This fascinating collection provides a chronologically arranged set of case studies looking at how interior design has constantly redefined itself as a manifestation of culture, from the eighteenth-century to the present day.
The book looks at the amateur activities of female 'home makers' in search of creative outlets and married couples seeking to modernise their homes as well as the contributions of early professional (female) 'interior decorators', and later, (male) 'interior designers'. It also considers the more anonymous role of commercial enterprises, such as hairdressing salons, ocean-going liners or modern offices as well as public institutions, such as hospitals or naval training establishments.
Interior design and identity examines interior design in relation to the changing identities of its practitioners, its inhabitants and of the furnishings, focussing on the ways in which cultural values came to be embedded in the spaces which people inhabited and made their own. Issues relating to interiority, gender, and the relationship of the public sphere are also considered opening up a new level of design historical enquiry.
List of figures
List of contributors
Foreword
Acknowledgements
Introduction - Penny Sparke
1. Women's creativity and display in the eighteenth-century British interior - Katherine Sharpe
2. Comfort and gentility: Furnishings by Gillows, Lancaster, 1840-1855 - Amanda Girling-Budd
3. A semblance of home: Mental asylum interiors, 1880-1914 - Mary Guyatt
4. The domestic interior and the construction of self: The New York homes of Elsie de Wolfe - Penny Sparke
5. Chintz, swags and bows: The myth of English country house style, 1930-1990 - Louise Ward
6. The role of the interior in constructing notions of class and status: A case-study of Brittania Royal Naval College Dartmouth, 1905-1939 - Quintin Colville
7. Feminine spaces, modern experiences: The design and display strategies of British hairdressing salons in the 1920s and 1930s - Emma Gieben-Gamal
8. Pragmatism and pluralism: The interior decoration of the 'Queen Mary' - Fiona Walmesley
9. 'Constructing contemporary': Common-sense approaches to 'going modern' in the 1950s - Scott Oram
10. After modernism: The contemporary office environment - Jeremy Myerson
Bibliography
Index
