This study is based on doctoral research carried out at the Department for Continuing Education at the University of Oxford. A career prior to academia in the conservation and restoration of historic furniture had already generated my interest in the relationship between people and the objects with which they enact their lives and social relationships, especially in the domestic context. Significant in the development of my knowledge in this area were conversations with authorities of the British vernacular furniture tradition, Bernard Cotton, and of early modern oak furniture, Victor Chinnery, whose work has been drawn on substantially for this study. Victor's early death has been a great loss to that area of study. I have been immensely fortunate to deliver courses for the Department for Continuing Education on both domestic and international programmes, initially in furniture history, but latterly focussed on all aspects of domestic life in Britain in the modern period. I am grateful to the many students who have enthusiastically shared in the exploration of these themes over the past fifteen years, and the stimulating exchanges with departmental colleagues.

It was out of one such class that the suggestion arose of the possibilities of probate inventories as a rich source of information on the mainly nonelite material culture of the early modern period. The inventories from the peculiar archdeaconry court of Thame presented a highly suitable body of data for a microstudy, rich in material and contextual detail and consistent in compilation, spanning the seventeenth century and located in an Oxfordshire community which experienced on a local scale many of the major economic and social developments of the early modern period. Mary Hodges was a valued and supportive guide to the data, having led a group of local historians transcribing inventories, wills and other court records, and whose work has proved of great value to this study. Initial researches resulted in an article in the journal Oxoniensia (2002) exploring the social use of space through the distribution of furniture in the early part of the seventeenth century. As editor of the journal, Adrienne Rosen provided invaluable assistance in the production of that piece, and when Malcolm Airs had suggested doctoral research as a way of progressing and broadening the inquiry Adrienne generously also agreed to supervise the study.