Includes bibliographical references and index.

Acknowledgements -- Preface -- Introduction -- Design for learning and 'A tale of two cultures' -- Good design by law: adapting Utility furniture to peacetime production -- domestic furniture in the reconstruction period - Fascinating fitness: the dangers of good design -- 'Then we were making furniture, not money': a case study of J. Clarke, Wycombe furniture-maker -- The empty cocktail cabinet: display in the mid-century British domestic interior -- FORM/female FOLLOWS FUNCTION/male: feminist critiques of design -- 'Give 'em something dark and heavy': the role of design in the material culture of popular British furniture, 1939-65 -- The tufted carpet in Britain: its rise from the bottom of the pile, 1952-70 --Strategies of embodiment and divestment: the representation of memory in domestic furnishings -- Inside Pram Town: a case study of Harlow house interiors, 1951-61 -- The real thing: the tufted carpet's entry into the vernacular -- Design as a practice of Modernity: a case for the study of the coffee table in the mid-century domestic interior.

"This collection of key essays about the domestic environment appears at a moment when the home is no longer dismissed as an insignificant feminine area, but is increasingly recognised as one of the fundamental units of human culture and, as such, of immense importance as a site for the study of society. While attending to individual case studies it also offers a synoptic view of the culture of design from a variety of perspectives. These range from the history of design education, to the view of a dying breed of craft-based designer-makers, to changes within the carpet and furniture industries and consumers taking control of the design of their own homes through doing their own interior design. It shows how apparently insignificant everyday objects as the coffee table can be seen as a sign of shift in the balance of power from production to consumption at a particular historical moment in the middle of the twentieth century. And thus it is possible to see how consumers adapted to modernity that revolutionised their lives through their consumption choices of such commodities as domestic furnishings." "This volume collects under one cover some of Judith Attfield's previously published best writings, containing essays such as 'Inside Pram Town: a case study of Harlow house interiors 1951-1961', that have since become classics in the History of Design."--Jacket.