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Enlivened and enriched by Auslander's experiences as a cabinetmaker, this pathbreaking work demonstrates that in post-Revolutionary France, furniture and consumer goods became newly important means of constituting selves, social class, and, perhaps most significantly, the economy and society of the nation itself. The very style of the goods reflected these preoccupations: nineteenth-century bourgeois style was dominated by gendered versions of Old Regime-style furniture, while the working class was offered new furniture designed specifically for its needs. Tastemaking took on a sudden urgency, reflected in the creation of new schools, museums, expositions, libraries, magazines, and books designed to "improve" the taste of producers and consumers alike. As these institutions competed with furniture sellers, a fierce competition sprang up among government bureaucrats, private philanthropists, and distributors to control workers' and consumers' taste. Auslander melds the history of high politics - the formation of the state - with the history of the mundane - furniture - in order to examine how power was consolidated, reproduced, and even resisted in the small objects and gestures of everyday life in France.

Furniture --- Social change --- Politics and culture --- Wood furniture --- Wooden furniture --- Decoration and ornament --- Decorative arts --- House furnishings --- Cabinetwork --- Interior decoration --- Upholstery --- Styles --- Social aspects --- France --- Civilization. --- Politics and government --- Social change. --- Change, Social --- Cultural change --- Cultural transformation --- Societal change --- Socio-cultural change --- Social history --- Social evolution --- 19th century french culture. --- 19th century french society. --- absolutism. --- aesthetics. --- bourgeois style. --- cabinetmaker. --- consumer culture. --- consumer goods. --- european history. --- france. --- french revolution. --- french society. --- furniture sellers. --- furniture. --- gendered furniture. --- modern france. --- monarchical power. --- national economy. --- old regime style furniture. --- post revolutionary france. --- power. --- productive labor. --- representation. --- social class. --- state formation. --- studies on the history of society and culture. --- style. --- taste making.