If we accept the very plausible idea that, in the ideal case, every book is also (or can also be) a work of art, then Tibor Somlai's book, which in any case genuinely fills a gap in our knowledge, can be regarded as a similar profession of love. His affection though is not so much directed towards the creators of the interior-design and architectural objects that feature in his book as towards the objects themselves and the types of rooms and interior spaces as objectified mementoes of a vanished and in a way yet quite present era. Last but not least they are mementoes of the people who commissioned and used them. The atmosphere of a vanished age in book form. First the Second World War, then nationalisation, resulted in untold and irreparable damage. The book, then, can also be regarded as a sort of memorial, with its focus not only on art historical and interior design considerations but, of no less significance, on wider historical, sociological and anthropological contexts. Whether focusing on astonishingly lavish interiors and layouts of villas from that era, or on economical, functional appointments of the typical middle-class two- and three-room home in Central Pest, the book divulges whole worlds, which moreover enact or stage, as it were, the bodies, the ways of thinking and the lifestyles of those who live in them. The book can thus be read as a visual novel without having to resort to a genuine novel like Nádas's.
Somlai's book starts off by listing home interiors and their furniture by designer, and the great advantage of this chapter is that apart from including already well-known designers (such as Lajos Kozma, Farkas Molnár and Gyula Kaesz), it familiarises us with a number of other, relatively unfamiliar names. This inevitably means, as András Körner says in an introduction, with a markedly personal tone, that those few well-known designers were neither exceptional geniuses nor isolated cases, but the embodiments of a popular movement, even an ideology, one that made a lasting impression on interwar Hungary, and the relics of which at least are still there for us to enjoy today (as witnessed in the recent revival of the Bauhaus and Art Deco).
The names of many furniture designers are not honoured simply because they were known first and foremost as architects, so this part of their output was fairly obscured. In fact, since mass production of highquality furniture was in those days still something of a rarity, quite a number of architects undertook commissions for individual items, indeed in some cases for complete interior decors, as they were often unable to make a living purely from architecture. Black-and-white photographs, whether by amateurs or professionals, but especially some marvellous, vividly coloured watercolour plans, provide a useful supplement to the blueprints.

The evocation of colour is of uncommon importance, because one of the trademarks of the movement that was of revolutionary significance, over and above clean form and functionality, was precisely its daring application of colour—which of course does not show in the black-and-white photographs of the time.
The next section is organised by type of furniture or fitting, such as beds, cocktail cabinets, dining rooms, cloakrooms, writing desks, armchairs, lamps, dressing tables, children's rooms, doctor's consulting rooms and terraces. This is where a motif that has already cropped up occasionally in earlier sections comes to the fore, terms which nowadays have a distinctly odd ring to them: the "man's room" and the "lady's room", meaning their bedroom, with the possibility that ingenious partitioning will also allow the spaces to be joined together. In modern homes a less obvious separation of, and respect for, gender is implemented in the form of "spaces" for women and men. It would be wrong to think that this was customary only in the case of multiroomed suburban villas, because in tworoom inner-city apartments it was also the latest thing for the anima and animus of a home to be asserted both in its spaces and its furnishings. The same concept also demonstrates rather eloquently the gender relations and outlook on life of those days, even in cases where both partners had jobs. Then there is a regular cavalcade of now-forgotten interior-design objects that likewise testify to quite a different age and way of life: the secretaire, dressing table, dressing room, radiogramme, cocktail cabinet—the kind of meaningful and evocative personal belonging like the "overnight case" of twenties' and thirties' America, as featured in Hitchcock's Rear Window, which in those days was an indispensable appurtenance of the emancipated new woman: a nécessaire or dressing case, fitted with all the toilet articles necessary, should one happen to spend the night somewhere else. One also encounters materials that by now have largely disappeared, such as opalescent milk glass, or frosted glass, or the linoleum that is so frowned upon today, but was then likewise a colourful complement to interior spaces. All the same, what is most striking is the individuality of the furniture and interior spaces, which above all says a lot about their users and their lifestyle. The bulk of the pieces can be considered "sitespecific", insofar as they were made to fit a specific space, and indeed a specific, predetermined place within that space—in many cases they were built-in or fitted items of furniture. Even if one occasionally finds such an item that has survived the ravages of time, these objects now exist outside their original "context". Fine pieces as they are, they have become detached from their history.