An item of furniture, a decorative object, a wall covering, a lamp: all of them speak volumes about our way of life, our tastes, our values and our occupations. Taking as its starting point some key objects from the Swiss National Museum, the exhibition reveals just how much an interior can tell us about the people who lived in or created it.

By way of introduction, a showroom of Swiss design presents visitors with an eclectic juxtaposition of furniture and art objects. The selection showcases not only the variety of styles and materials developed over time, but also the vitality of Swiss creativity. The exhibition opens with four sets of prestige furnishings of national or international renown and a selection of art objects, photographs and archive documents – some of them unusual – before going on to examine numerous topics of cultural history through a confrontation between contrasting realities.

The taste for luxury and the social practices of the elites in the Age of Enlightenment, the increasingly widespread use and serial production of middle-class furniture in the 19th century, unease about industrialisation, which was felt to be detrimental to good taste, and the 20th-century battle to improve hygiene in the housing of the underprivileged, are just some of the aspects of the history of interiors explored in Décors. Masterpieces from the collections.

Décors. Masterpieces from the collections also attests to the Swiss National Museum’s policy over the last decade of acquiring objects from French-speaking Switzerland to enrich its collections.