Collection: Museum of the Home

Collection-level records:

• Collection history (Collection development policy)

  The Museum’s collections have been acquired since the Museum’s initial inception in 1913. The Museum was opened as the Geffrye Museum in 1914 by the London County Council to reflect the interests of the local furniture-making industry. Early acquisitions included furniture-making tools, architectural fittings, metalwork (due to the Museum’s link to the Ironmongers’ Company) and a range of smaller, largely domestic items including tableware and kitchenware, candlesticks, cooking equipment, and furnishing textiles.

  In 1935, Marjorie Quennell was appointed Curator and the focus of the museum shifted away from the furniture-making industry towards education and school groups. Under Quennell’s curatorship ‘everyday things’ such as scrapbooks, clothing and toys were collected. Quennell also created a chronological series of period rooms spanning from 1650-1800.

  Collecting continued in a similar vein through the middle of the twentieth century, although the pace of collecting slowed down slightly under the curatorship of Molly Harrison.  Contemporary furniture was first acquired for the collections in 1950 and a new 1960s room was later added to the period rooms.  The paintings collection was developed during the 1970s and early 1980s under the directorship of Jeffery Daniels. Costume was heavily collected during this time too, but has not been actively collected since. Furnishing textiles, particularly curtains, and sample lengths of mainly mid-twentieth-century fabrics were also collected during the 1980s.

  In 1991, the Museum became a charitable trust, providing an opportunity to review the Museum’s purposes and priorities. Subsequently, the collection was developed to support the Museum’s shift in focus, first to English domestic interiors, then to the main living spaces of the urban middle classes (reflecting new research and development of the Museum’s period room displays in 2006) In this era, the Prints, Paintings and Drawings collection was refined and concentrated on two strands: examples of the type of picture the middle classes would have hung in their living rooms and representations of middle-class homes and gardens.

  In 2002, the furniture collection was greatly enhanced by the donation of the Cotton Collection of English Regional Chairs, which maps regional chair-making traditions.

  In 2003, one of the almshouses was restored and opened to the public. There are two period rooms furnished to represent the living conditions of the residents in the 1780s and 1880s and suitable objects were acquired for these displays.

  The first Christmas items were acquired in the 1970s, and the collection has been developed considerably since the early 1990s, supporting annual Christmas Past exhibitions at the Museum.

  Since 2005, the Museum has shifted its focus to the concept of home more broadly, aiming to study and reflect a more diverse and relevant meaning of home. In 2008, the Documenting Homes collection was begun, a unique collection, consisting of testimony, photographs, audio files, interviews and floor plans of people’s homes. It is a rich and vibrant connection that captures the connection between people and the places they live.

  The library collections were not systematically catalogued until 2008. Earlier collections seem to have consisted mainly of decorative arts and architectural histories. In the late 1990s selected parts of the former Shoreditch Library were acquired, expanding the collection. Since then, secondary literature as well as primary material such as diaries and decorating advice manuals continues to be collected.

  Archival collections have followed a similar path. In 1998, an interiors archive was set up, creating an image bank of domestic interiors and the Regional Furniture Museum Trust donated its archives to the museum in 2002.

  Since 2017, much collecting has focused on the development of the new Home Galleries and includes a new collection of objects representing the religious practice in the home as well as themes including comfort, entertainment and domestic game changers.

  Source: Collection development policy

  Date: 2023

  Licence: CC BY-NC

• Collection overview (Collection development policy)

  In the past, the Museum’s collections have primarily aimed to represent the material culture of the homes of the urban middle classes from 1600 to the present day.  In the past five years, the Museum has undergone significant change reopened in 2021 as the Museum of the Home, a place to reveal and rethink what home means. In preparation for the opening of the new Home Galleries and the refresh of the Rooms through Time Gallery, collecting focused on the home more broadly, including kitchens, bedrooms, bathrooms and gardens. Collecting in the past five years has also aimed to address the lack of diversity in the Museum’s collecting, focussing on representing a broad range of homes from a variety of cultures and backgrounds, not just the urban middle classes. A key focus has been objects used in the homes of the Black Caribbean community in the mid-1900s, much of which is on display in the 1970s Room through Time. This collecting has been object based, but has also formed part of our Documenting Homes collection where testimony and personal stories have been collected.

  The object collections include furnishings such as ornaments, curtains, furniture, floor and wall coverings, tableware, heating and lighting equipment and other domestic appliances.  While the majority of objects relate to the main living space, a small number of domestic objects furnishing or used in rooms beyond the main living space have been collected. Recently, object collections have broadened to reflect more diverse homes, including a collection of objects relating to religious practice, entertainment and housework in the home.

  The significance of the collections, library and archive lies in the fact that this is a unique body of evidence on the theme of home.  No other museum in the country specialises in this particular aspect of our national heritage.

  In collecting the material culture of home, the Museum’s priority is on typical and everyday domestic items, not the exceptional, the one-off or the most famous. In recent years, we have focused on the personal story of each object, and how it unlocks the lived experience for the person who owned it. In the past the Museum’s approach has been to start with the evidence of domestic inventories, wills, diaries, literature, household accounts, contemporary prints, drawings, paintings and photographs, as well as domestic architecture and artefacts, in order to build an understanding of taste, values and manners in relation to the home.  Whilst this continues to inform our collecting activity, there is now more of a focus on the importance of the lived experience and how each object can resonate with the visitor to provide relevance to the concept of home today.  When items are being considered for acquisition they are assessed against this contextual history, the personal story attached, as well as for qualities such as their condition and whether or not they have been restored, our preference being for items in as original condition as possible.

  Many of the objects typically found in English homes had their origins abroad and can be the product of British colonialism, cultural appropriation and exploitation. In recent years we have sought to address this through our refreshed interpretation of the Rooms Through Time. Since reopening we have begun the process of decolonising our collection and interpretation to recognise the human cost of the objects in our collections today by adding contextual information and using objects as a starting point for wider conversations, as well as reviewing the language we use to describe our collection both in the past and moving forwards.

  While the overwhelming strength of the collections, library and archives lies in their wide-ranging and in-depth coverage of the history of the home, there are highly significant strands within these areas, and individual items of national significance.  The collections are described in more detail below:

  Furniture collection – the most extensive and comprehensive of the object collections, comprised of over 1,000 items, dating from the early 17th century to the present day, largely consisting of items that would have been used in the main living spaces of middle-class Londoners’ homes.  Amongst the furniture collection, there are pieces and areas of exceptional significance:

  • a small but significant collection of 18^th– and early19^th-century London pieces bearing labels or inscriptions relating to their supply. These include the earliest known example of cabinet furniture to carry a printed trade label. The significance of these pieces is that for the vast majority of surviving pieces of middle-class furniture from the 18th and early 19th centuries the makers and owners are now unknown.  These labelled items provide invaluable personal perspectives from which to investigate the making and consumption of furniture at this period.
  • a small but significant collection of original upholstery, including an early18^th-century easy armchair (one of only two easy chairs of this date known to survive with the once relatively common stamped wool top covers intact). The importance of this collection is that upholstery is fragile and has rarely survived, and its significance for furniture has tended to be overlooked in public collections until relatively recently.
  • the English Regional Chair collection is largely formed of the Cotton Collection, donated to the Museum in 2002. This exceptional and unrivalled collection of over 450 chairs, many of which are marked by the maker, maps the regional ‘dialect’ of English chairs providing a typology for identifying and studying regional chair production and domestic culture.
  • an extensive public collection of Utility furniture, a historically significant, ambitious and unique scheme. The collection includes living room pieces as well as ephemera from the scheme such as tokens and catalogues.

  Paintings, prints and drawings: historically the collection has been made up of oil paintings dating from the 17th to 20th centuries, images that would have furnished the main living spaces of middle-class Londoners’ homes and, representations of domestic interiors and gardens.  Given the rarity of depictions on middle-class interiors, this is now a considerable collection of over 800 pieces.

  Photography: This comprises of over 200 works and explores the work of professional photographers depicting home life. Artists represented include Mark Cowper, Kyna Gourley and Jonathan Donovan. We are continuing to grow our photography collection to diversify representations of home and begin to ensure our collections reflect many types of homes, not just the middle-class main living space.

  Textiles: an extensive collection of furnishing textiles, curtains, carpets, cushions and other soft furnishings with examples from the 18th and 19th centuries and strength of coverage for the 20th century comprised of nearly 1,000 items. The collection is significant because it covers an important area of home furnishing that has tended to be neglected in public collections and due to its fragility is vulnerable to loss.

  Documenting Homes Collection: an exceptional and unique collection of over 7000 items providing rich coverage of homes from 1900 to the present, comprised of photographs of people’s homes with supporting documentation such as questionnaires and in-depth interviews. The archive has a wide geographical and social spread, and we continue to grow it, focussing on homes from a variety of classes, cultures and backgrounds.

  Christmas Collection: an extensive collection (over 1,800 items) of Christmas cards, decorations and other domestic Christmas ephemera as well as photographs of homes at Christmas, diaries and questionnaires. This level of documentation makes the collection unique and gives it a depth and richness that goes beyond other collections of Christmas material. We have started to expand this collection to encompass a broader range of winter festivals from a range of religions, cultures and backgrounds.

  Metalwork, ceramics and glass: over 3,500 items comprising domestic equipment, tableware and ornaments.

  Domestic Appliances: A collection of almost 900 items ranging from radio and stereophonic equipment, to domestic lighting, vacuum cleaners and sewing machines.

  Wallpaper: a collection of over 200 items, wallpaper samples, sample books and fragments dating from the 18th to late 20th century.  Particular emphasis is made on acquiring wallpaper layers from existing buildings which can be separated providing a sequence of decoration for a given room.

  Ephemera: Over 3,000 items mainly comprising packaging, stationery, writing equipment, household cleaning items and biscuit tins.  There is also an important collection of Utility Scheme related material.

  Treen: Over 700 miscellaneous small wooden objects from napkin rings and wig stands to tea caddies and other boxes, as well as toy/doll’s house furniture; mostly from the 19th and 20th centuries.

  Geffrye Almshouses collection: objects relating to the history of the Geffrye Almshouses and their inhabitants.  The 1780s and 1880s period rooms in the restored almshouse contain furnishings appropriate to their period and function, including cooking and food preparation equipment, bedroom furniture and accessories and objects relating to storage and recreation.

  Costume: over 1,400 items of domestic dress, with pieces from the 18th to 20th centuries; currently the museum is not collecting actively in this area; the collection provides an aid to dating furnishing textiles and providing colour references.

  Tools: an extensive collection of 19^th-century and earlier cabinetmaking and woodworking tools, including complete tool chests and small machines such as lathes and jig-saws. The museum no longer actively collects objects in this area.

  Furniture Archive: over 4,000 items relating to furniture design and production, including invoices, design drawings, business ledgers, photographs of stock/models (2,000 from the firm of H&L Epstein) and the Frederick Roe archive.

  Architectural Items: including several 17^th– and 18^th-century panelled rooms in oak and deal, a 17^th-century staircase, carved wood and marble fire surrounds, cast iron fire grates and firebacks, and examples of 18^th– and 19^th-century joinery.  Lead water butts and a brick niche are displayed in the museum gardens. The museum no longer collects in this area.

  Library Collections: comprises printed books and journals relating to the study of home ranging across a broad range of disciplines and subject areas from social history, through material culture, social anthropology, design history, domestic architecture, garden history and the decorative arts. It includes primary evidential material such as diaries, decorating and furnishing advice manuals and interior/life-style magazines, cookery books, etiquette manuals and household inventories both in printed and manuscript form.  There is also an extensive collection of retail and trade catalogues of household goods dating from the eighteenth century to the present day.  In all, the collection comprises of around 8,000 titles.

  Source: Collection development policy

  Date: 2023

  Licence: CC BY-NC