The Turkish Style Cozy Corner: Everyday Appropriations of Islamicate Objects and Spaces in the American Parlor, 1885–1910

The ‘cozy corner,’ ‘Turkish cozy,’ or ‘Turkish nook’ was a fashionable interior design phenomenon in western Europe and the United States between roughly 1885–1910. The corner was often styled after an imagined harem scene reminiscent of descriptions in the popular One Thousand and One Nights and visuals stemming from Orientalist paintings, world's fairs, and department store displays. Marketed as a space of relaxation for women at home, these ephemeral, tent-like spaces contained a low, cushioned seating area and were filled with a variety of furniture, designed objects, and foliage associated with so-called oriental or exotic locales. This chapter interprets Turkish style cozy corners as heterotopic spaces that enabled middle- and upper-class women to explore and construct presentations of self through the collecting and organizing of Islamicate objects within the space of the Victorian parlor.

Keywords: cosmopolitan domesticity ; Frederick Bridgman ; gendered space ; harem ; heterotopia ; interior architecture ; interior design ; islamic art and architecture ; Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres ; new woman ; nineteenth century interiors ; orientalist interiors ; Period rooms ; transnational feminism ; victorian interiors