The Geffrye Museum in Shoreditch, London, is set to launch its At Home exhibition on 14 November following an extensive refurbishment project.
At Home in London will present four new period rooms – dated 1630, 1695, 1745 and 1790 – as well as a series of new interpretive galleries, two new audio guides and an education and events programme.
The refurbished galleries will comprise a hall in a timber-framed house in the City of London from 1630, a parlour in a post-Fire of London house from 1695 as well as a parlour from a mid-18th century and late 18th century house.
The galleries will also display some newly acquired objects, including a set of six oak ‘joint’ stools from around 1620 – the only set of its type in a publicly accessible collection – and a pair of walnut chairs from around 1725 – the only known chairs to bear a label from one of the workshops in the St Paul’s Churchyard area, which was the main centre for the furniture trades in the late 17th and early 18th centuries.
Recently acquired domestic technology, ephemera and books will also be displayed, including a New London Family Cook recipe book from 1807.
Museum director David Dewing said: “Our challenge is to ensure that these displays are not simply evocative and nostalgic, but accurately represent the changing homes of London’s middle classes. This can only be achieved after years of intensive research. We recognise that history changes, knowledge is enhanced and fresh interpretations are reached. The new displays have been conceived for a diverse, demanding, engaged and questioning audience.
“There is much to discover about the urban middle classes, how they lived, how their tastes and aspirations were formed and how they expressed their identity through the rooms they furnished. They rose from being a relatively tiny group in society in the seventeenth century to a dominant group today.”
The project was supported by the Heritage Lottery Fund, the DCMS/Wolfson Fund and the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council.
The Geffrye Museum presents a chronological sequence of English urban middle-class interior rooms dating from 1600 to the present day. It is set in the former 18th almshouses of the Ironmongers Company, surrounded by walled gardens and a series of period gardens. Details: www.geffryemuseum.org.uk
