The idea of a period room was first developed as a museum technique as a means of preserving the historical accuracy of the material culture of the time. Parallel to period rooms we encounter historic house museums, outdoor history museums, as well as village and period recreations.
The period room originates from the need for storing and displaying objects gathered by collectors and antiquarians. These period rooms were also a means of bringing present and future generations in touch with their ancestral origins and connecting with their historical past. One of the pioneers of the use of period rooms to display and interpret collections was Charles P. Wilcomb
7
. Unlike the study of an artifact in isolation, the period room allows the viewer to see the artifacts within the physical context in which they were placed demonstrating the aesthetic values of that culture.
The concept of period rooms appears to originate in the French
monument
historique
movement around 1830, which was based in the promotion of historical and architectural buildings. In the United States it is followed with the beginning of the preservation in 1850 of such well-known properties such as George Washington’s headquarters in Newburgh, New York or Mount Vernon, Virginia about ten years later. That is, it begun with the historic preservation of places where well-known events had taken place or famous people lived.
It is not until the so-called
Sanitary Fairs
(exhibitions created as a means of raising funds during the American Civil War for widows and orphans) that ‘colonial mood’ rooms came about. The purpose was not preservation, education or even replication with any authenticity the interior rooms of that time period. These ‘colonial mood’ rooms can therefore be best compared with today’s ‘theme parks.’
As a prelude to museum rooms, we have the work of Parley Poore who begun to pursue aspects of historic periods within home settings. Also of especial importance are the period rooms of 1880 identified by George Sheldon and others of the Pocumtuck Valley Memorial Association in Deerfield, Massachusetts. These period rooms exhibited artifacts pertaining to the kitchen and bedroom but without attempting to authentically recreate a given period.
Criteria of the period room
The period room can be historical, aesthetic, or both. According to Young
8
there are three different criteria by which the period room must be judged: 1) the purpose of the room as dictated by its location, 2) the capacity to make you believe in the historical period or concept represented. That is, how well it captures the ‘spirit’ of the historical period or concept; and 3) the authenticity of originality of the enclosed furnishings and the frame.
There are artistic, ethnographic and educational goals associated with the true period room. Therefore, it is much more than just providing a background for the different cultural artifacts. Period rooms are used also as means of expressing and maintaining core beliefs, values and of representing rituals. It is a way of keeping ideals and ideas alive.
There are different ways of experiencing period rooms. The first is by being able to walk into the room and getting as close in proximity to the artifacts as is possible. The second way is the viewing of the period room from either a doorway or through a window. Each mode offers the viewer with a unique way of interrelating with the cultural artifacts within the context of the time period being represented.
Period rooms and artifacts: a social document of an era
The study of material culture as reflected in period rooms, as we go from the public or outside of the home, to the private, or inside the home replicates the Victorian values of the late 1800s and early 1900s. Students can better understand the role that cultural values and technology play on material culture and the importance of period rooms as a unit of analysis.
As the unit is implemented, it is recommended that we begin with a room that everyone can relate to. I propose to start with the kitchen and the bathroom (highlighting the role that technology plays in these two rooms) followed by studying the way that cultural values change the composition, location, and meaning of today’s living room.
Nonetheless, this narrative begins with the parlor as a means of illustrating the clear division during the Victorian period between private and public spaces within the home. The parlor, being the quintessential Victorian room represented the public face of the home and I so choose because the study of this public space within the home will afford us a window to the many social rituals that took place within those four walls and that characterized this time period.
The parlor
During the Victorian period the separation between private and public spaces was well delineated in the house layout. In general, public rooms were in the front while the more functional rooms were either in the back or on other floors of the house. Depending on the size of the homes, there may have been other ‘public’ single-purpose rooms loaded with symbolism through the décor and furnishings. Among these rooms we have the parlor, library, music room, and the dining room.
The parlor was a place of rituals encompassing life and death. Rituals regarding the way you acted in society where you demonstrated that you had a space in society as demonstrated by the orderliness and symbolism represented by all accessories and manners.
In order to better understand this time period it is important to study the existing dichotomy between the value of
culture
, as reflected from the ideals of gentility and cosmopolitanism, and
comfort
as reflected by domesticity (family-centered)
9
.
During this period there was a fascination with eighteenth-century European cultural ideals reflecting gentility values. Consequently we have parlors that mirror eighteenth-century salons or drawing rooms in their furnishings and in the activities that take place in them. These rooms with all their accessories were not set up for comfort but for the social display of refined manners, behavior, and appearances.
During the Victorian period ‘refinement’ means more and more elaborate possessions as their owners could buy or bring together. For example, the
fauteuil
style of the open-armed chair was meant to convey the eighteenth-century European cultural ideals of drawing rooms. If you owned one, the
fauteuil
brought you symbolically closer to the salon or drawing room; and if you could sit on it, you could then begin to act like a noble, and thus claim without stating it in words that you were what your possessions claimed you are. As a result you became noble by association.
Objects were saturated with covert and overt symbolism and were considered a reflection of family values and accomplishments. There are complex ideas that are reflected in the decoration and the placement of artifacts in the parlor. Among these ideas we have the term
domesticity
, which encompasses those family life norms that directed the conduct of the members of the household. This domesticity was reflected in the cleanliness, in the type of furniture, and wall decorations, which all expressed values of formality and appropriateness
10
.
Another ideal of the Victorian period is the fascination with travel, foreign lands, and the breadth of knowledge gained from traveling. This cosmopolitan ideal was directly reflected in the type of objects that would furnish the parlor. This ideal of world culture, of widespread knowledge and high-culture were represented among other artifacts on pianos and in wall decorations depicting foreign lands.
The decline of the parlor
With the exception of the ‘well-to-do’ who were able to afford to maintain multiple single purpose rooms, by the first decade of the twentieth century, we begin to see the living - room substituting the parlor.
Additionally, with the beginning of the arts and crafts period in the 1900s, there is a shift from pretentious complexity to the artistic simplicity of the handmade one-of-a-kind décor; a shift from the specialized room floor plan to the open space floor plan of the bungalow. Public and private home spaces are one and the same and by the 1920s the word living room had replaced the parlor in catalogs and magazines, even making the word parlor disappear from model homes.
At this point in time, the living room becomes a multipurpose room, which was now designed for both family and visits. In a sense it represents a return to the multipurpose room of the Colonial past.
One of the main reasons for the decay and eventual disappearance of the parlor is the fact that living spaces become smaller. There is a rise in the number of apartments, homes were subdivided into two or three family units, and consequently less space was available to have specialized rooms, which were not a part of the family day-to-day life. Additionally, functionality (technology) replaced form (decorative fashion). New homes, unlike those in the Victorian period, included some of the most up-to-date home technologies, which were dependent on electricity, pipes, plumbing, a furnace, water system, etc. that required more space and money.
Furthermore some of the social functions that took place in the parlor: calling, teas, and theatrics fell out of favor due to technological advances such as the invention of the car and the telephone, or due to new forms of social entertainment such as movies and entertainment parks. These advances and cultural changes made the need for a ‘public’ social space within the home obsolete.
The bathroom and the kitchen
In the nineteenth century we begin to see a significant shift from traditional forms of manufacturing goods (such as weaving, furniture making, canning goods, and agriculture) to the industrialization process of all those goods. This shift, paired with the rise of advertisement, created the idea of mass consumption.
This era of consumption takes place from the 1890s to 1940s as represented by the mass production of goods. This was the same period when the bathroom and the kitchen experience their most significant changes. As the bathroom became the center of the fight against all type of secretions, the kitchen became the control center for household consumption. While for the men the home was a shelter from production for the woman the house became the control center for managing consumption.
11
Timeline
The following list is a brief chronology of the most important events related to water, waste, and electrical systems, which are of significance to the understanding of the way that technological advances affected both the kitchen and the bathroom
12
.
-
· 1790, First system of public waterworks in Philadelphia
-
· 1820, Begins production of cast iron tubes in England (production begins in the US in 1850)
-
· 1840, Hot water available as part of a container in the hearth. The cooking range is also located there.
-
· 1849, Philadelphia’s population = 340,000. Number of bath tabs = 3,251
-
· 1854, New York’s population = 629,904. Number of bath tabs = 3,251
-
· c.1850, Mass production of cast-iron, wrought-iron, and glazed stoneware pipe. Full mass production of affordable pipes makes plumbing available to all social classes by the first decades of the twentieth century.
-
· Number of plumbing and gas fitting supply manufacturers in the US
-
· c.1860 Water closet is more common in wealthier than in middle or lower class households
-
· 1878, Thomas Edison and Joseph Sawn invent the incandescent carbon-filament lamps and with time becoming a major competitor with gas lighting.
-
· 1890, Edison-Swan Company builds power stations in New York and London
-
· 1901, New York’s Model Tenement House Reform Law requires that all new buildings must provide each floor with running water. Later it required that this be the case for each apartment.
-
· Percentage number of US homes that have electricity provided by power stations
It is important to note the differences between the percentage number of urban and suburban families who in 1940 had access to indoor plumbing as represented by the percentage of those who had running water, indoor toilets, and bathing arrangements.
While in the urban areas 93.5 percent of the households have access to running water, only 17.8 percent of those living in the rural areas do so. 83 percent of the families living in urban areas have indoor toilets and 77.5 percent have some type of bathing arrangement. Meanwhile, of the over 40 percent of Americans living in rural areas only 11.2 percent had indoor toilets and bathing arrangements.
The bathroom
There is no other room in the house that ever saw as much change in as little time as the bathroom. This was in part due to the fact that up until the end of the nineteenth century the bathroom did not exist architecturally as a separate room (other than in the rural areas in the form of an outhouse or delegated in urban areas to the cellar or merged into the bedroom in the form of portable containers.)
Before there was plumbing, families would make use of water basins and pails, commodes and chamber pots (portable containers). Before plumbing the functions of cooking and basin bathing were partners because of the combination of both heat and water in the kitchen. With the onset of new ideas on hygiene combined with technological changes, each function was separated and consequently delegated to separate rooms.
Unlike the portable appliances of yesteryear, such as the washstand or the chamber pot, the new bathroom equivalents the sink or the toilet bowl needed a room of their own. As running water and plumbing and fixtures became available in the home, small closets, stairway landings, and rooms were converted into bathrooms.
As with the rest of the house we see that the aesthetic trends of the period are reflected in the fixtures and the appliances across all the rooms in the house. During the Victorian period we see some of the decorative forms such as elephant trunks and dolphins reflected in the fixtures as well as the ‘claw-foot’ design on bathtubs and sinks. Later on, we will see the new ideals and emphasis on hygiene reflected in streamlined bathroom designs that exemplify the ideals of cleanliness.
The kitchen
Of all the rooms in a house, the kitchen is the room throughout the ages that evokes multiple universal meanings and values. Although the configurations may be very different whether you are in the north or the south, the east or the west, the pre-colonial or the Victorian period, the kitchen is a conveyor of multiple meanings and values related to primordial needs of nurturance, nourishment and family ties.
During the pre-industrial era the kitchen held significant artifacts associated with the role of the mother and homemaker. Objects such as spinning wheels or tall clocks were the norm. While during the Victorian period the ‘heart’ of the home was in the parlor, during the pre-industrial era the kitchen was vital to the functioning of the household and family members. This space was associated with women and children. Even in those households where there were servants, the kitchen became the refuge from the other ‘formal’ rooms of the house such as the dining room or the parlor.
The Victorian period fascination with intricate decorations and plush fabrics was soon replaced by a streamline modern design of the 1930s that was characterized by horizontal clean lines and curving forms. These changes were evident throughout the house, but nowhere did it have as much significance as in the kitchen and the bathroom.
Most typical of this streamline modern design is the conical ‘teardrop’ borrowed from aerodynamics and which would be integrated into the design of most objects from toasters to refrigerators to light fixtures.
There is a move from the mechanical pieces with all the nuts and bolts of the industrial era towards the streamline design characterized by one-piece seamless shell frame, which gave the impression of having been molded from a single piece. This is the beginning of porcelain and enamel surfaces that eventually would move from a heterogeneous collection of appliances to a coordinated and continuous group of domestic appliances.
Among of the most important technological improvements in the kitchen of this time are worth mentioning the washing machine, drier, dishwasher, refrigerator, and vacuum cleaner.