The home in 50 objects from around the world

More from this Series

• The home in 50 objects from around the world #44: Julia Child’s soup pot

  The 1960s celebrity chef introduced Americans to French cooking and quality cookware

  
• The home in 50 objects from around the world #43: JFK’s rocking chair

  The rocker was just one of many attempts to ease the 35th US president’s debilitating back pain

  
• The home in 50 objects from around the world #42: the lava lamp

  Inspired by a homemade egg-timer, Edward Craven Walker’s ‘Astro lamps’ brightened postwar homes

  
• The home in 50 objects from around the world #41: a Surrealist carpet

  The 1930s pattern of a dancer’s wet footsteps was a paean to Surrealism’s preoccupation with the fleeting and intangible

  
• The home in 50 objects from around the world #40: the antimacassar

  ‘However grubby it became, it lent an air of distinction to even the most decrepit horsehair-stuffed armchair’

  
• The home in 50 objects from around the world #39: Isamu Noguchi’s Akari paper lantern

  It had a delicate beauty, yet was robust enough to be flat-packed for shipping, and it suited any interior

  
• The home in 50 objects from around the world #38: Tupperware

  Its American inventor realised the huge domestic potential of a plastics industry that had come of age during the second world war

  
• The home in 50 objects from around the world #37: James Radclyffe’s bedsheet

  The sheet was embroidered with human hair by the wife of a beheaded Tower of London prisoner

  
• The home in 50 objects from around the world #36: the Lamport Gnome

  The story of how garden gnomes came to be a fixture in English gardens begins with an eccentric baronet

  
• The home in 50 objects from around the world #35: Salvador Dalí’s cricket cage

  The plain wooden cage hung on his bedroom wall, its rustic simplicity a contrast to the Surrealist artist’s flamboyant tastes and behaviour

  
• The home in 50 objects from around the world #34: the iMac G3 Bondi Blue PC (1998)

  At $1,299, the iMac was top-of-the-range but its distinctive aesthetic was quickly democratised

  
• The home in 50 objects from around the world #33: the gypsy table

  The reasons for its association with Romany culture — in particular, fortune-telling — are as misty as the crystal ball

  
• The home in 50 objects from around the world #32: the chatelaine

  The wearable domestic tool kit was in vogue throughout the 19th century

  
• The home in 50 objects from around the world #31: the rubber duck

  Apparently ubiquitous and banal, the bath toy can help child development and is also a subversive political symbol

  
• The home in 50 objects from around the world #30: a Dutch doll’s house

  The earliest doll’s houses were not toys, but showcases of wealth and taste — and tools for teaching girls how to run a household

  
• The home in 50 objects from around the world #29: the sliding bookcase

  Along with secret doors, these are common in country houses and spy films — but one has a very dark history

  
• The home in 50 objects from around the world #28: the air-conditioning unit

  It has come to feel like a human right for many, but its shiver-inducing caress was slow to catch on in the home

  
• The home in 50 objects from around the world #27: the rag rug

  Multiple histories are layered in the cotton, tweed, silk and wool of these thrift rugs

  
• The home in 50 objects from around the world #26: the La-Z-Boy

  This staple of the ‘dad den’ was a symbol of affluence and the American dream

  
• The home in 50 objects from around the world #25: the cuckoo clock

  Kinetic artwork or piece of kitsch? The cuckoo has origins in the astronomical clocks of the 14th century

  
• The home in 50 objects from around the world #24: bonsai

  The miniature trees are cherished in all seasons, blooming or bare

  
• The home in 50 objects from around the world #23: Big Mouth Billy Bass

  For a brief moment this mounted animatronic fish was the world’s favourite novelty gift

  
• The home in 50 objects from around the world #22: Welsh lovespoons

  This traditional token of affection has today become a symbol of Welsh identity

  
• The home in 50 objects from around the world #21: table centrepiece for 100 guests

  This extravaganza was produced by Christofle for Napoleon III who, for an autocrat and aristocrat, had oddly progressive ideas

  
• The home in 50 objects from around the world #20: Bubble cocktail shaker

  During Prohibition, shakers were designed in the form of lighthouses, roosters and penguins to disguise the alcohol within

  
• The home in 50 objects from around the world #19: the cardboard box

  An innovation born of commercial desperation, true friendship, and sheer talent led to the creation of exquisitely beautiful packaging

  
• The home in 50 objects from around the world #18: Chinese Kitchen God

  The woodblock prints of Zao Jun sit above the cooking stove to be burnt every year in the spring

  
• The home in 50 objects from around the world #17: Sigmund Freud’s porcupine

  When the pioneer of psychoanalysis made his only trip to America, he brought back a memento that became a desktop muse

  
• The home in 50 objects from around the world #16: the cabbage plate

  Dish of overlapping leaves topped with a snail finial is made from faience, a tin-glazed earthenware

  
• The home in 50 objects from around the world #15: The ‘possible bag’

  The leather pouch was used as storage inside tepees and as luggage for nomadic lives

  
• The home in 50 objects from around the world #14: ‘Throne of Weapons’

  Made of decommissioned guns from the Mozambican civil war, this is the antithesis of the easy chair

  
• The home in 50 objects from around the world #13: Gee’s Bend quilt

  Produced in a hamlet in the American South, these quilts have been likened to compositions of abstract art

  
• The home in 50 objects from around the world #12: plastic pineapple ice bucket

  This novelty item has evolved from a minor product of science to a museum piece

  
• The home in 50 objects from around the world # 11: Charleston log holder

  Paintings by Bloomsbury’s Duncan Grant elevated this unassuming object from a banal utility to a thing of beauty

  
• The home in 50 objects from around the world #10: Karl Marx’s cigar case

  Marx reportedly said that the money he earned from ‘Capital’ would ‘not even pay for the cigars I smoked writing it’

  
• The home in 50 objects from around the world #9: Pablo Neruda’s ships’ figurehead collection

  The pieces connect with recurring poetic landscapes and themes in his work: the sea, voyages, women

  
• The home in 50 objects from around the world #8: Dr Johnson’s walking stick

  His ideas about the standardisation of English for his dictionary took shape during walks around London’s neighbourhoods

  
• The home in 50 objects from around the world #7: Hanukkiah

  This is the candelabra used at Hanukkah, the eight-day Festival of Lights that has been celebrated by Jews for 2,000 years

  
• The home in 50 objects from around the world #6: Finnish vase

  Designed by the late Timo Sarpaneva, whose glasswork merged the arty with the utilitarian

  
• The home in 50 objects from around the world #5: the Jacuzzi

  This opulent creation by architect Piers Gough is a far cry from the original device invented by an immigrant Italian family

  
• The home in 50 objects from around the world #4: Dickens’s armchair

  Upholstered in plum-coloured leather, this was the seat of much of the author’s inspiration

  
• The home in 50 objects from around the world #3: Blue Mountain Pottery

  The elongated, stylised vases and animal figurines lent an otherworldly aura to Canada’s provincial homes

  
• The home in 50 objects from around the world #2: Brylcreem

  Its popularity might slide now and again but this hairstyling product for men retains a presence in many bathroom cabinets

  
• The home in 50 objects from around the world #1: Proust’s bed

  The French novelist wrote most of his masterpiece ‘In Search of Lost Time’ on it