Honung

ist der

Wanderslab

Lifestyles in Transition

bis zum

Grab

Embroidered PictureChristian wall decorationLower Austria, around 1880" Hope is the wanderer's stavefrom the cradle to the grave"

The dynamic of popular culture is reflectedin the changes to daily life, its organization and itsenvironment. The process of modernization not onlyled to the discovery of an ideal picture of ancient folkculture but also brought more variety in culturalpractice. Style and taste, values and concepts are re-flected to a great degree in the domestic environment.

In rural areas, house furniture has under-gone many changes in the course of the last century.Increasingly, homes became the centre of interest andawareness, and were decorated with often factory-made, prestige objects, and with proud keepsakes andepigrams. The extended agrarian family, comprisingseveral generations and often idealized due to itsintegrating functions, was gradually replaced by thebourgeois nuclear family. Children were consideredindependent beings for the first time, and the pro-gressive separation of living and working areas startedto restrict and define the role of women: as theguardians of order and comfort at home.

Social changes were also expressed in theformation of both private and semi- public objects.Such objects are the carriers of a traditional culturecoloured by personalization and reflecting the mental-ities of the different milieus.

Man and Society