Issues in Interior Design History: Guest Editors' Introduction

Abstract

The study of interiors, until recently a marginalized area of historical inquiry, is currently one of the most dynamic fields of scholarship in the history of the decorative arts, design, and material and visual culture. A testimony to this are the articles in this special issue of Studies in the Decorative Arts. With one exception, they were presented at a symposium that took place in spring 2006 at The Bard Graduate Center for Studies in the Decorative Arts, Design, and Culture (BGC) in New York. The symposium, Moving Home: Exploring Future Agendas for Research in the Domestic Interior, was the result of a collaboration among BGC faculty whose work encompasses histories of the interior and two United Kingdom-based research initiatives, The Centre for the Study of the Domestic Interior (CSDI) and The Modern Interiors Research Centre (MIRC). The symposium offered a stimulating opportunity to explore new approaches and expand on the existing informal international dialogue among the organizers. As suggested by its title, Moving Home: Exploring Future Agendas for Research in the Domestic Interior, the aim of the symposium was to permit an extended discussion of methods, theories, and approaches to the domestic interior. The three headings used to organize the symposium sessions were taken from the categories and research questions that had informed CSDI in its compilation of historical sources, the Domestic Interiors Database (now online). The symposium's first theme, Boundaries and Thresholds, concerned relationships between interior and exterior, distinctions and blurrings between public and private, and challenges of access and circulation. Because boundaries defined by entrances, windows, and staircases also influence the cultural and social patterns of domestic life, the need was discussed for subsequent historical interpretation to understand the relation between the physical and conceptual senses of the division of such spaces. Under the second theme, Consumer Practices, came aspects of domesticity and the inte-