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A Garden Within Doors

on July 22, 2010 – 3:58 am

“A Garden Within Doors: Plants and Flowers in the Home” exhibition at the Geffrye Museum, London will end soon. This exhibition looks at the enduring appeal of plants and flowers in the home and investigates the meanings and values associated with indoor plants. It explores what role houseplants and arranged flowers play in homemaking and in the psychology of the home, whilst taking into account changing fashions and tastes. A Garden Within Doors is a visually rich exhibition supported by a wide range of surprising textual evidence which promises to challenge perceptions about the long history of plants and flowers in the home.

A Garden Within Doors examines how plants and flowers were displayed over 400 years. It explores why they were so valued, who chose and created the display, what flowers, plants and floral displays meant at the time and which of the decorative arts reflected all this. The strong links between home and garden are highlighted by special displays in all of the museum’s period rooms, which span in date from 1600 to 1998; in these spaces the houseplants and flower arrangements appropriate for the time are displayed and set in their historical context. These historically accurate, often subtle, interventions in the period rooms enables visitors to the Geffrye to track the evolving styles in the plant materials themselves and also in the vessels in which these natural beauties were displayed.

The main exhibition gallery focus specifically on the long nineteenth century (1800-1914), a period when domestic gardening and an interest in bringing plants and flowers indoors grew dramatically. A thematic approach, structured into three main sections, enables a clearer understanding of the complex network of ideas, concepts, physical goods and ‘objects of desire’ which created a vibrant and diverse ‘floral culture’ in nineteenth-century England. Two introductory sections looks at the creators and supporters of such a culture: the opinion formers – inventors, advisors, writers and publishers who spread ideas and information about the subject – and the suppliers – the plantsmen, nurseries, florists, manufacturers, designers and tradesmen to whom the middle classes went for their seeds, plants, flowers and equipment.

Much of the exhibition is given over to what actually happened ‘at home’ in the nineteenth century. Using a wide range of evidence – including technical advice, fictional literature, paintings and photographs, plant lists and drawings, correspondence and reminiscences and unusual pieces of decorative art – the Geffrye explores how and why the huge interest in plants and flowers manifested itself in Victorian middle-class homes. Through this, they hope to demonstrate that the deep engagement with plants and flowers was neither solely the province of the Victorian woman of the home (‘the angel of the house”) nor was it considered a subject without weight: to the contrary, some of the brightest writers and thinkers of the period held opinions on the subject and its importance, to both domestic life and society at large. The rich and inventive range of flower and plant holders that became available in the second half of the nineteenth century and paintings depicting flowers and houseplants will be on display to inspire and delight visitors to the exhibition.

For more information visit the Geffrye Museum website.

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