I'm an eighteenth-century historian (mainly!), who delights in all things related to the country house; building and architecture, material culture, servants, household and estate management... If I can research it, I'll write about it!
As I mentioned in my post on Thinking About the Country House, there has been a great deal of interest in this subject area over the last two years or so. Present excitement is reflected in television shows like Downton Abbey which portray upstairs/downstairs divides and socio-economic themes of Britain in the early twentieth century. Such is public interest in these elements of country house living, that many houses open to the public feel the need to show their ‘secret’ rooms and dark domestic quarters for a short time each year.
There has also been a flourish of interest in the grander apartments, perhaps to counterbalance the austere or the uncharacteristic calm of the kitchens, pantries and nurseries. Restored pieces of furniture are celebrated and entire rooms have been in receipt of funding in order to return them to a key moment in their history. This sort of activity has eventually led a few British academic institutions to consider the thought processes of country house owners in creating their homes. This has in turn prompted debate on the wider position of the country house, in Britain particularly, through themes of trade, politics and even military presence.
The University of Warwick’s three year project on The East India Company at Home, 1757-1857 is one of these resulting debates. The main purpose of the project is to explore the significance of the country house in an imperial and global context by uniting relevant houses, families, and material culture by means of one detailed study. Funded by the Leverhulme Trust and led by Professor Margot Finn, in the Department of History at Warwick, the project ‘seeks to work in collaboration with family and local historians, curators, academics and other researchers to illuminate Britain’s global material culture from the eighteenth century to the present.’
It has become quite a large undertaking, and so far the project team have amassed a great deal of material to present on their website. Arguably, some of it is rather more general country house reference material, but nonetheless, for anyone interested in British country houses, this is a must-see.
The project has five main objectives:
i) to produce a series of interlinked case studies,
ii) to situate the Asian goods that furnished Georgian and Victorian homes,
iii) to illuminate the ways in which material culture helped to mediate wider historical processes,
iv) to assess the ways in which Asian luxuries incorporated within British country houses expressed regional, national and global identities,
v) and to integrate academic and museum-based research on the global genealogies of British country house interiors.
It does sound very long-winded for anyone outside academic study, or with a general interest. What the website for the project can do, however, is provide a platform for further reading. For example, over the term of the project there will be a series of published studies on individual houses. The first ‘went live’ this week – Swallowfield Park, Berkshire. With separate sections to leaf through, and a full PDF of the case study to download, there is plenty to get into. Crucially, the study is comprehensive enough to include histories of architecture, family, design, and fine art. There are several pages to navigate through, and the illustrations are wonderful! Especially as the house is now owned by Sunley Heritage, a company which converts country houses into luxury apartments.
Swallowfield Park, Berkshire. (From the East India Company at Home project website)
Clearly there are a lot of minds working on this project, and a lot of thought has gone into making this fully accessible. It may be academic, but this has not made it exclusive or entirely high-brow. I would even suggest that many more academic institutions could take heed of this method of promoting similar research, as it would definitely benefit those hungry to discover more about specialist areas of heritage study.
Many thanks to Peter Jordens for sending this information.
Samantha A. Rebovich announces that the 2011 Annual General Meeting of the Museums Association of the Caribbean (MAC) will be held from Monday, November 21 through Wednesday, November 23 in English Harbour, Antigua. The Meeting’s theme is ‘Museums and Sustainability’ and focuses on making Caribbean museums sustainable for future generations by greening their spaces, developing new fundraising initiatives in a changing global economy, and creating collections management strategies that speak to the sustainability of nonrenewable cultural resources.
Papers are invited from museum professionals and advocates throughout the Caribbean on topics related to the Meeting theme. In addition to paper sessions, the Meeting will feature several workshops and guest speakers focusing on the issues outlined above. A session will also be dedicated to discussing the future of MAC and how to better integrate museums from throughout the region into our organization.
ACRAH 