© 2003 by Design History Society
Wedding Presents: Marriage Gifts and the Limits of Consumption, Britain, 1945–2000
University of Brighton
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Abstract |
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Objects exchanges that take place outside the market, such as gift exchanges, are not often formally recorded,transfers of objects within a domestic sphere do not tend to be documented in the same way as their sale The account of domestic exchanges offered here is drawn from the Mass-Observation Archive This article is based on 254 responses to a 1998 Mass-Observation directive entitled ‘Giving and Receiving ’, which asked about objects given and received upon marriage This article details the specific ways in which objects are presented, accepted and preserved in married households in Britain in the second half of the twentieth century, using accounts written by people who describe themselves as ‘ordinary’ Significantly, their understanding of exchange relationships differs from the models of consumption that inform a nummber of academic disciplines, including design history, material culture studies and sociology.