Issue 1, Vol. 110 (2023)

The focus of this paper lies on the inhabitants of the duchy of Styria, those from small towns, market towns and the capital Graz, as well as those from rural dominions. Special stress is laid on local merchants as distributors of fabrics and final products. Their probate inventories allow us to get at least some insights into the locally available products and they often are regarded as best source for the research in changes of consumer habits. Cotton and silk are important indicators of these changes.
The article is based on probate inventories covering mainly the period from about 1660 to about 1790 with some earlier as well as some later examples. The core of the research database comes from nearly 1,140 probate inventories from the monastery of Seckau, and about 110 from the city of Graz, another 234 from other Styrian towns, market towns, and dominions. Despite the relatively large number of sources, the contribution follows a historical-anthropological approach.

The 16th century saw a significant transformation in Central-European
clothing customs, which became evident in the emergence of national
styles of clothing (German, Hungarian, Polish) and the equally rapid
adoption of Spanish dress ensembles. Changes in clothing also touched the
countryside, where new kinds of textiles began to replace the predominant
woollen cloth in the second half of the 16th century. Woollen, cotton and
silk materials were used mainly in festive clothing. At first, it was in the
production of traditional garments, but increasingly new items of clothing
appeared alongside them, which the countryside adopted from the urban
environment after a certain period of time. The urban guild tailors were
the source of the structural innovations transforming the existing cut of
the women’s full skirt, from which the sleeves and subsequently the bodice
were separated. By the end of the 16th century, a new ensemble of clothing
articles had established itself in the countryside.

The study deals with the furnishing of households in Sovinec region on the basis of books of inheritance inventories and testaments written in German from the 17th and 18th centuries in comparisn with other areas and source types. The main emphasis is placed on the equipment of the interiors, namely the furniture and decoration. The author examines what kind of equipment appears in the inventories, how often they appear, or what equipment can be classified as standard in the period under review, and what equipment or material used spread to the countryside later.

The clothing of criminals in the 18th century did not differ significantly from the clothing of the people around them, which is hardly surprising, as they came from their ranks. However, we can see in their clothing a reflection of their professional or social status. For example, it is evident from the clothing of most robbers that they came from a shepherd’s environment. In their clothing, we find components that have been explicitly designated as shepherd’s or were often found on shepherd’s clothing. Various forms of individual decoration are found on trousers and headgear, such as cloth ribbons and beads in particular, and also seashells.
As for other categories of criminal, identifying a pattern for such a small number of cases is complicated. However, in general, their clothing contained mostly elements typical of their status or profession. Still, it is clear that even the clothes of the lower social groups were not uniform.