Introduction

Birgitta Falck lived and worked in Tallinn – a Swedish-ruled town on the shore of the Baltic Sea in what is now Estonia – in the latter half of the seventeenth century.¹ Over the course of three decades, she married a succession of four butchers, each more successful than his predecessor.² Within the confines of the corporatist system of merchant and craft guilds which regulated much of life in Tallinn, Birgitta Falck led a financially secure life and advanced steadily up the social ladder. Although butchers belonged to the lesser of the town’s two craft guilds, they were some of its most influential craftspeople, and all but the first of Falck’s husbands had sworn the burgher’s oath.³ Falck herself was a figure of some standing in her own right in the community. During the 1690s alone, she was named as witness or godmother at the baptisms of six children, five of whom came from artisan families, and one who was born to the town’s fire marshal.⁴

Yet this is only part of the story – for Birgitta Falck was also a notable moneylender in Tallinn. Abetted by her second and fourth husbands, she offered loans to individuals across the social classes, from peasants – to whom she lent rye secured against small trinkets and silver items – and fellow artisans to merchants and members of the town’s educated professions. The sums involved varied considerably; most people borrowed a few Reichsthaler (Rtl), while the secretary of the town council and royal assessor of the consistory, Conrad Akenstierna, borrowed a total of 300 Rtl on the security of some silver.⁵ In 1688, Falck’s second husband Hans Ostertag petitioned the Swedish governor-general of Estonia, trying to claim the 66 Rtl that a Captain Adam Johann von Burt had borrowed against some bullocks in 1682, plus interest.⁶ It appears that the case was not resolved as Falck wrote another petition three years later, lamenting her situation as a poor, solitary widow who had waited patiently for the debt to be repaid.⁷ While it remains unclear how Falck and her husbands acquired the capital from which they issued loans, the non-payment of one debt was by no means a threat to Falck’s credit activities, which she continued until her death in 1698.

The process of drawing up a probate inventory for Falck’s estate was initiated on 22 June 1698 and concluded a little more than a week later, on 1 July (Figure 8.1).⁸ Among numerous personal items, the inventory lists eighty-three items of clothing: twenty-two shirts, fourteen skirts, thirteen jackets, seven aprons, seven bonnets, six overgowns, four caps, two fur coats, one cloak, one petticoat, a set of jacket and skirt, another set listed as a jacket and bodice, one fur lining and one neckerchief. In comparing Falck’s inventory with those of other artisans from a similar background, it becomes evident that she was certainly in a class far above her fellow artisan households.⁹ The clothing resources available to lower-middle-class households varied widely, with some inventories including very few garments and a scattering of others containing a quantity of garments much like hers. The list attests to a level of material comfort that one might not have expected of an artisan household formally belonging to the lesser of Tallinn’s two craft guilds.

Figure 8.1 Title page of the inventory of Birgitta Falck, 22 June 1698, Tallinn City Archives, collection 230, inventory 1, No. Bt14, fol. 226r.

Falck’s probate inventory – and especially its record of her wardrobe – makes an excellent point of departure for analysing the relationship between appearances and social position in the early modern period. The traditional view is that society was rigidly hierarchical and that deep-rooted ideas about the appropriate relationship between a person’s social standing and their appearance resulted in a ‘coincidence of costume and social position’.¹⁰ But Falck’s inventory also shows well the kind of investment clothes were for early modern people and how they could be used as capital. Falck had a variety of garments in different stages of their life-cycle, and, as she acquired new garments, she pawned several of the old ones. At the taking of the inventory, eight garments were still pawned, indicating that she did not have a direct need for them as the clothing resources available to her were sufficient. The dynamic preserved in Falck’s inventory therefore allows us to shift focus away from the role of clothes as social signifiers and to consider their full complexity, which could not easily be codified by sumptuary law.

Early modern Tallinn was a highly corporatist town, with the town council at the pinnacle of political and social influence.¹¹ Beneath the council were associations of merchants: the Great Guild, which consisted predominantly of merchants involved in long-distance trade, and the Brotherhood of the Blackheads (Schwarzhäupter), which united unmarried merchants and merchant journeymen. Artisans usually belonged to one of the two composite craft guilds. St Canute’s Guild affiliated practitioners of the more esteemed crafts – those thought to require more skill – such as goldsmiths, bakers, tailors and so forth, while St Olaf’s Guild represented the less prestigious trades, such as stonemasons, carpenters, butchers and furriers.¹² In the seventeenth century, approximately five per cent of Tallinn’s inhabitants were burghers. Only those men not in the service of anyone else could become burghers, after swearing a ‘burgher’s oath’ and paying a sum of money (Bürgergeld).¹³ Being a burgher was a prerequisite for social and political advancement, and, although in theory there were no obstacles to artisans of local background swearing a burgher’s oath, in reality the burgher elite was comprised mostly of merchants and artisans of German or Swedish background.

The seventeenth century witnessed increased specialisation and variation in the artisanal crafts, with hairdressers, wig-makers, comb-makers, pearl embroiderers, button-makers and ribbon-makers establishing a presence, presumably a reflection of growing popular demand for certain new luxury goods. But ideas of strict social differentiation between merchants and artisans continued to persist, and artisans’ attempts to be recognised for their improved wealth and social standing ran afoul of the interests of the town council and the Great Guild.¹⁴ As will emerge in this chapter, this new-found dynamism and the struggle for distinction in appearances was also reflected in the sumptuary laws, which went from singling out burghers and journeymen to distinguishing between several groups of merchants and artisans. The chapter therefore first examines how the appearance of Tallinn’s artisans was codified and distinguished from other social groups by the series of sumptuary laws promulgated by the town council over the course of the century, and then compares this with craftspeople’s wardrobes as described in household inventories. As an exhaustive analysis of the source material is beyond the scope of this chapter, focus is limited to three material categories that have previously been shown to be particularly meaningful for displaying social status in the early modern period: silk, fur and adornments.¹⁵

Accessing the wardrobes

Recent scholarship has shown that sumptuary legislation was not only a European but also a global phenomenon in the early modern period. Broadly speaking, these laws regulated various aspects of individual consumption and conduct, including appearance, diet and expenditure on and behaviour at weddings, funerals and baptisms.¹⁶ In Tallinn, the texts of eight sets of ordinances issued by the town council from around 1600 until 1706 survive; two additional unpublished drafts from 1641 and 1650 have been preserved in the archive of St Canute’s Guild, but were never codified into law.¹⁷ Clothing regulations could be both sweeping and extremely detailed, and, as will emerge, there was no standard or systematic approach regarding which details of dress were regulated. For one social group, it might have been headwear; for others, cloaks or muffs; and yet others, jackets and doublets. Importantly, the regulations for each group were a combination of prohibitions and permissions, allowing certain fabrics and fashions and forbidding others. Similarly, the basis on which distinctions were drawn also softened over time: after 1690, the regulations lost most of their guild- and gender-based structure, and the latest law, issued in 1706, focused more on taxing sumptuous clothing than on forbidding it. The primary focus here is consequently on clothing regulations issued until 1665.

Examining sumptuary laws does not necessarily shed light on what people bought, how they dressed or what they thought their clothes said about them. Focusing narrowly on the prescriptions and proscriptions of the laws encourages the belief that clothing is merely a representation or manifestation of hierarchy and prioritises the perspective of those in a position of power over the intentions of those lower in the social orders.¹⁸ Consequently, it assumes that the idea of ‘order’ is unproblematic – that it is absolute rather than itself socially constructed – and that people wanted primarily to dress above their social station and consume what their social superiors consumed. Scholars have rightly criticised such simplistic notions; early modern clothing practices were complex, and appearances were used by poor and rich alike to express not only social and economic aspirations but also religious, professional and familial affiliations, as well as personal identity, beliefs and values.¹⁹ Scholarship has also demonstrated how the proliferation of ‘semi-luxury’ or ‘populuxe’ goods – from mixed silks, combs and razors to mirrors and pocket watches – among non-elite consumers was important in undermining rigid distinctions based on expensiveness or fashionableness, and in multiplying the ways in which sartorial display might be enacted and interpreted.²⁰

One particularly fruitful way of placing the evidence from sumptuary laws in a wider context is to juxtapose them with the evidence that can be derived from household inventories. There is extensive literature on early modern inventories and their advantages and disadvantages as sources.²¹ However, four points are of particular relevance to the sampling of inventories relied upon for this chapter.²² First, clothing and textiles were selectively recorded in the Tallinn inventories.²³ Second, while roughly a third of the garments in the sample were described as male and a third as female, there was no indication whether the remainder would have been worn by men or women.²⁴ Third, unlike their western European counterparts, inventories from Tallinn rarely include financial valuations, so that we usually do not know the worth of people’s wardrobes relative to the total value of their household goods. It is thus difficult to make a straightforward estimation based solely on the inventories of how far social position corresponded with expenditure on clothes. Finally, on a more general note, considering the frequent borrowing and lending of clothes between households, especially among the lower classes, we often cannot know for certain the nature of the connections between individuals and the items in their inventory – and, indeed, we can only speculate about the goods that might have been present at different times in people’s lives.²⁵

Silk

As silk was one of the most expensive and luxurious of dress materials, it is perhaps no surprise that in seventeenth-century Tallinn sumptuary laws sought above all to restrict the wearing of silk to the social elite and that their most fundamental distinction was between silk and woollen fabrics. The laws addressed entire outfits and individual garments made of silk, as well as silk accessories. The general principle was to regulate the cost of the fabric, but over the course of the century the wording became more detailed, and the fabrics forbidden or allowed to each group were illustrated with several examples. At the beginning of the century, silk – and especially velvet – was generally forbidden even to the social elite. While the clothing regulation issued around 1600 was not yet based on guild membership, the wearing of velvet and silk stockings by burghers and journeymen was expressly prohibited.²⁶ The wives and daughters of burghers were similarly barred from wearing velvet and silk skirts and capes. These proscriptions were fairly straightforward, but, as the century progressed, the regulations on the wearing of silk – and the level of detail included in them – proliferated, reflecting the intricate social order they sought to demarcate.

The 1665 regulation allowed the most senior and eminent members of the Great Guild and the Brotherhood of the Blackheads to wear suits of plain silk on Sundays and on festive occasions. Both glossy and unnapped velvet remained entirely forbidden, and plush, satin and brocade were allowed only for doublets and jackets (Figure 8.2). All other members of the above-mentioned merchant guilds could wear cloaks of cheaper silks on special occasions, but otherwise they were restricted to woollens.²⁷ Unlike merchants, the ordinary members of both craft guilds were forbidden silk entirely, as they had been under the regulations of 1631 and 1639. The artisans of St Canute’s Guild were allowed various woollens of ‘moderate value’, such as broadcloth, grosgrain, floret and polymite. Only their aldermen were allowed the privilege of caffa cuffs on their coats to distinguish them from other artisans. Members of St Olaf’s Guild were allowed only woollen fabrics like polymite and coarse gewand.²⁸

The 1665 regulations impose a similar hierarchy for the use of silk in women’s dress, albeit somewhat more leniently. Unlike their husbands and fathers, the wives and daughters of Great Guild members could wear silk also on weekdays, but certain silk fabrics like caffa, velvet, satin and plush were restricted to single garments rather than entire outfits.²⁹ The female family members of more esteemed artisans were limited to woollen fabrics on workdays, but for special occasions they were allowed cheaper silks such as taffeta and terzenel – a coarse, low-budget silk derived from flawed cocoons – for single garments, while silk remained wholly forbidden to their husbands and fathers.³⁰ The wives and daughters of artisans practising less prestigious trades, meanwhile, were allowed only woollen fabrics, presumably on both workdays and festive occasions – although they were permitted a single silk ribbon on their cloaks as decoration.³¹ By the time of the 1696 sumptuary law, however, the regulations had relaxed so far as to allow all women, except servants, to wear black cloaks of unspecified silks.³²

Figure 8.2 Piece of silk brocade, textile sample (c. 1600–99). The sample consists of fifteen smaller pieces that have been sewn together. Width: 96.5 cm, length: 113.5 cm. Tallinn City Museum, TLM_4168 H 339.

The sartorial system envisioned by the town council was above all concerned with the type and fineness of fabric. At the same time, the evolution of the laws provides evidence of certain change occurring during the seventeenth century. Over the decades, silk undoubtedly remained an expensive commodity. However, the later laws reveal a variety of silks, including lighter and cheaper ones, some of which were also available to artisans and their household members under certain conditions, and the numbers of those who could and did wear silk increased considerably. However, the idea of silk being a clear visual marker of social distinction is complicated by the fabric’s presence in household inventories. These underscore the fact that, whereas the sumptuary laws targeted specific groups perceived as especially threatening to the social order, while completely overlooking others, in reality silk goods were owned by all social classes.

The primary distinctions recorded in the inventories relate to the quantity and type of silk items owned. While it is not always possible to know with certainty whether a fabric was silk or a silk mix, an estimated 60 per cent of artisans’ inventories contained at least one silk garment, while roughly 90 per cent of merchants’ and professionals’ inventories and all town councillors’ inventories contained at least one silk garment. The most extensive collection belonged to the shoemaker Jürgen von Stahl, whose 1687 inventory contained thirteen silk garments and accessories.³³ The median numbers of silk garments in the sample of inventories were two for artisans, five or six for merchants and four for both the educated professions and town councillors. As well as having fewer silk items, artisans also generally possessed smaller ones, such as sleeves, caps and stockings. With the exception of Birgitta Falck, complete silk gowns remained the preserve of merchants, professionals and town councillors, but some wealthier artisans did own substantial outer garments, such as doublets, jackets and cloaks, already before the 1665 clothing regulation was issued. For example, in 1638 the silversmith Christof Derenthal’s wife had a cloak of Florentine velvet trimmed in the front with sable, which was probably a costly item, and would have been forbidden to her by the sumptuary laws.³⁴ In 1658, the inventory of hat-maker Claus Reimer and his wife listed two bodices, one of damask and one of plush, a skirt made of silk tobin and silk garters.³⁵

Although it is unknown when and why sumptuary laws relaxed to allow her these items, as a young woman Birgitta Falck would have been forbidden from wearing any of the silk items she owned when she died in 1698: a black floral silk skirt, a black silk jacket, a brown taffeta skirt lined with yellow linen, a gown of black taffeta skirt and jacket and a black damask cloak.³⁶ Her inventory may not be unique – two other artisan inventories from the last decades of the century listed more silk garments – but it illustrates the variety of silk garments appropriate for someone of influence within their community at that time.³⁷ An examination of artisan inventories like Birgitta Falck’s reveals that individual circumstances varied greatly and challenges the notion present in Tallinn’s sumptuary laws as late as 1665 that the wearing of silk was confined to the highest ranks for the urban elite. Elsewhere in Sweden, a similar ambivalence towards sumptuary laws has been shown. While the middling and lower ranks generally adhered to sumptuary laws, inventories regularly listed individual items, such as velvet caps and jackets, that the owners would have been forbidden by law to wear.³⁸ Although the inventories confirm that, on average, artisan households contained the least number of silk items and merchant households the greatest, they also show that even the most exclusive silks according to the sumptuary laws – velvets, damasks and brocades – were worn by artisans as well. The guild-based social hierarchy expressed through dress which appears in the sumptuary laws, and the conventional perception that people of the lower middle classes could not and did not possess silk garments, are therefore complicated and enriched by the picture that emerges from the probate inventories.

Fur

Fur was another persistently, if unsystematically, regulated element of seventeenth-century dress. Providing warmth in the cold climate of northern Europe and the uninsulated buildings of the seventeenth century, fur was an indispensable and ubiquitous part of people’s wardrobes, even if few garments were made entirely from it. Furthermore, its significant financial value presented an excellent opportunity for displaying the wearer’s wealth and status.³⁹

Sumptuary laws of the seventeenth century repeatedly targeted the wearing of fur, restricting its use almost entirely to smaller items such as caps, muffs and various trimmings and facings. Above all sable and marten, very likely imported from Russia, remained a primary concern.⁴⁰ The men’s clothing regulations from around 1600, for example, forbade all journeymen, whether merchant or artisan, from wearing sable fur caps and wide cuffs and trims of black fox fur. While sable fur caps were not forbidden to burghers, they were cautioned, in vague terms, to ‘exercise restraint’, and the regulations prohibited them from wearing cloaks that were lined with sable and coats with cuffs or facings of sable fur.⁴¹ The 1665 regulation specified the maximum cost of the sable caps that members of the two merchant guilds were permitted to wear, according to their social standing. Artisans from either of the craft guilds were not specifically mentioned in that law with respect to fur, but it was declared that ‘what was forbidden to merchants, was even more so forbidden to artisans’.⁴² While there was no general prohibition against artisans wearing fur, they were presumably meant to stick to cheaper and lower-quality imported furs or furs of local origin.

Fur on women’s dress was regulated equally vigorously. A detailed discussion of all regulated garments is unfortunately beyond the scope of this chapter, so head coverings, which were the most common fur garments listed in the inventories, will serve as an example. From 1630s onwards, the town council seems to have been particularly troubled by the tall, cylindrical headgear (Hülle) (Figure 8.3). Initially forbidden to all women in 1631, the council allowed it to merchants’ wives in 1639.⁴³ However, it could not be too tall or excessively adorned and any sable used for it was not to exceed 10 Rtl in value. Wives and daughters of St Canute’s Guild members were also permitted to wear these head coverings, but, if the hat was made of sable, it could not be dyed, and the total value of the cap was not to exceed 8 Rtl.⁴⁴ Concerning female family members of the artisans of St Olaf’s Guild, fur headwear was not mentioned. As before, the 1665 regulation permitted sable fur caps (Mütze) with a maximum fur value of 20 Rtl for the wives of merchants, and their unmarried daughters were allowed only poor-quality sable fur on their caps.⁴⁵ The wives and daughters of artisans within more esteemed trades were also permitted to use sable fur not exceeding 12 Rtl in value on their caps, and the female family members of artisans practising the less prestigious trades were allowed dyed marten or ‘low-value sable’ not exceeding 8 Rtl in value.⁴⁶ From 1690, fur does not appear in connection with head coverings in the sumptuary laws. Worth noting is that, in each of these cases, the laws were concerned with the cost of the sable or the entire hat, but not with whether the head covering was made entirely of fur or simply decorated with it.

Figure 8.3 Nicolaus Willebrandt, burgher women of Tallinn (1634). From Stammbuch Adam Olearius. It is possible that the drawing depicts these women wearing Hüllen. Landesmuseum Schleswig-Holstein, Schloss Gottorf (2006/128, p. 425).

An assortment of different caps and Hüllen made of sable, marten or fox are recorded in the inventories. The furrier Jochim Hönchen’s inventory lists a cap, a ‘Polish’ cap and two ‘boat’ caps (Bohtmütze), all made of sable.⁴⁷ Sable fur Hüllen appear in the inventories of the tailor Jochim Tempelhoff and clockmaker Franciscus Zilagius.⁴⁸ Woollen or silk headgear is often described as having a fur lining or trim. The inventories of the shoemaker Jürgen von Stahl, furrier Martin Schonert, tinsmith Paul Wulff and tanner Lorentz Grawert all listed plush caps that were lined or trimmed with sable or marten fur, while the inventory of the tailor Hinrich Falck (unrelated to Birgitta Falck) mentions a striking woman’s cap featuring gold lace and a sable tail.⁴⁹ While monetary values were rarely given in the Tallinn inventories, the two items of clothing that were valued in the inventory of the cordwainer Hanss Busekist were two sable fur ‘boat’ caps, with assessed values of 12 Rtl and 5 Rtl.⁵⁰ Birgitta Falck had four different fur caps: a cap with/made of sable tails, another with/made of dyed sable tails, an old sable cap that she had pawned and an old marten-fur cap.⁵¹

The cold of the northern climes made the use of fur for outer garments widespread across all social classes. Artisan inventories list no fur coats made entirely of sable or marten, but coats of squirrel do appear.⁵² Birgitta Falck’s inventory records two old ‘peasant’ fur coats, which were probably made in the neighbouring countryside from local furs, and perhaps had been pawned to her in exchange for cash.⁵³ Fur was also extensively used to line and trim coats, jackets, overgowns and cloaks. These could be ostentatious displays of wealth, as shown by the ‘new and fine’ coat of shoemaker Jürgen von Stahl, which was made of brown broadcloth, lined with exotic honey badger and decorated with golden twisted braids.⁵⁴ Detachable fur linings are also frequently recorded in the inventories. Birgitta Falck, for instance, owned not only a squirrel-lined overgown but also an old separate lining made of squirrel.⁵⁵ The popularity of such linings attests to their usefulness: they could be added for extra warmth in winter and removed for summer, and they could be transferred between different garments, extending their lifetime and saving on the expense of new clothes.

Rather than being highly exclusive and coveted, furs were available to many people. It was clearly not the case that sable and marten – the focus of many of the regulations related to fur – were restricted only to the social elite. Indeed, it is not possible to distinguish between merchants and artisans on the basis of the presence of these furs in their post-mortem inventories – some sort of sable or marten, however old or worn it might have been, appears in the inventories of all social classes except for labourers. While sable and marten were targeted in sumptuary laws because they were likely imported from Russia and consequently expensive, a wide variety of local furs were accessible to people across the entire social spectrum, confirming that the practical function of fur was as important as its ability to signify the social status of its wearer. Individuals from every walk of life in early modern Tallinn did not necessarily have to break the law in order to be warm and to display their personal tastes and preferences.

Decorative elements

Decorative elements were heavily regulated for all social groups by seventeenth-century sumptuary laws. For example, the 1631 regulation stated that members of St Canute’s Guild could have one decorative ribbon on their cloaks, while members of St Olaf’s Guild were allowed nothing ornamental whatsoever on their dress.⁵⁶ The same regulation forbade members of the Great Guild and the Brotherhood of the Blackheads from wearing hatbands or belts embellished with gold and silver thread or pearls, colourful garters and shoelaces, gold and silver buttons and ribbons and other excessive adornment.⁵⁷ The 1665 regulation continued in much the same vein, but was even more restrictive with respect to artisans. Ornamentation was entirely prohibited to members of the two artisan guilds, except for the aldermen of St Canute’s Guild, who were allowed one silk ribbon to distinguish them from their guild brothers (Figure 8.4).⁵⁸ The 1696 regulation forbade expensive lace neckerchiefs to all men.⁵⁹

Women were generally granted more licence in the clothing regulations than the male members of their households, but the system of distinction could be dizzying and the distinctions between what was forbidden and what was allowed rather minute, as the 1665 laws illustrate. These specified that merchants’ wives and daughters could wear golden cords, ribbons and laces on their clothes, but braids and other trimmings sewn through with gold or silver thread were forbidden.⁶⁰ Furthermore, they were allowed diamond rings and bracelets of gold and coral, but no gold ornaments on their shoes. Unmarried merchant daughters could wear pearl embroidery and pearl necklaces, but brightly coloured, gold or silver ribbons tied around the neck or on gloves were not allowed.⁶¹ Female family members of the more esteemed artisans were entirely forbidden from wearing pearls, and their cloaks had to be without any laces, ribbons and cords, but they could enjoy silk ribbons or ribbons woven or crocheted from gold and silver thread elsewhere on their garments.⁶² The wives of artisans practising less skilled crafts could wear only a single silk ribbon or cord on their cloaks, and their unmarried daughters were allowed a velvet trim with no gold or silver on their cloaks.⁶³ The last regulation from 1706 had lost most gender-based distinctions and taxed a wide variety of decorations, including excessively trimmed gloves, gold and silver decorations on shoes and expensive lace neckerchiefs, among others.⁶⁴

Figure 8.4 Ribbon made of brown taffeta (c. 1600–1700). The ribbon is woven in a glossy pattern and has a dark brown border. In the centre there is a plant ornament surrounded by round and triangular motifs. Tallinn City Museum, TLM_16328 H 1809.

Earlier research has distinguished between ‘use value’ and ‘status value’ of clothing and suggested that decorative elements made the garments more exclusive and bestowed more status to the wearer (Figure 8.5).⁶⁵ The organ-builder Johannes Pauls, for example, had a russet cloak of unspecified fabric decorated with a golden galloon and large gold buttons.⁶⁶ Additionally, clothing was expensive in the early modern period, so trimmings enabled people to update their wardrobes at a fraction of the cost of replacing them entirely.⁶⁷ But while Tallinn’s sumptuary laws give detailed information about the size, composition and placement of adornments, the inventories are far less explicit about how clothes were decorated. In most cases, we do not even know how a jacket, doublet or waistcoat was fastened, let alone how it was decorated. In Birgitta Falck’s inventory, for example, the only items of clothing with any trimmings described are two overgowns with a shared thirty-six silver buttons between the two.⁶⁸

Indeed, buttons were the only type of decoration whose presence in the inventories appears to reflect class divisions. Gold buttons are repeatedly recorded in the inventories of merchants and of town councillors like Arendt Stippel, who owned a brown broadcloth jacket with gold buttons and gold braids, as well as a chamois leather waistcoat with gold buttons.⁶⁹ However, they never feature in the inventories of artisans or members of the educated professions or on the clothes of women from any class. Instead, gilt buttons are recorded for both professionals and artisans, while silver and tin buttons appear even more widely. For example, tin buttons were listed on the jacket of the weaver Andreas Wichman and the overgown of the shoemaker Jürgen von Stahl.⁷⁰ Although the inventories occasionally neglect to specify the types of buttons when listing them, it is unlikely that gold, silver or gilt buttons would not be mentioned. Thus, it is safe to assume that gold buttons were rather exclusive and rare, and the preserve of Tallinn’s upper classes, while gilt and silver buttons were within the reach of artisans and other members of the town’s middling sort.

Figure 8.5 Man dressed in mid-seventeenth-century fashion, detail from a silver tankard, workshop of goldsmith Stanislaus Schultze in Tallinn (c. 1640–60). Tallinn City Museum, TLM_4199 KA 495/V.

Conclusion

This chapter has examined the dress of seventeenth-century artisans in Tallinn, a town in the European periphery where much of life was organised around guilds and their households. Seventeenth-century sumptuary laws sought to create distinction in appearances: primarily to limit silk fabrics as well as sable and marten furs to the upper reaches of Tallinn’s social hierarchy and to regulate decorative adornments on a minute level. Household inventories, however, complicate this discursively created hierarchy. Not revealing much about adornments, or how these would have distinguished different groups of people in reality, the household inventories of middling and lower ranks show the presence of both silk garments and sable and marten furs. The observed differences in silk ownership were less in the kind and style of clothing than in the quantity of silk garments, as artisan inventories on average contained fewer silk garments than those of town councillors and merchants. While the latter had entire suits of silk, artisan inventories almost always recorded single garments, like jackets and skirts, but also smaller items, such as sleeves, caps and stockings.

The presence of silk garments and high-end furs in artisan inventories from Tallinn should prompt us to re-examine earlier assumptions that early modern artisan dress was primarily functional and durable.⁷¹ Although individuals were certainly conditioned by prevailing notions of social hierarchy and its appropriate visualisation, we cannot ignore the role of fashion and aesthetics, personal taste and available means in people’s consumption strategies. Both inventories and sumptuary laws appear to confirm John Styles’s findings in Chapter 1 above that, throughout the seventeenth century, lighter and cheaper silks and silk blends increasingly complemented heavier fabrics such as velvets and brocades. At the same time, Birgitta Falck’s inventory, drawn up at the close of the century, shows different silk fabrics, including silk damask, taffeta and unspecified silk appearing side-by-side, complicating the notion of linear change in fashions. For many people, especially in the middling and lower ranks, clothing remained an investment that retained its value over long periods of time. Nevertheless, despite the restrictions that Tallinn’s guild-based, corporatist social structure placed on the political power and economic opportunities available to some artisans, inventories demonstrate that individuals designated lower middle class (at best) in the sumptuary laws could still enjoy substantial material security and wield significant influence within a community that stretched beyond their immediate circles.

That legal regulation and observed practice do not neatly align is not surprising. Sumptuary laws show the complexity inherent in the hierarchical order of early modern society, but the clothing owned by individuals exposes the grey areas in the system, as the boundaries it prescribed between different categories of people rarely corresponded precisely with how they actually dressed. Moreover, we are reminded that wearing and owning were two different things. While sumptuary laws were principally concerned with public appearances, they did not regulate ownership of exclusive garments. Ultimately, there were other ways in which people on all levels of society could engage with the materiality of their clothes: by wearing them in private, keeping them as a fungible resource to gift or to pawn, or even simply delighting in their materiality, while being aware that they were forbidden. Artisan inventories like Birgitta Falck’s hint at the different ways in which people engaged with their clothes and also at the reasons that artisan dress should not be perceived merely as a signifier of social status. Early modern clothing culture was not a product of the mechanical workings of the social order, especially when that order itself was constantly contested and reconfigured.