Style and taste

The things we choose to fill our homes with can define who we are and how we are seen by others. These choices are often driven by individual taste or need.

Our choices are, however, also heavily influenced by social codes, fashions and behaviours.

How do you display your personal style in your home?

A museum gallery display of furniture and textiles in a glass cabinet, next to a painting hung on the wall

Photograph by Em Fitzgerald

Images from a furniture catalogue hung on a wall covered with pale blue, patterned wallpaper

Photograph by Em Fitzgerald

Stories to look out for

A tea set consisting of two cups with saucers, teapot, a small jug and sugar pot. White with blue patterns

Object number 97/2009

Tea service, 1876

This mass-produced tea service capitalises on the popularity of artistic design and its association with Japanese style.

Blue and white china with Japanese design motifs, such as bamboo stalks, fans, scrolls and geometric shapes, was an essential element of the artistic

Object number 40/1997

Stool, 1930–1940

Isokon furniture exploits the strength and lightness of bent plywood, a new material in 1930 that made the futuristic and dynamic designs of modernism possible – this stool weighs only 1.1 kg, about the same as a small laptop.