Journal of Design History - current issue

Useful Reading? Designing Information for London's Victorian Cab Passengers

Dobraszczyk, P. — 2008-07-02

Considered in an historical context, the design of information for everyday use can tell us much about the experience of reading for action. This article focuses on the extraordinary range of information designed for London's cab passengers in the nineteenth century, focusing on fare books, lists, posters and maps. The article assesses how the largely anonymous designers of these documents—publishers, mapmakers and printers—sought to address the perceived needs and abilities of their intended readers, and explores how actual readers responded, focusing, in turn, on two groups: regular cab users (invariably assumed to be upper- or upper-middle-class men) and strangers to London, whether foreigners or otherwise. The paper demonstrates how accounts of reading experience link design and use and bring into focus the effectiveness, or otherwise, of the former. Even in the context of this very specific case study, the article's analysis of readers' responses to information design suggests varieties of historical everyday experience that have yet to be considered by historians, but, like other forms of reading, warrant our close attention.

Originality and Jones' The Grammar of Ornament of 1856

Jespersen, J. K. — 2008-07-02

Two years ago (2006) was the 150th anniversary of the publication of The Grammar of Ornament by Owen Jones (1809–1874). This bible of ornament remains his best-known contribution to visual culture. This article looks at how the Grammar came about and also at its design intentions. The folio itself is really more famous for what it is than what it really is about. Jones' intention for ornamental designs of carpets, ceilings, wall elevations and fabrics was to create a field which was frequently conditioned by borders, panels or dados, cornices and covings.The field's ornaments consist of secondary motifs—dots, fragments, elements, etc.—but not primary or iconic, static, emblematic figures. With Jones, the field is a coloured field, and the secondary nature of the distributed ornaments aids in the creation of a coloured ‘bloom'. The visual field is driven by Jones' new (and very old) aesthetic of repose. Repose conditions the field as an aesthetic with physiological, intellectual and spiritual results. It unifies the visual experience. The Grammar is indeed a grammar of ornament, making possible the creation of new and significant ornaments through the application of its 37 Propositions. The design theory of the Grammar is modern, scientific and devoid of deliberate historicism, operating by principles to create an ornament for every kind of decoration.

Empire of Glass: F. & C. Osler in India, 1840-1930

Ahlawat, D. — 2008-07-02

This paper seeks to give political meaning to the consumption habits of the Maharajas during the late Victorian and Edwardian eras and to engage with the identities this kind of cosumption created in a wider discourse of empire. It will explore how the Birmingham firm of F. & C. Osler, makers of luxury glass objects, developed its market in India during the nineteenth century. It will also outline, as a case study, the firm's advent into the Rajput princely state of Mewar, through a study of the specially commissioned furniture acquired by the Maharanas of Mewar, in order to link material culture and design history in the study of political identity in a post-colonial context.

Translating Properties into Functions (and Vice Versa): Design, User Culture and the Creation of an American and a European Car (1930-70)

Mom, G. — 2008-07-02

Drawing from recent work in the philosophy of technology (the dual nature of artefacts), sociology and anthropology (social practice theory) and ecological psychology (activity theory), this article develops a functionalist, user-centred and quasi-evolutionary theory of agency and technical change in the history of design. Central in this theory is the concept of ‘function', a dynamic battleground between designers, users and other actors. Function is created and changed by users, and by users alone, but it is enabled (and constrained) by technical properties developed by designers and engineers with the user in mind. This theory is applied to the automobile's gearbox and is used to explain the emergence of two different automobile cultures, an American and a European, differing, in this case, by a preference for automation on the American side and a reluctance to follow the American example on the European side. Automotive functions, it is argued, have been developed during the ‘Fordist' phase to be as universal as possible, in order to enable a constant, but mostly incremental, change in user culture and to afford as wide a variety of applications as possible.

Craft and the Limits of Skill: Handicrafts Revivalism and the Problem of Technique

Betjemann, P. — 2008-07-02

Skill and technique appear axiomatic to the definition of handicraft. And no designers are more closely associated with defending skilled human labour than the leaders of the Arts and Crafts Movement in England and America. This essay, however, proposes that industrial-era definitions of handicraft—originating with figures such as T. J. Cobden-Sanderson, William Morris, Gustav Stickley and even the sociologist Thorstein Veblen—are in fact predicated on a paradoxical relationship to skill. For if skilled labour seems the self-evident alternative to mechanical production, it is also true that machines, capable of absolute precision and uniformity, threaten the traditional associations of craft and perfect workmanship. The era of the Arts and Crafts Movement thus developed ways of thinking about craft that are sceptical of practised, learned or reproducible technique. This essay probes the implications of that epistemological shift, considering its effects on the aesthetics of craft, on the class dynamics of handicrafts revivalism and on the popularization of a medieval style (rather than, say, eighteenth-century models) as the paradigm of the handcrafted. Rethinking the relation of craft and skill, the article offers an alternative to established historiographical models in which practical skilled labour was steamrolled by shoddy industrial production or modern marketplace ideals. Instead, I suggest that industrial-era definitions of skill do not support conventional distinctions of craft and consumerism, practicality and rarity or simplicity and excess.

A Cultural History of Fashion: From the Catwalk to the Sidewalk

Arnold, R. — 2008-07-02

Encyclopedia of Furnishing Textiles, Floorcoverings and Home Furnishing Practices 1200-1950

Beddoe, S. — 2008-07-02

Gender, Taste & Material Culture in Britain and North America, 1700-1830

Craske, M. — 2008-07-02

Stories from Home: English Domestic Interiors, 1750-1850

Ferry, E. — 2008-07-02

Notes on Contributors

2008-07-02