The seamstress has long been a favourite subject for artists: demure, pretty profile, gainfully employed, suggestions of the angel in the house. But the same pose can also be seductive and what is being sewn can send out a coded message, as the Colonel discovers when her calls on Mrs Bold (who is usually anything but) in Miss Buncle's Book. She is sitting on a sofa by the fire which irradiates "her small round face with rosy light", making herself "a nightie of peach-coloured crêpe-de-chine". The result is inevitable. This is La Couseuse (c1874-76, private collection) by Renoir. 

Fashions and fabrics, clothes and their construction, are important elements in many of our books. So this week the theme of the Post is dressmaking, beginning with Emily Fox-Seton in The Making of a Marchioness. Naïve, good-natured, well-educated Emily is from a good family which has fallen on hard times. Nevertheless, she is content to earn her living sewing and dressmaking. When she marries and her fortunes change, she carries on for the "mere sentimental bliss of it". This is The Young Seamstress (1907, Touchstones Rochdale) by Harold Knight.

The house is small - only six people at a time can fit in on a guided tour - but David Parr applied the same scale, grandeur, skill, and attention to detail to his domestic rooms that he used in his everyday professional work. What looks like printed wallpaper here is actually all meticulously hand-painted using the prick and pounce technique to transfer the designs. It is the contrast of the ordinary and extraordinary which makes the interior of the house so unique. 

David Parr (1854-1927) was employed by FR Leach & Sons (1837-1904), a leading firm of Cambridge-based artist-decorators who carried out schemes for churches, houses, and colleges designed by eminent Victorian architects, including William Morris and GF Bodley. Examples of their work can be found in All Saints' Church (aka the Painted Church) and Queens' College Old Hall (above).The David Parr House has just created a new FR Leach Walking Map of Cambridge for a self-guided tour of the various locations. 

This week on the Post, we have the David Parr House in Cambridge, "an ordinary terraced house with an extraordinary hand-painted interior", and a fascinating  counterpoint to the better-known house at Kettle's Yard. David Parr lived in 186 Gwydir Street from 1886 to 1926, during which time he decorated the rooms in grand neo-Gothic meets Arts and Crafts style, all concealed by this modest exterior.