Blackouts and furniture

 

                                                                   A World War II era buffet still in use today

The history that interests me the most is social history. That's probably the case for many family historians. Rather than focusing on what was happening with the great and good (or bad), social history encompasses the rules, events and fabric of the lives of the man and woman on the street. They weren't the movers and shakers of society but the masses who dealt with life as it came and tried to find their way through it, in the good times and bad. My current focus on World War Two sheds light on a challengingly bad time.

Footage and pictures that show the damage in London during the Blitz are familiar. Those images show the dramatic reality but the smaller, more annoying privations were something I didn't think that much about before starting to research the war era.

People had to change their ways of doing things and obey new rules, like the blackout. Householders were fined for showing light. To get around this, people had to pay for and fit their own blackout curtains or find other means of hiding the illumination in their homes. Of course, I knew about rationing but only thought of the difficulties of obtaining food. But other things were rationed as well, like clothing.   

Fashions reflected wartime regulations as dresses and suits slimmed down and used less material, giving rise to the wartime silhouette familiar from old movies. But other materials were also in short supply such as metal for pots and pans or fabric for upholstery or rugs.

Because wood was scarce and metal was needed for the war effort rather than springs for upholstered furniture, simplified furniture designs were developed. This led to Utility Furniture. This furniture was rationed and only available to newly married couples or those who had lost their household goods because of bombing.

Even after the war Utility Furniture must have been all that was available as, when my parents got married in 1949, it was this type of furniture with which they started married life. My mother was frequently disparaging of the sideboard which followed her to Canada, calling it "cheap war stuff". It was very simple and plain but that's one of the reasons I value it. I still have it with me as a functioning memento of that time in history.  

 

Sources:

Evans, Paul and Peter Doyle. The 1940s Home Shire Publications Ltd., Oxford, 2009