"This is of the yncke: yt is very bad he shall bringe no more"

• In Event: Materiality in Motion: Material Cultures of Movement

Abstract

This paper explores the types of movements occasioned by domestic consumption in early modern England. It identifies the kind of small, familiar journeys which provisioning the household might occasion, not for food but for domestic objects such as furniture or furnishings and consumables like paper and ink. It investigates the rhythms of these journeys, their duration and direction, the levels of forward planning which they necessitated and the self-consciousness which they may therefore have produced. Working carefully with the language of such quotidian journeying, particularly in its administrative manifestations in account books and its imaginative representation on the stage, the paper shows how the flow of goods into houses defined relationships between vendors, purchasers and consumers (manufacturers, servants, masters), but also assesses the significance of such material movements for defining individual and household identity – the extent to which the nature of settled household space was built on movement and change.

Author

• Catherine Richardson, University of Kent