"Any lady can do this without much trouble ...": class and gender in The dining room (1878)

Macmillan's "Art at Home" series (1876–83) was a collection of domestic advice manuals. Mentioned in every study of the late-nineteenth-century domestic interior, they have often been interpreted, alongside contemporary publications such as Charles Eastlake's Hints on Household Taste (1868), as indicators of late 1870s home furnishing styles. Mrs Loftie's The Dining Room (1878) was the series' fifth book and it considers one of the home's principal (and traditionally masculine) domestic spaces. Recent research on middle-class cultural practices surrounding food has placed The Dining Room within the tradition of Mrs Beeton's Household Management (1861); however, it is not a cookery book and hardly mentions dinners. Drawing upon unpublished archival sources, this paper charts the production and reception of The Dining Room, aiming to unravel its relationships with other contemporary texts and to highlight the difficulties of using it as historical evidence. While it offers fascinating insights into contemporary taste, class and gender, this paper suggests that, as an example of domestic design advice literature, it reveals far more about the often expedient world of nineteenth-century publishing practices

Lucy Faulkner and the 'ghastly grin': Reworking the title page illustration to Goblin Market

An article that recovers the work of the craftswoman Lucy Faulkner Orrinsmith. It demonstrates her role in the re-cutting of the title page illustration to Christina Rossetti’s poem ‘Goblin Market’ designed by D. G. Rossetti in 1862-5

“Any Lady Can Do This without Much Trouble…”: Class and Gender in The Dining Room (1878)

Macmillan's “Art at Home” series (1876–83) was a collection of domestic advice manuals. Mentioned in every study of the late-nineteenth-century domestic interior, they have often been interpreted, alongside contemporary publications such as Charles Eastlake's Hints on Household Taste (1868), as indicators of late 1870s home furnishing styles. Mrs Loftie's The Dining Room (1878) was the series' fifth book and it considers one of the home's principal (and traditionally masculine) domestic spaces. Recent research on middle-class cultural practices surrounding food has placed The Dining Room within the tradition of Mrs Beeton's Household Management (1861); however, it is not a cookery book and hardly mentions dinners. Drawing upon unpublished archival sources, this paper charts the production and reception of The Dining Room, aiming to unravel its relationships with other contemporary texts and to highlight the difficulties of using it as historical evidence. While it offers fascinating insights into contemporary taste, class and gender, this paper suggests that, as an example of domestic design advice literature, it reveals far more about the often expedient world of nineteenth-century publishing practices

Medievalism, Modernity and Memory: Cropthorne Church, 1892--1910

‘An old church is so common and so familiar an object that we are often in danger of forgetting its value...’ George Gilbert Scott (1811-78) Recorded in the Domesday Survey for Worcestershire (1086), the Church of St. Michael in Cropthorne, Worcestershire is an ancient building with a rich history. Drawing on surviving manuscript and visual sources, this article examines the repairs, restoration and refurbishments made to the interior of St. Michael’s between 1890 and 1910. This was a period in which the ownership of the village shifted from the Anglican Church to private patronage and a time which witnessed many changes to the fabric of the building; notably the extensive refurbishments carried out to the chancel in 1894 by Francis Holland, the Lord of the Manor and the restoration of the rest of Cropthorne church which took more than eighteen years to complete. Highlighting the significance of the Church in rural areas as a place for personal and community memory, this article will consider how these changes to a sacred space used for communal worship were linked to the social changes experienced by the rural community that worshipped within it: moving beyond a purely architectural survey of the building, it will identify the agents of these changes; the processes involved in accomplishing them; and, responses to these alterations. Consequently, the alterations and additions to the interior of St. Michael’s made at the instigation and expense both of the Holland Family of Cropthorne Court and the people of Cropthorne will be analyzed in the context of the changing religious, technological, social, economic and political conditions of the period, which include the effects of the Agricultural Depression and the devastating impact of war

‘Decorators May be Compared to Doctors’: An Analysis of Rhoda and Agnes Garrett's Suggestion for House Decoration in Painting, Woodwork and Furniture (1876)

Domestic advice manuals are, like any other texts, constructed discourses that cannot be used as conventional historical evidence. They need to be understood both as historical documents that engage with contemporary notions of design and taste, and as a genre of Victorian narrative: they need to be placed in a context of other narratives, both historical and literary, and explored using both historical methodologies and literary theories. Of the twelve volumes that comprise the “Art at Home” series published by Macmillan (1876- 83), four deal exclusively with interior design and decoration. Written by “Lady Experts” these texts seem to contribute to the Victorian ideology of the proper sphere of womanhood and to the cult of the “House Beautiful”. This paper considers perhaps the best known of these texts, Suggestions for House Decoration, written by Rhoda and Agnes Garrett. Ostensibly a text defending the “Queen Anne” style and offering advice on the design and decoration of the home, when read analytically, it can also be understood as a resistance to patriarchy and a subversion of Victorian domestic ideology through its demonstration of the hard-won knowledge and skills gained by England’s first professional female interior decorators

MEMS 411: Piston Pong

This report documents the design process of our ”Piston Pong” device. Our device was designed to be an educational demonstration of pneumatics and energy transformations using work and fluids models. The concept is that a bike pump will pump air into a holding container. After enough pressure is built up inside, the air will be released from the holding tank to a pneumatic cylinder. The cylinder will be released, hitting and launching a ball into the air. Additionally, force and pressure sensors would allow the energy to be calculated to fully understand the energy transformation. Our priorities for this design were safety, educational value, the ability to launch a ball, and pressure and force measurements. Throughout the design process, our goals and design were altered to best meet these priorities. Our final prototype was able to safely launch a ball while measuring the energy introduced to the system via the bike pump. While we have a functioning program and pressure sensor, we were not able to measure the pressure within the holding tank due to concerns about maintaining the airtight system

Mental ill-health among health and social care professionals: an analysis using administrative data

Objective Health and Social Care (HSC) workers are at high risk of job-related stress, burnout and mental ill-health. This study examines differences in self-reported mental health and psychotropic medication uptake across HSC occupational groups. Method Northern Ireland (NI) data linkage study of people working in the Health and Care sector, aged between twenty and sixty-four years, enumerated at the 2011 Northern Ireland Census and living in private households, and their uptake of prescribed psychotropic medications during 2011-2012 (using data derived from routine electronically captured information on prescriptions issued within the NHS and linked at an individual level using a NI-specific Health and Care key identifier). Comparing HSC workers with all those professionals not involved in HSC occupations, we used multinomial logistic regression to examine (a) self-reported chronic mental illness and (b) uptake of psychotropic medication by occupational groups adjusting for age, sex and socio-demographic circumstance. Results When compared against other professionals highest risks for mental health problems (associated with psychotropic prescription uptake) were associated with nursing/midwifery (OR = 1.25: 95{%}CI = 1.17-1.33; OR = 1.84: 1.58-2.15 for females and males respectively), welfare (OR = 1.34: 1.21-1.48; OR = 1.71: 1.44-2.03) and formal caregiving roles (OR = 1.42: 1.31-1.53; OR = 1.70: 1.50-1.91), again for females/males respectively). These higher risk professions record notable increases in psychotropic medication use. Conclusion Working in the Health and Social Care sector, irrespective of gender, may be more stressful than other jobs. Additionally, self-reported mental ill-health and psychotropic medication treatment both appear to be associated with social class inequity

Creación de valor y espacio mexicano-estadounidense

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