Trade catalogues in Victorian England: a new approach to furnishing the bourgeois domestic interior in the late nineteenth century
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.22429/Euc2026.sep.09.01Keywords:
Trade catalogues, Victorian furniture, England, 19th century, material culture, domestic space, middle class, advertisingAbstract
Abstract: This article examines English furniture trade catalogues published in London during the final third of the nineteenth century, establishing their connection with material culture and the middle-class domestic interiors/domestic interiors of the middle class. After contextualizing these volumes within the new commercial and advertising strategies developed by companies to market their goods, the paper analyses and compares ten specific catalogues based on their formal characteristics and structure. Through this corpus, the study explores the commercial strategies, departments, and services offered by these firms, while also examining the typologies, styles, materials, and techniques of the furniture featured within their pages.
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