Designing the Morality of Consumption: “Chamber of Horrors” at the Museum of Ornamental Art, 1852–53

Abstract

Introduction In Britain, where all sumptuary laws were abolished as early as 1604 (the earliest in the world), the “taste” of everyday things became an issue of great importance by the mid-nineteenth century, enough to give birth to a national institution solely dedicated to the matter. This was the Museum of Ornamental Art, now the Victoria and Albert Museum, whose primary aim was to “improve the public’s taste.” The term “taste” was introduced to Britain from France in the eighteenth century, and was discussed mainly within intellectual, aristocratic, or professional circles. Edmund Burke argued “On Taste” in the preface to his Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful (1756); and the title of Thomas Chippendale’s book, Gentleman and Cabinet-Maker’s Director: Being a Large Collection of the Most Elegant and Useful Designs of Household Furniture, in the Most Fashionable Taste (1754), was clearly suggestive of its audience. In the following century, however, after Britain had experienced the industrial revolution, “taste” was placed in a much wider context. A.W. Pugin associated taste, society, and morality in his Contrasts: Or, A Parallel Between the Noble Edifices of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries and Similar Buildings of the Present Day, Shewing the Present Decay of Taste (1836). Works such as The Hand-Book of Taste: Or, How to Observe Works of Art, especially Cartoons, Pictures, and Statues (1843) by Fabius and periodicals including The Artist and Amateur’s Magazine: A Work Devoted to the Interests of the Arts of Design and the Cultivation of Taste, to which William Etty and John Ruskin contributed, intended for a nonprofessional and middle-class reader, appeared soon after. So far, the focal subjects of these how-to publications were architecture, painting, sculpture, literature, and music, which, in general, were either appreciated in public or possessed by a luxuried few. Towards the middle of the century, a different trend emerged. Taste in consumption was discussed for a nonprofessional, more general audience that would spend money on home decoration. Domestic objects became as serious a subject as any work of art, as represented by Charles Eastlake’s Hints on Household Taste in