Buying Patience: Ordering and Purchasing Wedding Jewellery and Furniture through Intimate Networks during Eighteenth-Century Mercantile Marriage Initiation and Preparation

Abstract

This article deals with the practice of buying wedding jewellery and furniture for a new home during mercantile marriage initiation in the eighteenth century. At the centre of the paper is the act of marriage initiation between the Hamburg burgher's daughter Ilsabe Engelhardt and wholesale merchant Nicolaus Gottlieb Luetkens, who travelled France in the two years preceding his marriage. Luetkens postponed the marriage several times in order to finish business in France. As a compensation, Ilsabe Engelhardt instructed him to buy precious jewellery and valuable furniture. In order to comply with her requests, and to do so as quietly as possible, Luetkens had to mobilise their intimate network of close confidants in London and Amsterdam, who helped him to purchase the precious items.