" The private dwelling becomes an important site on which the nineteenth-century ‘‘paradigme de ‘l’artiste’’’ is played out, for during this period, artistic sensibility is commonly manifested by an appreciation of the ‘‘minor’’ arts of interior furnishing and decor, fuelling the popularity of collecting and the bibelot. [...] 
The home interior thus becomes a field of struggle for claims to artistic taste. At the heart of this struggle one finds the bibelot in its various guises –objet d’art, objet de luxe, objet de mode, objet superflu, objet de consommation, objet de désir. The lengthy descriptions of interior decor characteristic of nineteenth-century novels are best understood within the context of both the sociology and the aesthetics of the decorative arts.[...]  The story of the interior which emerges from these two bodies of writing goes something like this: the collection used as decor (in other words, the cultural phenomenon of the bibelot) purportedly originates among the aristocratic and artistic elite (including collectors, painters, and writers), then is popularized and vulgarized by the middle classes, and by women. A common strategy for gendering decor emerges: feminine bibelots are relegated to the sphere of fashion, while masculine bibelots are elevated to the sphere of art." 

Watson, Janell. Literature and Material Culture from Balzac to Proust : The Collection and Consumption of Curiosities. Cambridge University Press, 2000. p. 57-58.