Category talk:Historical kitchens

The creators of this category haven't been active on Commons in more than a decade, so if this category is to have a definition it's up to current users. I recently had a disagreement with a user placing some photos of home kitchens in use from within the last 10 years into this category. I *think* it is intended more for kitchens preserved to display a particular past time, like in museums or historical sites - what are other people's opinions? I note we already have a Category:Kitchens by decade structure. Comments? -- Infrogmation of New Orleans (talk) 23:51, 1 February 2024 (UTC)

I think this is a rather challenging question. From a kitchen historian's point of view, probably every kitchen can be classified as "historical" that is clearly not from the 2020s, but from the 1980s or 1990s or the early 2000s. For an expert, there are big and obvious differences between those eras. But even for a keenly interested amateur, those differences may be really hard to tell. One drastic option (which I neither want to strongly advertise nor to veto) would be to vacate this category altogether and to use alternative categories that are better defined, such as Category:Kitchens by decade, Category:Kitchens by century, plus a maintenance category (if not even the century is known). Stilfehler (talk) 00:36, 2 February 2024 (UTC)

I think gradually vacating media from this category is a good idea - moving files to categories with better definitions. Perhaps we can create a category "Preserved kitchens" or "Preserved historic kitchens" where the kitchen is deliberately preserved to represent a particular time - similar to "Kitchens in museums" when the property is not a museum? -- Infrogmation of New Orleans (talk) 15:24, 2 February 2024 (UTC)

You brought up another interesting point on your talk page, that kitchens are categorized by "year of the photography and not by the year of construction." Well the year of photography is often easier to know. If you think another category tree like "Kitchens built in (decade)" or "constructed in" might be useful, I do not object. However it seems to me that in practice home kitchens with elements from different years and decades are more common than those where everything is from the same time - in practice people often only replace things one or a few at a time, when either what they have wears out or they see something in particular they like better than what they already have, rather than completely remodeling the kitchen and replacing everything. -- Infrogmation of New Orleans (talk) 15:32, 2 February 2024 (UTC)

I very much agree, we have probably very many media showing kitchens that are not stylistically pure but have been updated. I don't think it can be expected, namely from laypeople, to make correct or even helpful date estimations or decisions here.

As for the question of "date of photography or of construction": we don't have that issue in the Category:Architecture by date, right? The reason is certainly that pertinent buildings are mostly better documented than the average kitchen that finds its way into the Wikimedia Commons.

By the way, we have a group of media that show both stylistically pure kitchens and exact dates: I mean the magazine ads. Stilfehler (talk) 19:49, 2 February 2024 (UTC)

I am currently writing a Wikibook (about kitchen remodel, with a chapter about modern kitchen history, which is what brought me here) and am therefore hesitant to start another construction site in the Commons, but I am still pondering creating a gallery page here, for some basic education about the evolution of styles. Greetings, Stilfehler (talk) 20:01, 2 February 2024 (UTC)

• @Stilfehler: Those sound like good projects - including a gallery page for education of those of us not well informed on kitchen history. Thank you! -- Infrogmation of New Orleans (talk) 17:58, 3 February 2024 (UTC)

• I'm happy to do some work improving categorization of media here. However not much other than country and/or date is obvious to me - as you know more about the topics, if you have suggestions about what would be most useful or other categories that should be created, please do so. Cheers, -- Infrogmation of New Orleans (talk) 17:58, 3 February 2024 (UTC)

As you and I already figured, time determination may be quite difficult, due to stylistic eclecticism and because most users wouldn't have expertise. An other alternative that I was thinking of would be to categorize certain features that can be seen as important stylistic markers. Yesterday, I started Category:Covered exhaust hoods and Category:Industrial stoves in home kitchens (both very typical for 1990s and 2000s kitchens) and Category:White kitchen cabinets (still in fashion today, but standard in the U.S. until the early 1950s). Another big one would be the colors of appliances and obviously of cabinet faces. Minor ones would be live kitchen plants (1970s), crown molding (probably since the 1980s), type of wall cabinets (all the way up to the ceiling, or under fur downs, etc.), among others. Stilfehler (talk) 19:39, 3 February 2024 (UTC)