I’m always fascinated by how people live and I freely confess to being a House Hunters International junkie. What amuses me so much about that show is how Americans (mostly) decide they’d like to experience life in another country, then are upset when they can’t find a house with American-style amenities or floorplan. Yesterday, I watched a couple moving to Morocco. They traipsed through narrow alleyways and through narrower room arrangements all festooned with elaborate Arab tiles in 1000 year old “riads.” In the end, they bought land and built their own Americanized version of a “riad,” a box-like home designed around a central courtyard with a roof terrace.

In every culture and every time period, people use living spaces differently. Now we tend to favor “open plan” living, even to the extreme of lofts which have no interior walls at all. In Victorian England, this would have been unthinkable.

To the Victorians, each activity required a specific place. A parlor for receiving guests, an orangery to extend the growing season, a music room for after dinner entertainment, a smoking room for the gentlemen to retreat to when the amateur recitals became too boorish to bear . . . you get the idea. For this reason, a true Victorian home seems chopped up and the rooms incredibly small. To a lady or gentleman of the period, it meant decency and order. Coziness was valued, and not just as a real estate code-word for “impossibly teeny.” Life was compartmentalized into neatly regimented bits and their homes reflected it.

Victorians would have approved of the florid detail the Americans on HHI encountered in the Moroccan riad. They too believed every flat surface of their homes deserved decoration and the Victorians loved bright colors in combinations that might seem garish to our eyes.  From the large print wall paper to thick Turkish carpets, dark woodwork and lushly brocaded furniture, a Victorian room was layered with textures to the point of overwhelming the senses. Objets d’art cluttered every horizontal surface and even the piano’s legs might have been dressed with lacy little pantaloons. Home was a reflection of the woman who created it and the castle of the man who provided the wherewithal to ornament it.

I’ve lived in lots of different places–downtown high-rise condos in bustling cities, single family homes in towns of under a 1000 souls. We’ve perched on the side of a mountain in Utah and spread out on an acreage in Wyoming. We’ve sojourned in all 4 time zones and wandered both north and south of the Mason Dixon line. Each time we find a new place, the spaces we inhabit help define how we live and how we think about ourselves. Our homes inform our lives, just as the Victorian model of home did for the Brits of the 19th century.

Now it’s your turn. What do you love most about your home? Or if you’ve moved around as I have, do you have a favorite place?

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Check out Mia’s Victorian set Touch of a Thief today!

“To retrieve the fabled “Blood of the Tiger” red diamond, Greydon Quinn needs the best thief in the business, the Mayfair Jewel Thief. What Greydon doesn’t need is Lady Viola Preston. Unfortunately for Greydon, the thief and the lady are one and the same, which Greydon discovers when he finds Viola trying to clean out his safe. Forced into a reluctant partnership with Greydon, Viola worries that Greydon will find out about her uncanny gift for distinguishing real gemstones from fakes and that the more time she spends with him, the more difficult it will be to “dissolve” their partnership. Marlowe’s debut will dazzle readers with its seductive mix of captivating characters, a plot infused with danger and a touch of the paranormal, and a scorchingly sensual romance between two perfectly matched protagonists.” ~ Booklist

*Starred Review from Publishers Weekly* 

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