ABSTRACT
American journalist James Grant Wilson claimed the bric-a-bracquer was drawn to the quaint, everyday things that appealed to the heart rather than the mind. The bric-a-bracquer's accomplishments lay not only in his astute acquisitions, but also in the art of composition: his ability to create a harmonious whole from disparate parts, fashioning a 'gesamtkunstwerk' or 'total art work.' 'Being possessed by possessions' was not just about accumulation; the process facilitates 'fashioning an object-based historiography and anthropology.' With class consciousness, as well as artistic expression, inscribed and constructed through an assemblage of objects the etagere became central to the House Beautiful, an epithet derived from Clarence Cook's domestic advice manual published in 1877. Harry Quilter railed against Aesthetic dogma as it was imposing a straightjacket on the home decorator. In Art in the House, German scholar Jakob von Falke deemed it a 'woman's aesthetic mission' to create a beautiful home.
