Venetian blinds and pocket watches, c. 1780

[Johnny_L.A]

Roomie watched a series on the American Revolution, and an HBO series on John Adams all day yesterday. In the former, George Washington is shown consulting a pocket watch. In both, rooms are shown with Venetian blinds. Patents for Venetian blinds were taken out in England in 1760, and the blinds existed in France before then. Pocket watches, of course, existed in some form for a couple hundred years by then.

Question: How common, really, were Venetian blinds and pocket watches during the time of the American Revolution?

[yabob]

Wiki claims:

Until the second half of the 18th century, watches were luxury items; as an indication of how highly they were valued, English newspapers of the 18th century often include advertisements offering rewards of between one and five guineas merely for information that might lead to the recovery of stolen watches.[citation needed] By the end of the century, however, watches (while still largely hand-made) were becoming more common; special cheap watches were made for sale to sailors, with crude but colourful paintings of maritime scenes on the dials.

From Pocket watch - Wikipedia

Washington, of course, was very rich. He might have had one even if it was still very much a luxury item.

[cwthree]

This week, I’m reading snippets (sort of a chapter-a-day “lite”) of *Betsy Ross and the Making of America *by Marla Miller. While describing Ross’ early career as an upholsterer, the author mentions that Elizabeth Griscom (as Ross was then known) and her employers made Venetian blinds, among other furnishings.

[Johnny_L.A]

That’s very interesting.

FWIW, I’ve always associated Venetian blinds with the 20th Century.