Interior Decorating in Nineteenth-Century France

This book explores the origins of interior design in nineteenth-century France. It shows how new, modern techniques of image-making and reproduction enabled the still-unnamed profession of the interior designer to take shape. -- .

---

This book explores the beginnings of the interior design profession in nineteenth-century France. Drawing on a wealth of visual sources, from collecting and advice manuals to pattern books and department store catalogues, it demonstrates how new forms of print media were used to ‘sell’ the idea of the unified interior as a total work of art, enabling the profession of interior designer to take shape. In observing the dependence of the trades on the artistic and public visual appeal of their work, the book establishes crucial links between the fields of art history, material and visual culture, and design history. -- .