Corinne Hoge
Programme:
Architectural History - PhD/MPhil
Start date:
Sep-22
Mode of study:
Part time
Research title:
Producing Taste and Gender for Profit: The Role of Wallpaper and Carpet Manufacturers in the Creation of The British Victorian Domestic Interior, 1834-1884
Biography
Corinne is currently pursuing her doctoral research on the impact of capitalism on the British Victorian domestic interiors. Her research focuses on the commercial role of designs and patterns in the wallpaper and carpet industries in the mid-to-late nineteenth century, and the role of advice literature as a marketing agent.
Corinne worked as a change management consultant and holds a French Master’s degree in Business Management. In 2018, she received a Master’s degree in Art History with Merit from the Open University, followed in 2021 with a Master’s degree in the History of Design with Merit from the University of Oxford. Corinne is a regular contributor to the Wallpaper History Review published by the Wallpaper History Society.
Research interests
- Victorian Interiors
- Nineteenth-century wallpaper
- Nineteenth-century carpet
- Commodification and the commercial role of design and patterns
- Advice literature
- Gender and domesticity
In the second half of the nineteenth century, a dramatic increase in the production of wallpapers, and carpets resulted in the creation of a new British domestic interior. Whilst numerous studies have been conducted on either the artistic or social creation of the Victorian domestic interior, the role of manufacturers in shaping these interiors has not yet been explored. This lack of research, combined with a focus on the consumption side of decoration, has resulted in a biased representation based on the belief that supply responded to demand.
My research proposes to compare the wallpaper and carpet industries to show how manufacturers created new markets, shaped domestic British interiors and transformed the home into a commodity, ‘a good for sale and for profit’ (Hermann 2021: 23). Drawing on Bruno Latour’s actor-network theory, this research analyses the different stages of the commodification process by looking at the interaction of manufacturers with three critical ‘actants’ in this process: government and non- economic organisations, advice literature, and hero designers. Drawing on the Board of Trade Office of the Registrar of Designs archival records, and business archives of manufacturers, designers and publishers, this study examines economic aspects of design, advice literature and gendering of rooms. It thereby highlights interior design decoration from a business perspective and underlines a commodification process which started with the governmental concern about design applied to decorative art industries in the 1830s and culminated by the end of the century with the emergence of a new profession: interior designer. By analysing the evolution of interiors, advice literature, products and marketing techniques, I argue that manufacturers had an active role not only on the aesthetic creation of the Victorian domestic interiors but also on the economic transformation of taste into a mass-market good for sale and for profit.