Household Gods: The British and their Possessions Book

This book is utterly fascinating and I really enjoyed it. I would probably have got into it a lot more quickly had it not stunk of cigarette smoke; whoever took it out of the library last was clearly a chainsmoker. The topic, of how British social views on home furnishing have evolved during Victorian times and subsequently, proved to be really compelling. There have been a series of very significant shifts, which of course tie into broader economic, class, and geopolitical changes. To summarise, at the beginning of the Victorian age, possessions carried important religious and moral connotations and restrained taste equated to good character. Moreover, furnishing the home was considered largely a man's role. However the latter half of the nineteenth century involved an almost total reversal of this; possessions became emblematic of personality and individuality, rather than moral worth, and decorating was seen as effeminate and womanly. A boom in manufacturing allowed for a huge diversity of new furniture and fabric designs, to which customers responded enthusiastically. The early twentieth century saw the suffering and upheaval of two world wars, as well as a huge boom in home ownership, and the population turned away from eccentric individualism and towards conservative and functional styles. Modernist design failed to catch on, and to be honest still hasn't really. The end of the twentieth century and start of the twenty-first exhibit an emphasis on housing as an investment asset. The judgemental air of property programs on TV have created a cult of magnolia walls and boring sofas, based on a self-consciousness about one's furnishings. I am obviously over-simplifying vastly here, but those were the main points I took from the book, which supported them with a wealth of sources and intriguing illustrations.

As well as the main sweep of changing historical trends, 'Household Gods' also includes fascinating details regarding the rise and fall of huge department stores, magazines advising on home decoration, the cult of antique collecting, and Queen Mary's spectacular dolls house (which I remember reading a great book about: The Queen's Dolls' House: A Dollhouse Made for Queen Mary). The writing is accessible and involving, although it does amuses me a little to read commentary on the British class system (weird beast that it is) by an American professor. I was also moved to wonder about prevailing attitudes to home furnishing today, now that the UK housing market is terribly unbalanced, younger people like me can expect to be renting for a long time, and views of conspicuous consumption are evolving. My instinct is that the current furnishing trends are homogeneity (surely Ikea and other chain stores have cornered much of the market), some limited concerns about ethical manufacturing, and functionality (the TV as much more important than what you sit on to watch it). I am just speculating, though, and would be interested to read something that examines attitudes to possessions and home furnishing in the UK today.