those buildings, with their grand, usually neo-classical, interiors, lay in
their relationship with the new railway and road systems that had opened
up Europe and the usato travellers and shoppers. From the perspective
of their guests, hotels were idealized replicas of the domestic interiors of
the affluent. While hotels did not strictly sell things they nonetheless
played an important role in the consumption of goods inasmuch as,
in collaboration with the railways, they helped to ensure that consumers
could access them.^28
For a variety of reasons, therefore, the language of the nineteenth-
and early twentieth-century private, domestic interior moved outside
the home, rendering ambiguous the spaces of feminine modernity as it
did so. In addition to their new role as consumers, however, middle-class
women also continued to perform their roles as domestic producers,
especially in the areas of household textiles and decorative objects.^29
Once again this served to blur the boundaries between the spheres.
From the 1870 s onwards, the increasing popularization of the ‘artistic
home’ – of, that is, a home that was visually unified and that focused on
its appearance above all else, confirmed the role of women as amateur
home decorators. Eastlake’s Hints on Household Taste, published in Great 33
The Little Blue Tea Rooms, 97 Yonge Street, Toronto, Ontario, c. 1920.