FEELING AT HOME: INTERIORS, DOMESTICITY, AND THE EVERYDAY LIFE OF BELGIAN LIMBURG MINERS, IN THE 1950s

The article aims at contributing to the knowledge of the decisive breakthrough of mass consumption by exploring the significance of seemingly banal consumer goods in the 1950s (wallpaper, radio, china...). The case under investigation is the Belgian Limburg mining community that was formed in the late 1920s. The article analyzes the interior decoration of the homes of four families and questions identity, aspirations, and meaning of particular consumer durable goods. Photographs, as bearers of unique information for historical research, will be used in place of more traditional historical source material. The study shows that the houses of the miners' families became homes, with the addition of seemingly trivial objects. Of course, this was nothing new, but it was greatly magnified by the wave of consumption that struck Belgium in the 1950s.