The central aim of Katherine French's book Household Goods and Good Households is to address the question of how people learned to live with more following the rise in consumption after the Black Death. To answer this, French focuses on the material culture within the households of the merchants and artisans of London. Despite the disparities in wealth and status across these groups, French argues they shared a cultural identity, reflected in their use of household furnishings.

The sources used in this study are wills and debt and probate inventories. French adroitly navigates the issues inherent in using material produced by a range of court jurisdictions. Moreover, she is clear about the limitations that these records offer in terms of illuminating the household goods of the ‘bourgeois’ population. For example, inventories made for the probate of a husband would not include the paraphernalia belonging to his wife in addition to any low-valued items. Whilst appraisers made qualitative judgements about objects listed in inventories, this does not provide insight into the intimacies of their daily use. Inventories, in this way, work on a different register to wills and testaments, which can provide more information on objects’ emotional value. These records are approached by French through both quantitative and qualitative analysis to contextualize examples used, but this methodology also prevents over-generalizations. French, moreover, situates the use of household objects and patterns of consumption within the socio-economic changes of the period. Further details of this methodology are laid out clearly by French in the appendix (pp. 221–30).

The chronological range of this research, from 1300 to 1540, allows the comparison of how household objects were used and considered before 1348; immediately following the plague; and in the longer term. Descriptions of goods found in London's coroners’ rolls, in addition to archaeological finds, have been used to supplement material from wills and inventories. Images of surviving artefacts, moreover, are used effectively to illustrate the items, such as birthing girdles (pp. 176–7). Girdles were a clothing accessory worn on the waist, but girdles of written prayers were also used for protection during childbirth.

The first two chapters provide an outline for household material culture before the Black Death and the valuation of goods, and this provides context for the change French traces following the plague. Sadly, inventories for London's population are scarce in the years before the Black Death. French, therefore, is forced to supplement the pre-plague material with inventories from King's Lynn. Merchant and artisan households and their goods before 1348 are characterized by few rooms with multipurpose functionality. Whilst French describes furnishings during this period as ‘minimal, adaptable, and often portable’, she also stresses the considerable variety in how household space was used, dependent on individual requirements. This versatility is demonstrated by the presence of chests where items could be stored when not in use.

The second chapter studies how household goods came to be more frequently valued by assessors in inventories but also by testators in their wills following the Black Death. French argues that changes to the worth of objects were not driven purely by economic conditions, but also changing social concerns, hierarchies and relationships. The connection between social relationships and household objects is a central premise of this book. Householders learned to place affective value on certain goods; this is reflected in the way items were described in wills. To illustrate, French notes that drinking cups, in particular mazers, were often bequeathed to children or grandchildren. Mazers were cups made from growths, or burls, from maple trees and were a popular item bequeathed in wills throughout the period, until the 1530s. John Pyers left a mazer to his daughter which he described as being given to him by his mother to pray for her soul (p. 59). This mazer evoked a sense of lineage passed from mother to son and, subsequently, to his daughter. These household objects, French argues, were used by testators to evoke and strengthen, in this case familial, relationships.

The rest of the book is arranged thematically, dealing with changing practices of decorating, housekeeping, food consumption, children, and childbirth, as well as domestic piety. Throughout, French places an emphasis on women's relationships with various household objects. The growing market for household goods in the later medieval period, for instance, enabled women to use items such as wall hangings and bed linens used specifically during childbirth to express their own understanding of the process. Moreover, bequests of these objects evoked social connections and shared memories.

French, nevertheless, historicizes what sometimes appears to be a timeless connection between women and household work. While moralistic literary ideals, which worked to naturalize women as housekeepers, existed earlier, for French this association became more focused within bourgeois culture only in the later fifteenth century. By this time, the development of routines around caring for a greater quantity of furnishings combined with an economic downturn, which restricted employment opportunities for women outside the home. Housekeeping, thus, became more explicitly a role for women to undertake and was linked increasingly to the morality and reputation of their household. Women from mercantile and artisanal households, however, were not passive in connecting housekeeping with spiritual virtue. Where bequests to parishes included movable goods, women usually left linens, jewellery or kitchenware. These bequests, French argues, made connections between the parish and their piety and domestic responsibilities, and enabled them to participate in parish affairs outside of official office-holding (pp. 213–14).

Throughout Household Goods, French stresses the need to understand what Felicity Riddy terms ‘burgeis domesticity’ not merely as imitative of elite and aristocratic culture following the Black Death. Urban mercantile and artisanal households instead used the increased availability of goods and furnishings to create their own aesthetics which reflected their own priorities. This ‘burgeis domesticity’, French argues, valued comfort and hospitality and prioritized civic piety, restricted access, order and industry. Household Goods, overall, offers a detailed analysis of the inventories, wills and testaments of later medieval London. It is both easy to read and enjoyable. French provides a real insight, not only into how people might experience and understand household goods, but also how these goods affected, and were tied to, people's social relationships and identities.