The Geffrye Museum — the delightful museum dedicated to the living rooms of merchants’ houses through the ages — is currently running A Garden within Doors, an exhibition looking at plants and flowers in the home, writes Helen Gazeley.
The museum, set in eighteenth-century almshouses, Shoreditch, has a run of eleven rooms furnished as they would have been at different periods from the end of the 16th to the end of the 20th centuries. Each room is currently dressed with flowers, in keeping with the period. So, a swag of greenery is slung across the Tudor mantelpiece, Delftware full of scented hyacinths adorns a 17th-century table, ferns and careful arrangements feature in the mid 19th century. In the basement, the exhibition space holds paintings, books and plant holders from the 19th and 20th centuries.
Is it worth a visit? Well, in a nutshell, we can say that people have always enjoyed bringing flowers and plants into the house and occasionally fashion changes as to how and what flowers are displayed.
The 19th century saw a rise in the affluence of the middle classes, more books and magazines published, and a move to mass marketing. So it’s not surprising that books about gardening proliferated and gardens were of interest to those with property.
Slightly less predictably, the 1820s and 1830s saw an upsurge of interest in the language of flowers (now coded with secular messages, rather than the religious meanings with which they had been imbued in art from earlier times) and the care of plants and the garden were placed firmly in the remit of the lady of the household.
Of course, you could equate these ideas with a Victorian emphasis on keeping the delicate woman at home. Or you could, with a nod to human nature, see them as ideas welcomed and promoted by eager merchants hoping to increase their income. But that’s not something explored here.
The exhibition has some attractive paintings, a variety of vases and plant-holders, a reconstruction of a conservatory (these were widely available by the 1870s, thanks to the end of the glass tax in 1845, cheaper raw materials and modular designs) and quite a few entertaining audio recordings of passages written by the opinion formers of the time, from Maling to Jekyll.
Outside, they have set up an auricula theatre and pelargonium pyramid, a tower of red pelargoniums based on a design by horticultural designer Shirley Hibberd, published 1878.
In its press release, the museum says, “A Garden Within Doors will be 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.”
It’s certainly visually rich and I’d never want to put you off visiting the Geffrye, which is one of my favourite museums (especially at Christmas). This is as good an excuse as any for another visit. But if you’re worried that you won’t have time to visit A Garden within Doors, yet do have some idea of garden fashion or a degree of common sense, I’d reassure you that you won’t have missed anything approaching a challenge to what you already know.
A Garden within Doors runs until 25th July. Location and opening times. If you’d like a quick look at what’s at the Geffrye, visit the virtual tours of the rooms and gardens.
Website: The Geffrye Museum
Helen’s blog can be found at Weeding the Web.
Interesting reads.
I find it fascinating that how much we can actually learn about history thru gardening:)
I visited the Garden@Metropolitan Museum of NY last summer, and the have a rich selection of plants & flowers, and I am really amazed by the 17 centuries collection of books & gardening tools as well.
Jay Chua
Publisher, PorchSwingSets.com
Posted by: PorchSwingSets | Jul 21, 2010 at 02:06 AM