The Thumbnail Book Reviews
by John Q McDonald --- 4 August 2000
by Witold Rybczynski
This is more a history of the idea of comfort than of home. Rybczynski takes us on a whirlwind overview of the development of the comfortable, cozy homestead. Starting in the late Middle Ages, through the eighteenth century development of domesticity, into the modern era of appliances and designer furniture. One wouldn't think that the basic idea of a cozy warm home would have such recent heritage, but Rybczynski convinces us that it does. Throughout the book, he uses the example of comfortable chairs as illustrative of the human conception of comfort. From sitting on bare floors in a medieval home where Greek furniture is forgotten, to sitting on bare wood, to sitting on carefully crafted Windsor chairs, to a brief mention of the La-Z-Boy to today's curiously over-designed furniture. He starts out with Ralph Lauren's carefully directed home furnishings advertisements, which project a congenial and usually wealthy vision of home (This book was published in 1986. I imagine that faced with Martha Stewart and other mavens of cozy today, Rybczynski would have quite a lot more to say on that subject). He then takes us back to the first flowering of multi-roomed houses, and the evolution of bourgeois concepts of warm comfort. While Rybczynski seems to take the view that the cultural ideals were changing in the late middle ages, he seems also to neglect that at that time, an explosion of middle-class wealth might also have resulted in expressions of that wealth in larger, more luxurious, private houses. The expression of wealth and power in the bourgeoisie may have had a lot to do with people's desire for the trappings of wealth, which certainly included the larger more opulent homes. At the time this book was published, smaller, cozier homes were more the norm. Witness, today, the growth of large mutated homes in sprawling gated communities. Also, as he describes the modern furniture that seems to have lost all concept of comfort, driving people back in time to simpler days and cozier homes, he only touches on the economic side of this issue. People without the money to buy these things suffer less from the over-designed image of the modern home, and I think, tend to live in comparative comfort. The very poor, have a lot more to worry about, though, but they are not necessarily the subject of this book. Nevertheless, this is indeed an entertaining overview of the development of home as an idea. The history is rich and detailed, but also provocative. Builders, architects, designers should read it.
Also by Rybczynski: [One Good Turn] [City Life] [A Clearing in the Distance]