The Modern Interior

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A breakfast table set with a service designed by Susie Cooper, displayed in the Bowman
Brothers’ Store, London, late 1930s, illustrated in C. G. Holme, ed., The Studio Year
Book, 1939.
goods) in this context. Gradually, as the power of the marketplace
expanded the means came to dominate the end and the idealized public
sphere interior became as important as, if not more so than, its realized
counterparts. Indeed, in that form, the modern interior became an
accomplice in the construction of the ‘irrational’ desire which underpinned
the mass consumption of goods intended for ‘real’ interiors. The
result was that it became increasingly difficult to view them independently
and yet another level of ambiguity between the private and the public
spheres was created.
Another effect of the interior’s expanding relationship with mass
consumption was felt in retail spaces themselves. Arcades were covered
over to make the conditions for consuming more acceptable, and as a
consequence the idea of spaces within spaces, of rooms within rooms and
of stores within stores became increasingly widespread. The experiences