Household Gods: The British and Their Possessions

The homes of the British middle class in the third quarter of the 19th century, as depicted in contemporary photographs, were cluttered with furniture, soft furnishings and objects. Walking across a room required careful negotiation of lightweight tables that might easily topple over and spill the numerous items that decorated their surface. Textiles added comfort, with upholstered furniture often deeply buttoned, and several layers of curtains swathed the windows; in addition, textiles draped over doorways and even dangled from mantelpieces. Surface pattern was lavish and often in clashing colours and designs which produced gorgeously three-dimensional representations of the natural world. Never before or since had interiors been such a riotous display. Deborah Cohen's book Household Gods: the British and their Possessions seeks to analyse how this came about. With particular emphasis on the period between the 1830s and 1930s, she contextualises home-making and taste in interiors by considering the influences that produced the cluttered interiors and the subsequent artful interiors. She focuses on gender, religion, changes in the manufacture and retailing of objects for the home, and the changing advice given to home-makers, as well as the changing nature of the advisors. Her central aim is to explore the 'bad taste' that resulted from 'middle-class selffashioning' and how 'self-expression' became important in furnishing the home (p. xv).