The Comforts of Home in Western Europe : 1700–1900

"Comfort, both physical and affective, is a key aspect in our conceptualization of the home as a place of emotional attachment, yet its study remains under-developed in the context of the European house. In this volume, Jon Stobart has assembled an international cast of contributors to discuss the ways in which architectural and spatial innovations coupled with the emotional assemblage of objects to create comfortable homes in early modern Europe. The book features a two-section structure focusing on the historiography of architectural and spatial innovations and material culture in the early modern home. It also includes 10 case studies which draw on specific examples, from water closets in Georgian Dublin to wallpapers in 19th-century Cambridge, to illustrate how people made use of and responded to the technological improvements and the emotional assemblage of objects which made the home comfortable. In addition, it explores the role of memory and memorialisation in the domestic space, and the extent to which home comforts could be carried about by travellers or reproduced in places far removed from the home. The Comforts of Home in Western Europe, 1700-1900 offers a fresh contribution to the study of comfort in the early modern home and will be vital reading for academics and students interested in early modern history, material culture and the history of interior architecture."-- Provided by publisher Title Page Copyright Page Contents Illustrations Contributors Introduction:Comfort, the home and home comforts Comfort Home Home comforts Notes Part 1: The convenient house: Architectural ideals and practicalities Chapter 1: Convenience, utility and comfort in British domestic architecture of the long eighteenth century ‘A warm comfortable plain room’: Comfortable homes for the labouring poor Bourgeois home comforts Conclusion Notes People in focus 1: Masters and servants: Parallel worlds in Blondel’s maisons de plaisance Notes Chapter 2: Northern comfort and discomfort: Spaces and objects in Swedish country houses, c.1740–1800 Architecture, technology and comfort Comfortable home seen through objects Comfort and discomfort pictured Conclusion: Creating a comfortable home in a northern climate Notes Object in focus 1: Marketing the necessary comforts in Georgian Dublin Notes Chapter 3: The invention of thermal comfort in eighteenth-century France The time of the impossible fight against the cold Scientific and technical reflections on domestic heating in the eighteenth century The three levels of the technical reflection The invention of thermal comfort: Progress and reluctance to change Conclusions: The complexities of improving thermal comfort Notes Object in focus 2: The improved tiled stove: Sweden’s contribution to defining comfort? Notes People in focus 2: Keeping warm with Sir John Soane Notes Chapter 4: The spread of comfort in nineteenth-century Belgian homes Domestic comfort ‘The comfortable hearth’19 When light conquers night Spatial arrangements and household organization Reasoned resilience Conclusion: Technologies and identities Notes Part 2: Home making: Objects and emotions Chapter 5: Home Making: Women, marriage and comfort in Victorian middle-class drawing rooms Women and comfort in the home Comfort in the drawing room Frederica Orlebar and her drawing room A truly English love of comforts? Temporal and flexible use of space and material culture Food and linen Comfort from freedom Notes Object in focus 3: The ideal home in 1732: The Uppark Dolls’ House as a study in comfort Notes Object in focus 4: Comfort compromised? The ‘bachelor box’ in Finland at the turn of the twentieth century Temporal and flexible use of space and material culture Food and linen Comfort from freedom Notes Chapter 6: Feeling at home abroad: Comfort, domesticity and social display on the Netherlandish Grand Tour, 1585–1815 Facilities Services Spaces Conclusion: Comfort on the move Notes People in focus 3: Moving house: Comfort disrupted in the domestic and emotional life of an eighteenth-century bachelor Notes Chapter 7: Home from home? Making life comfortable in the Victorian barracks The barracks The soldier The officer Conclusions: Regulating comfort Notes Object in focus 5: A wallpaper sandwich: Comfort in the student room in nineteenth-century Cambridge Notes Chapter 8: Making a home: Family, memory and domestic objects in England, c.1750–1830 The house as family memorial Rooms, memorials and memories Family trees and family albums Household objects: Remembering family and friends Sentimentalizing and memorializing through bequests Conclusions: Family, memory and home Notes Object in focus 6: The comfort of animal ‘things’ in late-Victorian Britain Sims at home Animal comforts of home Notes Afterthoughts: The comforts of home Note Bibliography Index "Anyone wishing to understand the meaning of home will welcome the essays in this volume, which have much to say about how inextricably linked our concept of home is with the notion of comfort. By casting light on countries across Western Europe, and looking at the situations of men, women and even pets, this splendid collection sets a high standard for investigations of domestic space and will appeal to readers across disciplines."--Stephen G. Hague