Volume 36, Number 17 · November 9, 1989
Good Housekeeping
By Witold Rybczynski
Culture and Comfort: People, Parlors, and Upholstery, 1850–1930
by Katherine C. Grier
University of Massachusetts Press, (out of print)
I was recently shown a house whose interior was being renovated. The house was in a prosperous part of the city, and I was curious to see what sort of changes and alterations had been specified by owners who had enough money to have a wide range of choices. It was not the interior decoration itself that concerned me, although like most people I am a voyeur when it comes to the houses of strangers—especially rich strangers. Interior decoration is customarily thought of as merely an illustration of good or bad taste—or of fashion; it is more than that. The embellishment and arrangement of a home are a graphic (and sometimes symbolic) representation of public and private cultural attitudes to domesticity and family life. More interestingly, they are also an indication of how these attitudes are changing.
Review, 2849 words
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