Comfort and Judgement: Nineteenth Century Advice Manuals and the Scripting of Australian Identity [Paperback]

My journey to this book is the culmination of a long-held fascination with the history of Australias domestic interiors. Even as a child in a remote, desert-bound Queensland town, far from the acknowledged centres of culture, I understood the power of this interior space as a refuge from the extremities of the outside world & What could not be tamed on the outside could be subdued within a manageable framework of highly gendered domestic performance inside. As I sifted through the pages of Australias nineteenth-century advice manuals on the subjects of domestic economy and home decoration, I was struck by the continuum of the interior and its purpose: as a refuge to nurture both comfort and confidence.Since the earliest days of colonisation white Australians have sought solace within the domestic interior. Faced with a disconcerting and entirely alien environment, the replication of English interiors provided the colonys settler communities with the tether they sought to a guiding homeland and its governing rules of domestic practices. Though Australian identity is aligned, truthfully or otherwise, to the masculine exterior  the bush, the outback and the beach  the feminised interior provides an alternative site of identity, potentially closer to truth than the heroic fictions of colonial frontier narratives. Comfort and Judgement provides a richer, deeper understanding of the Australian home than has been realised before.Gene Bawden has over twenty-five years experience as a communication designer and design academic. He currently leads the Department of Design at Monash University, where he is a passionate advocate of teaching, design thinking and practice-based research. His research interests combine notions of gendered spatial practices with his communication design expertise, to reveal new ways of imagining interiors that are shared and equitable. The book will possess a wide retail interest. Itsaccessible content has marketability beyond justacadelcŒ