Collections
Silver teapot, Benjamin West, 1744-5; Domestic interior with a mother and a child seated at a piano, probably by Charles West Cope RA c1860; Armchair & footstool, Robin Day for Hille, 1970
The Geffrye Museum's collections comprise furnishings, pictures and ornaments reflecting the history of the English home over the past 400 years. Our focus is on the living rooms of the urban middle classes, mainly in London, and our collection of objects is unique in being typical of those used in the parlours and dining rooms of people from the middle ranks of English society. These include lawyers, doctors, teachers and people in all forms of media and business, from retailing to banking. The choices they make, both in the past and now, in their own homes reflect their values and aspirations and are a key part of our national identity.
This means that the Geffrye is a museum of typical rather than exceptional objects. People tend to throw away the ordinary things of life when they have finished with them, but keep the best or most valuable, which then often find their way into museums. Our special challenge at the Geffyre is to find the relatively ordinary things of the past, owned and used by ordinary people, and to show these in their appropriate domestic context. As such, we are actively collecting images of homes today and recording information about them. If you would like to participate in this and donate furnishings or photographs of your home to the museum, please send an email to curatorial@geffrye-museum.org.uk
If you are interested in knowing more about how we collect, please click Acquisitions for more information.
You can find out more about our collections through two new programmes on this website. You can Search the Collections for particular types of objects or by theme and you can also explore Life in the Living Room 1600-2000, which allows you to discover through pictures and objects the changing nature of living rooms over the past 400 years.
