Other topics relating to 18th century material culture
Last updated: Mar 25, 2026
Visit 18thCenturyNotebook.com for updated pages on these topics.
Primary sources
- Agriculture, farming, gardening, and husbandry
- Beekeeping
- Candles and candle-making
- Etiquette and manners
- Soap
- Life in 18th century America
- Runaway ads
- More primary sources, including letters and journals
On food and drink
- Cookbooks
- Beer
- Bread
- Butter churns
- Chocolate
- Coffee and coffeehouses
- Gingerbread
- Inns & Taverns
- Mead
- Punch
- Spruce beer
- Tea
Material culture of play
- Dolls
- Board games
- Bubbles
- Card games and playing cards
- Hoops & sticks
- Hobby-horses and stick-horses, pull-toy horses, rocking horses
- Kites
- Other games
- Pantin
- Puppets
- Pinwheels & whirligigs
- Rattles
- Toys
Occupations & material culture relating to textiles and needlework
- Chatelaines and equipages
- Coats of arms as embroidered by New England schoolgirls
- Dyes and dyeing
- Embroiderers
- Firescreens & polescreens
- Fly fringe
- Housewifes (hussifs, sewing rolls)
- Irons
- Knitting (and knitting sheaths)
- Knotting
- Lacemakers
- Laundry
- Marks (initials) on clothes and linens
- Milliners and millinery shops
- Monochrome-printed textiles
- Painted silk
- Patched clothing
- Pincushions, and wearing pincushions
- Ribbon embroidery
- Sewing kits (including work-baskets, work-tables, hussifs, needlecases, etc.)
- Spinning with a distaff and spindle
- Swatch books & textile sample books
- Tailors, seamstresses, and mantua-makers
- Tambour embroidery
- Upcycling & textile reuse
- Wall pockets
- Work-bags
- Yarn-winding tools, including niddy-noddies and clock reels
Occupations & material culture relating to lighting
Miscellaneous other stuff
- Artificial flowers
- Ballad sellers & singers
- Babywearing & baby slings
- Backpack baskets
- Bed warmers
- Beekeeping
- Birdcages
- Blacksmiths
- Books for young readers about 18th century life and history
- Brooms
- Camp followers
- Dressing tables
- Ear trumpets
- Fishing - Angling
- Floor cloths
- Flower sellers
- Fair booths
- Garnitures
- Hand screens
- Hornbooks
- Ice skates and figure skating
- Knife grinders
- Magic lanterns
- Mops
- Napping
- Nodding Mandarins
- Parasols
- Peep shows
- Peglegs
- Pickpockets
- Pottles
- Printed art and other broadsides displayed on walls
- Quilts: Pieced, Patchwork, Appliqué, Broderie Perse, and Wholecloth
- Raree shows
- Recipes for Fashion (1753)
- Sedan chairs
- Slipcovers
- Squirrels (as pets)
- Tinkers
- Toilettes, dressing tables, and dressing rooms
- Umbrellas
- Wallets
- Watering cans
- Wheelbarrows
- Wheelchairs
