Friday, October 2, 2009

live rooms & the middling sort

british "living" in the 1930s:


an entire museum displaying middle-class entertaining rooms across the eras is a pretty f-ing cool concept (the museum dubbed the middle class as people of "the middling sort"). investigating the domestics of the everyday, of the places where average people were/are peopling, familying, making their lives happen, is incredible-illuminating. and, in many ways, what a certain type of poetry deals with (especially the lyric, non-confessional poetry--even if the everydayness in such poetics is a much more chaotic, intense, or surreal experience).

british "living" in the 1960s:


the geffrye museum is meant to be as much a design history and playful voyeurism as it is a type of looking glass--a quick flip into what your living space might/could have looked like across the previous four hundred years (unless you are a zillionaire).

since part of my latest work is dealing with the differentials of domestic spaces over the last century and, in particular, the kitchen debates of the cold war, i am interested in comparisons between domestic spaces of different countries. consider how much of the 1960s british household, shown above, is brimming with danish modern design concepts! it seems there is nothing like arguing whose appliances allow for happier lives.



this retro kitchen, from the film eternal sunshine of the spotless mind, was constructed entirely based on the idea of the average kitchen of the time period. what a job to recreate historically accurate design.

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