George Clarke and the furnishing of Hyde Hall, 1806-1835

Abstract

The motivations for acquiring household furnishings in the early nineteenth century were rarely straightforward or uniform. Then, as now, domestic interiors resonated with objects that inhabitants regarded with varying degrees of pleasure, purpose, or indifference. Inconstancy in consumption has not precluded historians of decorative arts from reducing it to primarily an act of aesthetic and social aspiration. Because status and fashion were real and familiar concerns, this has become a conventional explanation for why people bought the things they did. It also has sufficed because causality is difficult to prove in an activity that merged innumerable economic, demographic, and functional incentives with human psychology and matters of taste. Records fastidiously kept by George Clarke (1768-1835), from the time he immigrated to the United States in 1806 through the last phase of construction on his country estate Hyde Hall, expose clear linkages between personal circumstances and consumer spending that enable a more precise account of historical furnishing decisions than theories of conspicuous consumption allow. This study addresses the establishment of a household inventory by analyzing records of Clarke’s commercial transactions against the trajectory of his personal and professional life. Lending material support to documentary research is the rich surviving collection of Clarke’s furniture, ceramics, metalwork, art, and household fixtures. Much of it is contained in the house he designed and inhabited with his spouse, Ann, whose architectural development was crucial to the family’s interactions with the market for household furnishings. The grandeur of Hyde Hall enhances its value as a corrective for assumptions about consumer spending because it accentuates selectivity and restraint in other purchases. The Clarkes did not spend indiscriminately, but only as the need arose following changes in family life and their domestic context. The family and their home were exceptional, but their pragmatism as consumers of furnishings exhibited logic that extended to anyone protective of his or her resources and requiring more compelling objectives than frivolity to expend them.