Abstract
In 1923, a set of two chairs, a settee and a sofa table were donated to Museu Paulista, as a clause of D. Francisca Miquelina de Paula de Souza Queiroz’s family will. These pieces of furniture originally belonged to his grandfather, Brigadier Luis Antonio de Souza Queiroz, one of the wealthiest men in the first half of the 19th century in São Paulo, deceased in 1819. Their physical attributes are testimonies of the social and economic transformations and stimulate to reflect on the meaning of possession of objects, the personal relationships mediated by them and the shaping role of social practices played by artifacts. Based on the study of these pieces of furniture and goods described in inhabitants’ wills of São Paulo, the article analyzes the material dimension of social life, in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, focusing on the social practices around meals in the domestic environment in a context marked by the gradual internalization of sociability.
Keywords
food; materiality; domestic space
