An overview of the history of arguably the most prolific partly French named site on the web.

Link to us:

The Maison de Stuff is a sort of community website, which was started by a group of fellow students from Reading University. A number of us started at Reading back in October 1995. At that time the internet was all very new and exciting (not too mention slow!), and for some of us going to university gave us our first experience of using it.

Within a month or two of having seen other people's homepages for the first time, we all generally thought "I want one of those", and probably by the end of 1995 many of us had already a bit of a dabble. These were typically rather naive, ugly creations, with little or no purpose.

Some time during our first year at university (1995-1996) a group of us (John H, Jon E, Tim, Rob, Tom and possibly Lorenzo) clearly had too much time on our hands, and decided to create a new society within the student union. It was the Silly Pointless Society. Unsurprisingly (given the lack of conviction in the name), it didn't get much further than making a website and assigning each other joke executive roles. Still, this was our first collaborative web project, and effectively this was the birthplace of the Maison de Stuff. Tom created an amusing page describing his portfolio, which, for effect, he wrote partly in French. This caught John's eye, who, when trying to come up with a name for his webpage (a random assortment of things) came up with the name Maison de Stuff. The first incarnation of the 'Maison came into being some time in early 1996.

Over the next couple of years the 'Maison grew a bit, but remained largely just John's website. It wasn't until the summer of 1998, when we all graduated, that the community aspect began to develop. As we all went off our separate ways, the message board became the chief way that we all kept in touch with each other. From this it became clear that the 'Maison was more than just John's website any more.

In the summer of 1999, John got his first digital camera, one of the main driving forces being the desire to put pictures on the web. From here (and with the help of Photo Studio), John's Pictures grew - there are now many thousands of photographs on the web.

Some time in 1999/2000 the site moved away from Reading University's servers, and onto it's own domain, all thanks to Jon Ellis.

Since then the site has continued to grow, and new regulars have come on board from all over the word (OK, well the rest of England and also USA - then Jon moved to Japan).