This thesis investigates the history of British domesticity through the sound and material culture of a sounding object: the doorbell. It is triggered by a methodological assumption and by an epistemological one: first, that there is a need to reassess consolidated design histories through a combined sonic and material history of sounding objects, and second, that sounding objects are well positioned to assess the fast-moving, transient and private qualities of the domestic. It is hardly debatable that the twentieth century brought momentous change into the Western world’s urban domestic reality. Within shifting political, economic, cultural and social contexts, houses and their inhabitants underwent significant transformations both in their lived and idealised existences, providing a breathless account on social acceleration thrust by modernity. These fleeting and multiple experiences have been trampling over history at high-speed, leaving scholars struggling with understanding them in a systematic way. The fugitive quality of the everyday and the cloistered nature of domestic life aggravate the cloud of smoke in which they travel, keeping them unavailable for conventional investigation. Domestic objects often survive time as witnesses of fast-shifting domestic dynamics, turning disciplines such as design history into optimal amplifying chambers of broader historical narratives. Doorbells, in particular, have been hiding many accounts of domesticity behind their varied covers and domes. However, doorbells’ material liminality and sonic everydayness kept them away from scholarship, while disciplines such as design history and sound studies have been reluctant to approach sounding objects in their dual sonic and material presences. These absences locate this thesis in a relevant space: it is at the encounter between design history and sound studies that this project braids sound and matter to investigate mutual exchanges between doorbells and identities and spaces in the home. This project adopts British manufacturer Friedland as thread and source of investigation. Friedland, incorporated in the 1930s and dissolved in the 2010s, held an enduring worldwide and British doorbell market leadership. Therefore, through Friedland doorbells, I explore how the sonic and material design of doorbells mutually engaged with changing British domestic realities between the 1930s and the 2010s. Employing interdisciplinary methods of object analysis and listening methods, I investigate how doorbells have been mutually vibrating with domestic identities and spaces. I conclude that although passing quietly through history, many doorbells oscillate intensely with their contexts, enriching existing accounts of domesticity with nuances on gender, class, identity and liminality. Being placed at a space of both encounter and separation, doorbells often convey how people present themselves to others but also their domestic identities and their own limitations in the performance of everyday life. Examining facets of domesticity through the doorbell also revealed how the sounding objects’ dual nature does not necessarily evolve in sync, the Westminster Chimes and the ding-dong sound being epitomes of how the sonic often lingers through memory despite the material. Ultimately, this thesis reveals the potential of sounding objects, when methodologically approached through their dual dimension, as sources of historical knowledge.

Funder: LAHP