Feeling at home. Material culture and everyday life of Belgian Limburg miners in the 1950s

The article aims at contributing to the knowledge of the decisive breakthrough of mass consumption, by exploring the significance of seemingly banal consumer goods in the 1950s (wallpaper, radio, china). The case under investigation is the Belgian Limburg mining community that was formed in the late 1920s. The article analyses aspects of the interior decoration of the homes of four families, questioning identity, aspirations and meaning of particular consumer durables. Photographs as bearers of unique information for historical research will be used, next to more traditional historical source material. The study shows that the houses of the miners' families were turned into homes, by adding seemingly trivial objects. This, of course, was not new, but it magnified firmly in the 1950s consumption wave.