Shortcuts
Please wait while page loads.

Research Library catalogue

Back to Research Library home

PageMenu- Main Menu-
Page content

Catalogue Display

Comfort and judgement : nineteenth-century advice manuals and the scripting of Australian identity / Gene Bawden.

Comfort and judgement : nineteenth-century advice manuals and the scripting of Australian identity / Gene Bawden.
Share Link
Catalogue Information
Field name Details
ISBN 9781925835489
Author Bawden, Gene Thomas (author.)
Title Comfort and judgement : nineteenth-century advice manuals and the scripting of Australian identity / Gene Bawden.
Publisher and/or associated date/s Clayton, Vic. : Monash University Publishing, 2019.
Description lviii, 166 pages : illustrations (some colour) ; 24 cm.
Note Winner of the Mollie Holman Doctoral Medal for Excellence, Faculty of Art, Design and Architecture, 2019.
Bibliography Includes bibliographical references (pages 187-196)
Summary 'My journey to this book is the culmination of a long-held fascination with the history and currency of Australia's domestic interior. Having been born in a remote, desert-bound Queensland town, I have felt its power as a solace; a retreat from the extremities of the Australian environment. The interior provided a zone in which we were kept safe, but so too were our traditions, behaviours and belief systems. As I sifted through the pages of Australia's nineteenth-century advice manuals on the subject, featuring caverns of formal furniture suites, patterned carpet, velvet drapes, china cabinets, occasional tables, and collections of ornaments all awkwardly coalescing in spaces impregnated with the acrid waft of furniture polish, I was struck by the continuum of the interior and its purpose; as a refuge to induce both comfort and confidence.' Since the earliest days of colonisation white Australians have protectively swaddled themselves in the domestic interior. Faced with a disconcerting and entirely alien environment, the replication of English interiors provided the colony's settler communities with the tether they sought to a guiding homeland and its comforting rules and practices. Though Australian identity is aligned, truthfully or otherwise, to the `masculine' exterior: the bush, the outback and the beach, women were imperative to settler communities, and so too were the interiors they created. Comfort and Judgement provides a richer, deeper understanding of the Australian home than has been realised before.
Subjects Advice manuals
Women -- Australia -- Identity
Interior decoration
Graphic design (Typography)
Imperialism -- Social aspects
Other Corporate Bodies Monash University
Call number 2019.365
.
Add Title to Basket Catalogue Record 100075262
.
Catalogue Information 100075262 Beginning of record . Catalogue Information 100075262 Top of page .
Item Information
Barcode Shelf Location Collection Volume Ref. Status Due Date
A00930697 2019.365
 General Collection   . Available to Museum Staff .  
. Catalogue Record 100075262 ItemInfo Beginning of record . Catalogue Record 100075262 ItemInfo Top of page .