ABSTRACT
The final three decades of the nineteenth century saw the development of a specialist house furnishing trade in London's Tottenham Court Road. Though the area had long been home to a diverse range of trades associated with domestic provision and furnishing, the rapid expansion of the retail sector in the later nineteenth century witnessed the development of large-scale, comprehensive retailers catering for all aspects of domestic furnishing design and provision. This chapter considers the rise of the specialist furniture and furnishing retailer during the later decades of the nineteenth century. It argues that furnishers developed to serve a non-elite, "middling" market by offering new goods to new consumers, and that the presentation, exhibition and display of these goods in dedicated galleries, spaces and windows became a finely conceived yet contested aspect of retailing. The chapter characterizes the final three decades of the century as a moment of change as furniture retailing practices become established and "formalized".
