Mr Straw's House, Nottinghamshire
This collection has 23,159 items online
A 1920s suburban family home caught in time. Very little has changed or been removed since the Straws took up residence in 1923. The interior decoration and collection of objects reflects the taste and lifestyle of this local well-to-do grocer family. There is currently a cataloguing and photography project underway at the house which some of the volunteers are involved in. With such a large collection of everyday objects in a conventional 1920's family home there are always new stories to discover and tell. As a family in the emerging middle class during the turn of the century, it was important to William Sr and Florence to keep up with the swiftly changing fashions to maintain their social status. William Jr and Walter, however, did not change their style much, prefering instead to maintain the early twentieth-century image of a 'gentleman' throughout their lives. The concept of 'fashion' can be found as early as the 14th century when clothing started to develop and change according to social standing and geographical location. Through the following decades and centuries, fashion changed and developed, often disappearing as quickly as it had appeared. Fashion was a key social marker, with styles, fabrics and accessories showing which social class a person belonged to. By the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuies, fashion shifted from decade to decade, often quite dramatically and as a result of large-scale cultural change. This year you can learn more of the family through their clothing and costume.
