Abstract
The aim of this paper is to position issues of class and taste within the context of the home and through the lens of the domestic in mid-twentieth century provincial Ireland from the early 1950s to the early 1970s. This was a time of unprecedented economic growth and heralded a period of social and cultural change. Our homes and the artefacts we surround ourselves with are central to our sense of self and how we wish to be seen by others. Issues of class, taste, status, gender, and aesthetic possibilities are unpacked by focusing on the ‘Good Room’ as a micro locus of cultural transitions. The ‘Good Room’ was often the external face of the family where the public realm and the private intimate familial space converged. The belief that there was no class distinction in Ireland was touted as a particular Irish characteristic; however, in the context of provincial Ireland, social mobility, particularly the retreat from the land into small towns and provincial cities, brought with it new expectations, aspirations and transient class identities. Therefore, it can be argued that the advent of consumerism and mass production subverted more prescriptive notions of class and challenged enduring and fixed notions of the conflation of Irish authenticity with the rural and, in terms of material culture, the hand-made. New materials, new goods and technologies opened up aesthetic possibilities that hitherto had been beyond the cultural and economic reach of the Irish consumer. Drawing on oral history, and using the design history paradigm of production, mediation and consumption, the artefacts within the ‘Good Room’ can be read as significant participants in identity building. A prime example of how taste and class coalesce is through the mechanised wall-to-wall carpet; therefore, Youghal Carpets Ltd., founded in 1954, acts as an accessible point of entry to the complexities of mid-twentieth patterns of class and taste.
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-Share Alike 4.0 International License.
Recommended Citation
Mehegan, Angela
(2026)
"From Lino to Luxury: Class, Taste and Identity in the Mid-Twentieth Century Irish Provincial ‘Good Room’,"
Irish Communication Review:
Vol. 20:
Iss.
1, Article 5.
Available at:
https://arrow.tudublin.ie/icr/vol20/iss1/5