At home, Mundella had a great regard for domestic comforts and liked to be surrounded by beautiful things. Just as he was ahead of others in his politics, so he led in his artistic tastes: he was noted as a collector, long before others, of old Chelsea porcelain and Crown Derby. In furniture, English marqueterie took his eye, and he acquired "all the Chippendale he could lay his hands on". One of Mundella's nieces recalled that he and his family flourished at a time when all things Italian were fashionable and having Italian ancestry was considered most desirable. She remembered him having breakfast in bed wearing a red Garibaldi jacket (a garment usually made of scarlet Cashmere wool with military trimmings of gold braid, and popularised as – generally – a woman's shirt during the early 1860s). 16 Elvaston Place, she recalled, was full of beautiful Italian things.