The Making of Home
The 500-year story of how our houses became homes
Judith Flanders
- English
- ePUB (mobile friendly)
- Available on iOS & Android
The Making of Home
The 500-year story of how our houses became homes
Judith Flanders
About This Book
The idea that 'home' is a special place, a separate place, a place where we can be our true selves, is so obvious to us today that we barely pause to think about it.
But, as Judith Flanders shows in this revealing book, 'home' is a relatively new concept. When in 1900 Dorothy assured the citizens of Oz that 'There is no place like home', she was expressing a view that was a culmination of 300 years of economic, physical and emotional change.
In The Making of Home, Flanders traces the evolution of the house across northern Europe and America from the sixteenth to the early twentieth century, and paints a striking picture of how the homes we know today differ from homes through history.
The transformation of houses into homes, she argues, was not a private matter, but an essential ingredient in the rise of capitalism and the birth of the Industrial Revolution. Without 'home', the modern world as we know it would not exist, and as Flanders charts the development of ordinary household objects - from cutlery, chairs and curtains, to fitted kitchens, plumbing and windows - she also peels back the myths that surround some of our most basic assumptions, including our entire notion of what it is that makes a family.
As full of fascinating detail as her previous bestsellers, The Making of Home is also a book teeming with original and provocative ideas.
Frequently asked questions
Information
Acknowledgements | |
Illustrations | |
Home Thoughts: An Introduction | |
PART ONE | |
1. | The Family Way |
2. | A Room of Oneâs Own |
3. | Home and the World |
4. | Home Furnishings |
5. | Building Myths |
PART TWO | |
6. | Hearth and Home |
7. | The Home Network |
Coda: Not at Home | |
Notes | |
Bibliography | |
Index |
1. | View Down a Corridor by Samuel van Hoogstraten, 1662 (Dyrham Park, Avon, UK / National Trust Photographic Library / Johan Hammond / The Bridgeman Art Library) |
2. | Interior with a Woman at a Clavichord by Emanuel de Witte, c. 1665 (Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam, Netherlands / De Agostini Picture Library / The Bridgeman Art Library) |
3. | Woman Reading a Letter by Gabriel Metsu, c. 1664â66 (National Gallery of Ireland) |
4. | Petronella Dunoisâ dollshouse, c. 1675â1700 (Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam) |
5. | At the Linen Closet by Pieter de Hooch, 1663 (Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam) |
6. | Children of King Charles I by Anthony Van Dyck, c. 1637 (Getty Images) |
7. | Mr and Mrs Atherton by Arthur Devis, c. 1743 (Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool) |
8. | Arnolfini Wedding Portrait by Jan van Eyck, 1434 (Getty Images) |
9. | Claud and Peggy by David Allan, 1780s (Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection) |
10. | Saint Barbara from the right wing of the Werl Altarpiece by Robert Campin, 1438 (Prado, Madrid, Spain / Giraudon / The Bridgeman Art Library) |
11. | Centre panel of the Merode Altarpiece by Robert Campin, c. 1427â32 (© Francis G. Mayer / Corbis) |
12. | Steward at Rosenborg Castle by Wolfgang Heimbach, 1653 (Royal Danish Collections) |
13. | The Artist in his Studio by Richard Morton Paye, 1783 (National Trust Images / John Hammond) |
14. | A Smoking Party by William Bendz, 1828 (NY Carlsberg Glypotek, Copenhagen / Ole Haupt) |
15. | Mrs Duffinâs Dining-room at York by Mary Ellen Best, 19th century (Private Collection / The Bridgeman Art Library) |
16. | Staple Inn, High Holborn, London, prior to restoration in 1886, c. 1860â86 (English Heritage) |
17. | Staple Inn, High Holborn, London, c. 1937 (Getty Images) |
18. | The log cabin in which President Abraham Lincoln was said to have been born, Hodgensville, Kentucky. From a stereoscopic photograph taken in 1910 (Getty Images) |
19. | Charles Francis Annesley Voyseyâs design for a house for C. Turner Esq. in Frinton-on-Sea, 1908 (© Stapleton Collection / Corbis) |
20. | A Peasant Family at Meal-time by Jan Steen, c. 1665 (Print Collector / Getty Images) |
21. | Saying Grace by Joseph van Aken c. 1720 (© Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford) |
22. | The Proposition by Judith Leyster, 1631 (The Hague, Mauritshuis) |
23. | Drawing of a betty lamp by Maurice Van Felix for the Index of American Design, c. 1943 (National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC) |
24. | John Middleton with His Family in His Drawing-room by unknown artist, c. 1796 (Heritage Images / Getty Images) |
25. | Dining-room of Dr Whitridgeâs as it was in the Winter of 1814â15 by Joseph S. Russell, 1814â15 (Courtesy of the New Bedford Whaling Museum) |
26. | Scene in a gaming house from A Rakeâs Progress by William Hogarth, 1733 (© Historical Picture Archive / Corbis) |
27. | The Elegant Reader by Georg Friedrich Kersting, 1812 (Klassik Stiftung Weimar) |
28. | A woman doing laundry in a tenement building, Chicago, Illinois, c. 1910 (Getty Images) |
29. | Illustration of a Beecher kitchen from The American Womanâs Home by Catharine Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe, 1869. |
30. | Reconstruction of a Frankfurt kitchen in the MAK Vienna (Christos Vittoratos) |
31. | Mr and Mrs Hill by Arthur Devis, c. 1750â51 (Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection) |
32. | A family gather round the television for an eveningâs entertainment, 1957 (Getty Images) |
An Introduction