Design at Home : Domestic Advice Books in Britain and the USA since 1945

Design at Home brings together etiquette, homemaking and home decoration sources in the first systematic demonstration of the historical value of the category of domestic advice literature for understanding homes of the past as socially and materially constructed. Using a transatlantic perspective, this book traces a domestic dialogue between the UK and the US as the chapters explore issues of design, domesticity, consumption, social interaction and identity markers including class, gender and age. It asks: who was really best served by the solutions offered? Design at Home will interest students, teachers and researchers working in cultural and social history, design history, popular culture studies, American studies, women’s and gender studies and youth and family studies.

Domestic advice literature is rich in information about design, ideals of domesticity, consumption and issues of identity, yet this literature remains a relatively neglected resource in comparison with magazines and film.

Design at Home brings together etiquette, homemaking and home decoration advice as sources in the first systematic demonstration of the historical value of domestic advice literature as a genre of word and image, and a discourse of dominance. This book traces a transatlantic domestic dialogue between the UK and the US as the chapters explore issues of design, domesticity, consumption, social interaction and identity markers including class, gender and age.

Areas covered include:

• the use of domestic advice by historians

• relationships between advice, housing and the middle class

• links between advice and gender

• advice and the teenage consumer

Design at Home is essential reading for students and scholars of cultural and social history, design history, and cultural studies.