Recenty published a chapter in Cultural History of Home for Bloomsbury 2021
Chapter on Furniture 1650-1800
In the eighteenth century, domestic space was fashioned, inhabited, structured and performed through the concepts of habitus and figuration. The furniture and furnishings that were bought and used expressed habitus or the unarticulated but experienced symbols of life. The figuration or the networks of interdependent humans that created and sold the styles, types and materials that helped people to make sense of themselves and the world in which they lived, informed these. Supplementing these two considerations was discussion of furniture as a cultural signifier whereby people were defined by their furnishings. In addition, furniture and its relation to gender has suggested that although there was differentiation in products, home furnishings was often a joint venture for married couples. It was during the eighteenth century that furniture and the concepts of function and comfort were fully developed, whilst the notions of fashion and taste and ideas around self-consciousness, identity, difference and social performance all played a role in the furnishing choices made for the home.