A living room in 1935.
Ed Sexton took a look at the decorations and furnishings in the home at The Geffrye Museum in London.
Based in the heart of Shoreditch, The Geffrye Museum shows how the interior decoration and furnishing of the middle class home has changed and developed since the 1600s.
The museum is housed in a series of 300-year-old almshouses with extensive gardens that offers a haven of calm from the hustle and bustle of the East End.
Founded in 1914, the museum started by displaying furniture made for the then growing middle classes, much of which was made in surrounding Shoreditch.
As the museum nears its 100th anniversary, major changes are being planned and deputy director Christine Lalumia talked me through the background and existing displays in the museum and what lies ahead for the future.
“The museum was founded to inspire the local furniture trade, as it was believed at that time that good design would lead to positive environments, good behaviour and a general sense of well-being."
“The museum was established here in Shoreditch, where the East London furniture trade had been based, in the hope that people would make more attractive and better objects.”
A display of chairs from different periods.
The museum focuses on the furniture and design of the middle classes allowing people to see how choices and tastes have changed over the centuries. Christine explained the background to the museum's series of period rooms.
“In the 1930s, there was a brainwave which led to a change in the way the collections were displayed. The idea was to take all the furniture and decorative arts and amass them in clusters by date - in other words to create a chronological sequence of displays. After this came the idea of creating period rooms, although we were by no means the first museum to do this,” she said.
“However we are quite different from most of these in that there is a generic aspect to our displays - you can see what the middle classes might have had in one particular room at a given period in history."
“We always show the living room, hall or parlour, as these are traditionally the rooms that receive guests and where people spend the most energy on decoration."
“You can compare 'like for like' from the early 17th century through the Regency period and the 1930s across the same socio-economic band," she added. "We think of ourselves as a 'museum of the home' and the middle class core is the same throughout. This makes the story very clear and accessible.”
Art Deco tea set.
Between the period rooms there are areas that give some background to the historical period that the room is based on and relates the interior choices to the social history of the time. Christine described how there are also plenty of interactive areas where you can touch and feel the furniture and fabric-finishes in the different rooms.
“There are things you can feel and touch and chairs that you can sit on, which give an instant feeling of what it was like to be in that period. We have four sit-upon chairs - you start off on a very hard chair, oak, carved and joined with no upholstery, and by the end you literally fall back into a huge leather armchair designed by Matthew Hilton."
“It is hard to sit formally in the final armchair and on the earliest chair there is no padding so you begin to understand different notions about comfort through the ages. There were different concerns with the furniture of each period and this is a very simple way of communicating that.”
The history of the middle classes and the social changes that have had an impact on them are shown to be key in the way they decorated their homes.
“The middle classes have undergone a lot of changes; it has got bigger and contains many professions and types. We are not looking at the very rich but rather at a group with some disposable income, which they want to spend on their homes. We examine the ways in which people use their home for display and self-expression. We look at how objects can convey meaning and why we get so attached to things."
“Provenance is very important to us," she added. We love to know who owned the piece, where it was located in their home, whether it was valued. It is this personal history, the story of the object's life, which really is of interest to us.”
A Drawing Room In 1910.
The museum is planning a new library and learning centre for the study of the home with construction beginning in 2012.
“We are hoping to give people access to objects and where possible, to find ways that visitors, students and researchers can handle objects in the collection in quite a radical way for a museum."
“We have some innovative ideas which we are exploring now - we are concerned to make the centre scholarly informative, accessible and quite a lot of fun as well.”
“Home gives people a sense of belonging - what a wonderful subject.”
The museum hopes to complete the building in time for its 100th anniversary in 2014, which will coincide with the 300th year of the museum's historic buildings.
For more information go to www.geffrye-museum.org.uk
