This collection is based on papers presented to a symposium, ‘At Home’, held at the University of Otago in November 1998. The contributors include historians, architects, literary commentators, as well as curators, and the collection is an innovative interdisciplinary publication. Its editor, Barbara Brookes, warns us in her introduction that the collection is ‘patchy in some areas’ and is only an ‘initial blueprint’ (p.3). The quality of the collection is indeed mixed, a characteristic shared by a number of recent collections in New Zealand history.

The fourteen papers are problem-based and most are also reflective about the nature of their sources.

Ian Lochhead asks whether architectural styles were merely transplanted from Britain to New Zealand or were they transformed into a new national architecture at some point? He suggests the latter.

Margaret Tennant asks what we can find out about home life from welfare case records which social service agencies generated increasingly from 1880? She argues that they are rich sources for ideas about both ‘problem’ homes and the ideal home.

Charlotte Macdonald asks if there were any indigenous characteristics about New Zealand’s servants and why did the servant disappear from New Zealand homes in the twentieth century? She discusses why Maori were not servants and the complex developments behind the collapse of domestic service around World War Two.

Anna Petersen asks why a trend emerged for incorporating Maori motifs, designs and carving on architectural features and furniture inside Pakeha houses? Her explanation attributes it to a developing New Zealand art nationalism.

Helen Leach asks what was the relationship between housing and garden trends? She makes a case for there being parallel developments and explanations for both.

Lawrence Jones asks why it was that the range of New Zealand writers from the 1930s rejected their own families? His explanation emphasizes the provincial Puritanism of writers’ families and more generally New Zealand society.

Penny Isaac and Erik Olssen ask why housing was given priority on the nation’s political agenda at various times? In particular, what was the ‘justification for Labour’s Housing Scheme’ after it was elected in 1935? They examine the ‘discourse of the slum’ and emphasize the politics surrounding 1918, the flu epidemic, the Great Depression and the 1937 Housing Survey.

Ben Schrader asks how successful was the first Labour Government with its familial suburban ideal? He suggests that it was one of the best internationally.

Julia Gatley asks why Labour went ‘up’ rather than ‘out’ in the construction of state rental flats between 1935 and 1949? Her discussion is really about why so few apartment blocks were constructed.

Robin Skinner asks how authentic was the New Zealand state house shown at the 1950 Ideal Home Exhibition in Britain? She concludes that it was ‘a constructed fiction rather than a faithful replica’.

Louise Shaw asks what was the nature of gender politics over New Zealand homes in the post-war period when construction shortages and rising costs led to houses being built smaller? She argues that the feminist lobby was not particularly successful.

Xanthe Howes and Paul Walker ask if the post-war tide of domesticity just washed over race, class and local divisions? They use the writings of one woman, Sarah Campion, to suggest that there was some resistance and the ‘possibility of transgression’ which undermined domesticity.

Justine Clark and Paul Walker ask what the preparations and debates in the 1950s for a book about New Zealand architecture indicate about architectural discourse? The book was never published in the end. They conclude that conventions of ‘homogeneity’ cloud our understanding of a vigorous local architectural debate.

Barbara Brookes examines the controversy over Washday at the Pa, a 1964 illustrated school publication about Maori housing which was subsequently withdrawn from circulation. In particular she asks what was the significance of the Maori Women’s Welfare League’s opposition to the publication? She finds this reveals the gap between Maori and Pakeha home life but also a debate over cultural images which bore little direct relation to material conditions. Most of the questions asked are important, even if there are fewer answers than questions and many references to work in progress, further and larger research projects.

Brookes is also somewhat tentative in her introduction about what the collection overlooks. She confesses that there is little critique of cosy New Zealand homes by way of exploration of inter-familial violence of various kinds and the questioning of the coherence of ‘the idea of home’ by different generations over time and groups hegemonized contemporarily (p.3). Indeed she hopes that another book will begin where this one ends with her chapter on the 1964 controversy over Washday. Having been warned in this way, I was rather surprised then to read the chapters by Tennant, Jones, Isaac & Olsen and Brookes’ own and which I do think undermine the idea of New Zealand’s cosy homes. I think that these chapters about the ‘underside of the home’ fantasy were the highlights in this collection. The autobiographical authors’ notes and reflective introduction suggest a relatively comfortable socio-economic home background of all the contributors and yet this isn’t necessarily an impediment to their considering familial underbellies. On the other hand, Brookes is emphatic about the ‘distinctiveness’ of the New Zealand house and the sexual division of labour. And there I think many would take issue with her. Discussions about the New Zealand home as a distinctive ‘detached’ house, surrounded by garden flowers in the front, vegetables out back, often weatherboard with a painted corrugated iron roof ignore Australia at their peril. And the ‘seemingly universal division of labour’ was something that was created and undermined during the twentieth century. It has not been as robust for as long as some of the articles portray it.

It’s a pity that genuinely collective, collaborative work by historians is so rare, for such collections as this one illustrate the opportunities open to collective work, opportunities too rarely grasped by our rather individualist profession.

'When houses become homes', The Evening Post, September 2000

In 1950 a 'typical' New Zealand state house was displayed at London’s Ideal Home Exhibition in an attempt to showcase all that was admirable about New Zealand. An ill-at-ease, pregnant Princess Elizabeth was escorted around the house by our High Commissioner, and the result was a widely shown newsreel.

Shipped over with the house (built of matai, rimu and totara) were the New Zealand innovations – the rotary clothesline, slope-sided concrete tubs and electric hot water cylinder. Unfortunately, they forgot the stainless steel sink which was unobtainable locally and had to be replaced in the terrazzo bench with a label. Not mentioned in the publicity was that prospective British immigrants would not be eligible for state rental housing. This is merely one story in this fascinating collection of various interpretations of being 'at home' in New Zealand. The contributors are mainly historians and architects and this multi-disciplinary approach adds to the book’s value both for the general reader and as textbook. The editor is Otago University historian Barbara Brookes.

Housing design historically has created distinct public and private spheres and specific gender roles. The woman was expected to make the house a home, although her voice was rarely heard in the design or building process. One chapter discusses what happened when home-science women tried to influence house design in the 1950s.

Other themes include such diverse subjects as the use of Maori art in pakeha house decoration, the welfare institution as home, changes in house design caused by the decline in domestic service, shifts in the public-private split and garden design reflecting these trends, the growth of the suburb and the social politics of state housing (with some lovely comments from Naenae), the modern movement in architecture, and the home in literature. The final essay reveals why the Maori Women’s Welfare League found the Ans Westra book Washday At the Pa, the mainstay of liberal bookshelves, so offensive.

This book can be read almost as a companion volume to the recently launched photograph collection Every Kitchen Tells A Story. The woman’s domain has both changed and remained the same.

Unfortunately the clever cover is too busy to yell 'Read Me!' and its lack of an index will limit its use as a reference tool. But the photographs are wonderful. Some of the 'modern' interiors take me back to my own childhood. The house-home as a symbol of our emerging national identity is a fascinating concept.