[Colloque international] Home comforts, The physical and emotional meanings of home in Europe, 1650-1900

Olivier Prisset, doctorant de l’équipe InTRu, intervient dans le colloque international « Home comforts, The physical and emotional meanings of home in Europe, 1650-1900 » organisé par la Manchester Metropolitan University à la Chetham’s Library 

Home is widely recognised as a place of emotional attachment, often expressed and articulated through material objects which lie at the heart of attempts to uncover what made a house into a home. One important aspect of this is the notion of comfort, both in a physical and emotional sense ; yet comfort is a relative term, its fulfilment dependent upon a wide range of economic, social, cultural, environmental and psychological factors – from wealth to the weather, and from family to fashion.

This conference aims to explore the wide range of ways in which ideas and ideals of comfort were expressed in and through the home ; how these changed over time and space, and whether it is possible to identify a European conceptualisation of home and comfort.

Thursday 5th October

10.00-11.00   Registration and coffee

11.10-12.00   Keynote 1: How to ‘live comfortable’: northern English tradesmen in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, Hannah Barker, University of Manchester

12.00-13.15   Panel 1: Family, sociability and the emotions of comfort

Emotional labour and the household in 17th and 18th century England – Dominic Birch, King’s College, London
Samuel Pepys, comfort and social accounting – Jamie Graves, University of Sheffield
Middle-class fathers, sons and domestic comfort in Victorian England – Laura Ugolini, University of Wolverhampton
13.15-14.10   Lunch

14.10-15.50   Panel 2: Modern, convenient and efficient houses

Masters and servants in the 18th century: parallel worlds? – Aurélien Davrius, Paris-Malaquais
Powdering rooms and water closets: marketing home comforts in Georgian Dublin – Conor Lucey, University College Dublin
Modern comforts and medieval décor: the Gothic revival home in the UK and France – Alizée Cordes, Université Clermont-Auvergne
The clientele of Dauvergne’s agency: search for amenities and yearning for modernity in Indre in the late 19th century – Olivier Prisset, Université Francois-Rabelais, Tours
15.50-16.15   Tea/coffee

16.15-17.30   Panel 3: Making a home from Home

Comfort, domesticity and social display on the Netherlandish Grand Tour, 1585-1750 – Gerrit Verhoeven, Universiteit Antwerpen
Comfort in the college: wallpaper and the student room as a domestic haven in 19th-century Cambridge, Serena Dyer, Museum of Domestic Design and Architecture
Morale, morality, fashion and subversion: the home comforts of the late Victorian Barracks – Rowena Willard-Wright, English Heritage
17.35-18.00   Intermission 1: The comfort of animal things – Julie-Marie Strange, University of Manchester

18.00-19.00   Reception

20.00            Conference dinner (venue to be confirmed)

Friday 6th October

9.30-10.20     Keynote 1: Northern comfort and discomfort: distribution of spaces and display of objects in Swedish country houses, c.1740–1800, Johanna Ilmakunnas, University of Turku

10.20-11.10   Panel 4: Singular comforts: bachelor homes

“What a dislocation of comfort is comprised in that word moving”: comfort disrupted in the domestic and emotional life of an 18th-century Bachelor – Helen Metcalfe, University of Manchester
Comfort compromised ? The domestic lives of Finnish bachelors at the turn of the 20th century – Laika Nevalainen, European University Institute
11.10-11.30   Tea/Coffee

11.30-12.45   Panel 5: Technologies of comfort: heat, plumbing and light

The invention of thermal comfort in 18th century France – Olivier Jandot, Université d’Artois
Technique, form and comfort: John Soane, a pioneer – Diego Bocchini, M. Beatrice Bettazzi and Giovanni Mochi, Università degli Studi di Bologna
Where fairies seem to superintend … the breakthrough of comfort in 19th-century Antwerp homes – Britt Denis, Universiteit Antwerpen
12.45-13.40   Lunch

13.40-14.55   Panel 6: Ideal homes? Furnishing for comfort

The ideal home, 1737: the toy or baby house as a place of retreat – Patricia Ferguson, British Museum and National Trust Advisor
“Sophas in abundance”: from inconvenience to comfort at Chiswick House – Esmé Whittaker, English Heritage
Pleasing the new wife: creating female comfort in a Hungarian country house – Kristof Fatsar, Writtle University College
15.00-15.30   Intermission 2: Exploring notions of comfort through the Geffyre Museum of the Home’s collections from the 18th century to the present– Eleanor John, Geffrye Museum

15.30-15.45   Last words on comfort