Report: DHS Research Travel Grant by Freya Gowrley

Reports

25 February 2017 -

Thanks to a 2016 Research Travel Grant from the Design History Society (DHS), I was able to conduct crucial primary research for the completion of my monograph, provisionally titled From House to Home: Gender, Identity & Emotion in British Interior Design, 1750-1840. This will be the first study to focus on the complex relationship between emotion, identity, and the material culture of the home during this period, exploring how the decoration of domestic space allowed contemporaries to express themselves, to show affection to their loved ones, and to construct the homes in which they lived.

Specifically, a DHS Research Travel Grant enabled me to conduct research for three of the book's chapters, which examine descriptions of interior design in the travel writing of Caroline Lybbe Powys, reputation management and the interiors of John Wilkes's retirement cottage on the Isle of Wight, and Anne Seymour Damer's inheritance of Horace Walpole's Gothic revival home, Strawberry Hill, in turn.

At the British Library, I consulted the papers, journals, and correspondence of Caroline Lybbe Powys, Anne Seymour Damer, and John Wilkes, whilst at the Royal College of Surgeons and the Wellcome Library I viewed the correspondence of Mary Berry, a close friend of Damer and Walpole. I discovered many exciting finds in archives, including a number of previously unknown portraits, as well as a recipe for shellwork cement shared between friends, highlighting the collaborative nature of such craft practices. I also read many letters describing key elements of the interiors of Walpole and Damer's homes, which I will continue to think about during my forthcoming research trip to Yale's Lewis Walpole Library, where I'll also be investigating the relationship between the two figures.

The grant also allowed me to visit Strawberry Hill itself, which has been the subject of a sensitive restoration and was reopened to the public in 2010. Being able to walk through the spaces so lovingly described by its owners and viewers was immensely important and evocative, particularly for a project concerned with issues of emotion and experience. The visit also revealed that despite the importance of Damer and Walpole's relationship, the narratives of queer inheritance and ownership that are at the heart of my book chapter are entirely absent from Strawberry Hill's current public presentation.

I'm excited to utilise this archival research in my forthcoming monograph, and would like to thank the Design History Society, the British Library, the Royal College of Surgeons and the Wellcome Library for making this research possible.

Freya Gowrley
Edinburgh College of Art, The University of Edinburgh