Domestic Design

By the mid-1920s most furniture retailers in Britain sold at least one style of kitchen cabinet or ‘commodious cupboard’. Made of wood or metal, kitchen cabinets took the form of a single free-standing cupboard with multiple doors and drawers. They were organised into compartments to allow for the storage of food and equipment associated with food preparation and sometimes cleaning equipment. The British kitchen cabinet had its origins in the American Hoosier cabinet, which was first manufactured in Indiana from the late 1890 until the 1930s, with production peaking in the 1920s when more than one in ten American households owned a Hoosier brand cabinet. In Britain, kitchen cabinets were produced in a range of sizes, prices and specifications. Some retailers even supplied them fully stocked with food and speculative builders frequently installed them in compact kitchenettes as part of the purchase price of new suburban houses.

Marketed by companies such as Easiwork as efficient and space saving, the kitchen cabinet was promoted as a rational and hygienic solution to food preparation and storage needs in the ‘servantless’ house. This paper discusses the response to the kitchen cabinet by the British domestic advice writer, lecturer and broadcaster Nancie Clifton Reynolds who devoted several pages of her 1929 Easier Housework to a detailed discussion of its pros and cons for the housewife. This paper argues that the kitchen cabinet is best understood through a dynamic network of actors in the interwar suburban house, including the cabinet itself, the compact space of the kitchen and the housewife. It may speak the discourse of labour-saving and easier housework but only if certain sets of efficient actions are performed. Nevertheless, it could also signify the professionalization of the housewife and her modernity and serve as partial recognition of her labour.

The article probes the social background to the controversial ‘Kitchen Debate’ between the Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev and the US vice-president Richard Nixon, which occured at the American trade exhibition in Moscow during summer 1959.  Political histories narrowly focus on diplomatic point-scoring between the two leaders, leaving largely untouched the purpose of the landmark exhibition, and its expression of America's ‘suburban’ values.  This discussion traces a broad arc exploring:

- The exchange between Khrushchev and Nixon, especially their discussion of housing
- What was shown in the Moscow exhibition (detailing the display kitchen that prompted Khrushchev’s indignation), and the US State Department’s broad aims.
- The expansion of suburbia in post-war America (census figures quoted), and changes in property development including the emergence of commuter suburbs.
- The influential Levittown model for mass home construction & instant suburbs, and the impact of its highly publicised estates on Long Island, Connecticutt and New Jersey.
- Nature and extent of suburban conformism, including pointed criticisms made by urban planning commentators, the sociologist William Whyte, and the Feminist Betty Friedan.
- Mounting distress of women who did not feel fulfilled as homemakers, and their main grievances.
- Segregation, and enforced racial exclusion at the Levittowns.
- Portrayal of suburban values in the key literary works, ‘The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit’ (1955), ‘Revolutionary Road’ (1961), ‘The Stepford Wives’ (1972)
- Efforts to raise the quality of home and suburb design in California, prompted by the magazine ‘Arts and Architecture’
- The pioneering Case Study House project.
- Role of the Los Angeles firm Eames Office in post-war domestic design.
- Contribution of Eames Office to the Moscow exhibition.
9pp.