Emily's Musings: Home: A Short History of an Idea

January 23, 2004

Home: A Short History of an Idea

Finshed Home: A Short History of an Idea by Witold Rybcznski last night. I had bought it with Carrie at our trip to the GreenApple bookstore in SF.

Its a quick journey through time tracing the history of the idea of home and of comfort.

He writes that:

[Comfort] is an idea that has meant different things at different times. In the seventeeth century, comfort meant privacy, which lead to intimacy and, in turn, to domesticity. The eighteenth century shifted the emphasis to leasure and ease, the nineteenth to mechanically aided comforts -- light, heat, and ventilation. The twentieth-century domestic engineers stressed efficiency and convenience. At various times, and in response to various outside forces -- social, economic, and technological - the idea of comfort has changed, sometimes drastically. (231)

and urges that, "We must rediscover for ourselves the mystery of comfort, for without it, our dwellings will indeed by machines instead of homes." (232)

I liked the book and the way each chapter started with an image of the home in art and a quote about home or comfort from literature (similar to how Alan talks about Hay in art and literature). This is one of the paintings he used, Georg Friedrich Kersting's Girl Embroidering (c. 1814) for the chapter entitled "Ease" (along with a Jane Austen quote from Emma: "Ah! There is nothing like staying at home for real comfort.") [I found the image on a site with notes and illustrations on Regency clothing styles from a site called The Republic of Pemberley: Your haven in a world programmed to misunderstand obsession with things Austen.]

Posted by Emily at January 23, 2004 09:23 AM

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