From service to self-service: Advice literature as design discourse, 1920-1970

Journal of Design History

Volumn 14, Issue 3, 2001, Pages 187-206

  Lees Maffei, Grace ^a  

^a NONE

Author keywords

Advice literature; Domestic space; Home entertaining; Household management; Interior design; Taste

Indexed keywords

EID: 34249139100     PISSN: 09524649     EISSN: 17417279     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1093/jdh/14.3.187     Document Type: Review

References (76)

1. P. Sparke, As Long As It's Pink: The Sexual Politics of Taste, Pandora, 1995, p. 180.
2. The Esquire Party Book, by the editon of Esquire with Scotty & Ronnie Welch, Arthur Baker Ltd., 1965 offen a highly unusual example of 'additive' advice, as the 1965 text has been amended and augmented over a number of years.
3. The British Library holds, for example, more than four hundred texts published in the United Kingdom between 1920 and 1970 that include etiquette in the tide.
4. For example, A. W. Groom, Etiquette for Everyone, Southern Editorial Syndicate, 1946 and S. B. Pemberton, Etiquette for Everyone and Everywhere, Goodship House, c.1925.
5. J. Woodham's work on CoID being an example: 'Managing British design reform II: the film Deadly Lampshade: an ill-fated episode in the politics of "good taste"', Journal of Design History, vol. 9, no. 2, 1996, pp. 101-15.
6. See also D. Jeremiah, Architecture and Design for the Family in Britain, 1900-70, Manchester University Press, 2000.
7. L. Davidoff, The Best Circles: Society Etiquette and the Season, Croom Helm, 1973
8. and A. St George, The Descent of Manners: Etiquette, Rules and the Victorians, Chatto & Windus, 1993 are two examples of works concerned with pre-twentieth-century etiquette.
9. Cas Wouters offers a rare example of the academic study of twentieth-century etiquette writing, most clearly in 'Etiquette books and emotion management in the 20th century: Part One: The integration of social classes', Journal of Social History, vol. 29, no. 1, 1995, pp. 107-24
10. and 'Etiquette books and emotion management in the 20th Century: Part Two: The integration of the sexes', Journal of Social History, vol. 29, no. 2, 1995, pp. 325-39.
11. Cas Wouters's research has been comparative, focusing on The Netherlands, the United States, Britain and Germany, as the following papers demonstrate: 'Social stratification and informalization in global perspective', in Theory, Culture and Society, vol. 7, Sage, 1990, pp. 69-90
12. and 'Developments in the behavioural codes between the sexes: the formalization of informalization in The Netherlands, 1930-85', in Theory, Culture and Society, vol. 4, Sage, 1987, pp. 405-27.
13. J. Woodham, 'Managing British design reform I: Fresh perspectives on the early years of the Council of Industrial Design', Journal of Design History, vol. 9, no. 1, 1996, p. 55.
14. See also K. Hiscock, 'Modernity and the "English" tradition: Betjeman at The Architectural Review', Journal of Design History, vol. 13, no. 3, 2000, p. 195.
15. Woodham, op. cit., pp. 59-60.
16. C. McDermott, 'Popular taste and the campaign for contemporary design in the 1950s', in P. Sparke (ed.), Did Britain Make It? British Design in Context 1946-1986, Design Council, 1986, p. 157.
17. K. Davies, 'Finmar and the furniture of the future: the sale of Alvar Aalto's plywood furniture in the UK, 1934-1939', Journal of Design History, vol. 11, no. 2, 1998, pp. 145-56.
18. S. Bowden & A. Offner, 'The technological revolution that never was: gender, class and the diffusion of electrical appliances in interwar England', in V. de Grazia & E. Furlough (eds.), The Sex of Things: Gender and Consumption in Historical Perspective, University of California Press, 1996, pp. 244-74.
19. P. Bourdieu, Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1984 (1979), p. 66.
20. We may add to this Elias's theory of The Civilising Process (Blackwell 1994 (1978), first published in German in 1939), including the 'habitus' interpreted as his 'socio-genetic law', which informs both Bourdieu's notion of habitus and generative structuralism. In each case, the role of inherited or familial learning is key.
21. R. Marchand, Advertising the American Dream: Making Way for Modernity, 1920-1940, University of California Press, 1985.
22. Wouters, 'Etiquette books and emotion management', pp. 107-24.
23. N. Elias, op. cit., vol. 1, The History of Manners, p. 57.
24. L. O'Shea Borrelli, 'Dressing up and talking about it: fashion writing in Vogue from 1968 to 1993', Fashion Theory, vol. 1, no. 3, 1997, p. 255.
25. Cassell's Book of Etiquette by 'A Woman of the World', Cassell & Co., 1922, p. v.
26. E. M. Barber, Short Cut to Etiquette, The World's Work Ltd., 1956, p. vi.
27. M. Bolton & J. Bolton, The Complete Book of Etiquette, W. Foulsham & Co. Ltd., 1968, p. 7.
28. St George, op. cit., p. 286.
29. For example, a British Library catalogue search of books published in England with the title word 'etiquette' reveals an average output of 16.4 publications per decade. Between 1920 and 1929, 19 books with etiquette in the title were published. This figure rises to 21 in the decade 1930-9, to fall to only 8 in 1940-9, 13 in 1950-9, and a substantial rise to 21 again in the decade 1960-9, with a drop to just 2 in the period 1970-5.
30. J. Scanlon, Inarticulate Longings: The Ladies' Home Journal, Gender and the Promises of Consumer Culture, Routledge, 1995, p. 5.
31. Bolton, op. cit., p. 55. With many thanks to Dennis Kelly for kindly donating this book to my study.
32. Barber, op. cit., p. v.
33. N. Elias, The Court Society, Blackwell, 1983 (1939), p. 55.
34. T. Putnam, 'Beyond the modern home: shifting the parameters of residence', in J. Bird, B. Curtis, T. Putnam, G. Robertson & L. Tickner (eds.), Mapping the Futures: Local Cultures, Global Change, Routledge, 1993, p. 152.
35. E. Goffman, The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, Penguin, 1990 (1959), p. 32.
36. For a discussion of privacy in the home as compared with the parlour as a hostess's 'cultural podium', see M. Hepworth, 'Privacy, security and respectability: the ideal Victorian home', in T. Chapman & J. Hockey (eds.), Ideal Homes?, Routledge, 1999.
37. F. Leslie, Design for Twentieth Century Interiors, V&A Publications, 2000, p. 10.
38. The A.B.C. of Etiquette by a Society Lady, Drane's, 1923, p. 14.
39. The mid-nineteenth-century practice of the hostess following the processing guests in order to oversee their correct manoeuvres was replaced by 1920, when the hostess was advised to lead the least familiar or highest-ranking female guest into the dining room, directly after the host who was to accompany the least familiar or highest-ranking male guest. Agogos (pseudonym Charles William Day), Hints on Etiquette and the Usages of Society with a Glance at Bad Habits, Turnstile Press Ltd., 1946 (1836), p. 17.
40. T. Veblen, The Theory of the Leisure Class, Unwin, 1970.
41. A. Marwick, British Society Since 1945, Penguin, 1982, p. 115.
42. D. Jeremiah, Architecture, Design and the Family 1900-1970, Manchester University Press, 2000.
43. J. L. Martin & S. Speight, The Flat Book, Heinemann, 1939.
44. See also T. Brindley, 'The modern house in England: an architecture of exclusion', in Chapman & Hockey, op. cit., pp. 30-43.
45. D. Patmore, 'Modern furnishing and decoration', The Studio, 1934, plate XV.
46. Woman's Own Book of Modern Homemaking (WOBMH), George Newnes Ltd., 1967, p. 17.
47. For a related discussion of the mixing of modernist and 'other' elements, see P. Kirkham, 'Humanizing modernism: the crafts, "functioning decoration" and the Eameses', Journal of Design History, vol. 11, no. 1, 1998, pp. 15-29.
48. Patmore, op. cit., plate XVI.
49. This attempt at achieving a sense of luxury through the use of an 'all-white' colour scheme has precedents in C. R. Mackintosh's designs of 1902-3 and Syrie Maugham's off-white interiors of the late 1920s and early 1930s. Patmore, op. cit., plate III.
50. WOBMH, p. 332.
51. The Esquire Party Book, p. 2.
52. D. Bridges, How to Make Your Home Smart, Unwin, 1962, p. 79.
53. E. Good, Tableware, a Design Centre publication, MacDonald, 1969, p. 62.
54. A. Forty, Objects of Desire: Design and Society, 1750-1980, Thames & Hudson, 1986.
55. J. Leman, '"The advice of a real friend": codes of intimacy and oppression in women's magazines 1937-1955', in H. Baehr (ed.) Women and Media, Pergamon Press, 1980, p. 74.
56. L. Spigel, 'Television in the family circle: the popular reception of a new medium', in P. Mellencamp (ed.), Logics of Television: Essays in Cultural Criticism, Indiana University Press and BFI Publishing, 1990, p. 81.
57. R. Schwartz Cowan, More Work for Mother: The Ironies of Household Technology from the Open Hearth to the Microwave, Basic Books, 1983.
58. Putnam, op. cit., p. 157.
59. WOBMH, p. 85.
60. Good, op. cit., p. 53.
61. H. Robertson, 'Reconstruction and the home', The Studio, 1947, pp. 31-2.
62. C. Hardyment, Slice of Life: the British Way of Eating Since 1945, BBC Books, 1995, p. 57.
63. Barber, op. cit., p. 32.
64. C. Spry & R. Hulme, Constance Spry Cookery Book, 1956, quoted in Hardyment, op. cit., p. 56.
65. WOBMH, pp. 329, 337.
66. The A.B.C. of Etiquette, G. F. Harnden, 1920.
67. The A.B.C. of Etiquette by a Society Lady, pp. 29, 44.
68. A. Bertram, Design, Penguin, 1938, p. 73.
69. S. Macdonald & J. Porter, Putting on the Style: Setting Up Home in the 1950s, Geffrye Museum, 1990.
70. WOBMH, p. 59.
71. N. Bullock, 'First the kitchen - then the façade', Journal of Design History, vol. 1, nos. 3-4, 1988, pp. 177-92.
72. E. Bird & K. Holmes, 'Decorating for the amateur', The Studio, 1955, pp. 86-7. The original caption reads: 'The pictures and decorative curtain show that meals in the kitchen need not involve absence of comfort and elegance.' The design is by Frederick Gibberd.
73. WOBMH, p. 60.
74. Bourdieu, op. cit., p. 13.
75. Spigel, op. cit., p. 76.
76. WOBMH, p. 79.