Taste and Power: Furnishing Modern France: 24 (Studies on the History of Society and Culture) - Softcover

"Auslander . . . repeatedly brings out the deep implications of the seemingly trivial and gendered choices that ordinary mortals unthinkingly make from day to day."--Patrice Higonnet, "Times Literary Supplement

Louis XIV, regency, rococo, neoclassical, empire, art nouveau, and historicist pastiche: furniture styles march across French history as regimes rise and fall. In this extraordinary social history, Leora Auslander explores the changing meaning of furniture from the mid-seventeenth to the early twentieth century, revealing how the aesthetics of everyday life were as integral to political events as to economic and social transformations. Enriched by Auslander's experience as a cabinetmaker, this work demonstrates how furniture served to represent and even generate its makers' and consumers' identities.