Chinese), and more rarely japonais (from Japan), reveals the commercial success and the demand for these products. Names of exotic fabrics are often quoted: Peking, Nanking, Persian, circaka or canadaris, as shown on an invoice by the mer