Exhibitions

Permanent Exhibitions

Exploring Interiors: Decoration of the Home 1900-1960

Exploring Interiors asks what our living rooms, dining rooms and kitchens were like in the first half of the twentieth century, and why.

The displays show fabrics and wallpapers, from expensive designs in the most up-to-date styles to cheaper, popular patterns for the mass market. They offer a taste of the sort of choices that were available at the time.

Catalogues give a glimpse of the fixtures and fittings, the furniture and furnishings that could be bought in the shops. Advertisements and magazines highlight the newest household equipment and reveal changing attitudes to the home and domestic life. But, at the same time, Exploring Interiors uses the evocative evidence of photographs and personal commentary to find out what people's homes were really like. And, more often than not, they were very different from the impression given by advertisements, catalogues and magazines.

The exhibition aims to stimulate you, to consider how things were and to think about what made (and still makes) 'real' rooms so individual and so different from the stereotyped 'ideal'. Visitors' own recollections and photographs are warmly welcomed with a view to developing the exhibition in the future. Please contact us if you have anything to contribute

Exploring Interiors shows only a tiny fraction of MoDA's extensive collections.

Anyone wanting to follow up with further in-depth research is very welcome to make an appointment to use the collections in our Study Room. Please contact Assistant Curator Zoë Brealey on +44 (0)20 8411 5445 to make the appointment.