Interior Design and Identity

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.

Susie McKellar is Researcher at the Royal College of Art

Penny Sparke is Professor of Design History, and Dean of the Faculty of Art, Design and Music, at Kingston University