Gender and Materiality in Early Modern English Gloves

Abstract

January 1578: 'By the Lady Mary Sydney, one peir of perfumed gloves, with twenty-four small buttons of golde, in every of them a small diamond'.January 1579: 'By Mr. William Russell, a paire of gloves, garnished with gold and sede perle'. 2 Elizabethan gift rolls feature frequent presents of elaborately decorated and perfumed gloves given to the queen by both women and men in highly ritualised New Year's gift-giving ceremonies at court. These new possibilities for conspicuous European consumption of exotic products and new materials were opened up by European settlement in North America beginning in the sixteenth century and spreading over the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, as well as by expanding trade between Europe and Asia. At the same time, royal and aristocratic courtly culture contributed to a growing demand in luxury items such as art, porcelain, jewellery, textiles and clothing. These changing patterns of early modern consumption in Europe could both reinforce existing social patterns and shape new ones, including gender relations, as consumables interacted on various levels with human actors. 3 Gloves became part of this increase in demand for 1 This article derives from an AHRC network 'Gender, Power and Materiality in Early Modern Europe' led by Daybell and Norrhem. We are thankful to the following for comments and assistance: