Journal of Design History - recent issues

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

Introduction: Professionalization as a Focus in Interior Design History

Lees-Maffei, G. — 2008-05-14

In the industrialized West, the design of the interior has been conceptualized as a domestic and amateur phenomenon, and the domestic interior has been conceptualized as a feminine realm. This introductory article aims to overcome the tendency to conflate the interior, the domestic, the amateur and the feminine in three ways. Firstly, it engages with a broad definition of the interior, encompassing professional and amateur spaces in both domestic and extra-domestic contexts. Secondly, it examines processes of professionalization which, from 1870 to 1970, moved the practice and product of interior design beyond its amateur origins. Thirdly, the association of femininity and domesticity so fundamental to Western patriarchal society is here replaced with a concern for the professional practice of women, and men, as gendered subjects. These points are addressed in turn in the three parts of the article. This article argues for analysis of the historical processes by which professional status in conferred upon the act of designing. Professionalization is an extremely useful and revealing focus for understanding the genesis, characteristics and significance of interior design and design and its histories more broadly.

At the Forefront of a Newly Emerging Profession? Ethnography, Education and the Exhibition of Women's Needlework in Austria-Hungary in the Late Nineteenth Century

Houze, R. — 2008-05-14

The exhibition of women's needlework in Vienna at world's fairs and other venues coincided with the widespread reform of the decorative arts industries in Austria-Hungary in the late nineteenth century, which led to the establishment of the new Museums of Applied Art in both Vienna and Budapest, as well as to a host of museums and vocational craft schools throughout the lands of the Dual Monarchy. The aim of the regional craft schools—to draw attention to and preserve the vital folk art of the Austrian peasantry, while simultaneously improving and regulating its production in the form of cottage industries—intersected with an effort to train and educate bourgeois and aristocratic ladies in the urban decorative arts schools. As Austria attempted to define its place as a leader in the applied arts industries, women's needlework took on a central role. Indeed, the preoccupation with feminine fabrication of the domestic sphere, and especially the production of traditional and ‘dilettante’ needlework, among Austrian critics such as Rudolf von Eitelberger, Jacob von Falke and Alois Riegl, largely shaped the emerging profession of modern interior design at the turn of the twentieth century.

Acknowledging Regional Interior Design? Developing Design Practices for Australian Interiors (1880-1900)

Avery, T. — 2008-05-14

In the nineteenth century, tensions around the conditions of professionalization in architecture in Britain coincided with architects’ renewed interest in the design of interiors. Furniture manufacturers also aimed to claim the attention of middle-class homemakers. These developments operated within a particular British social and economic hierarchy. Consequently, the relative position of an Australian example of a late nineteenth-century interior design collaboration within a broader narrative requires a move away from interpretations of marginality, innovation and imitation which have underscored Australian design histories. This article considers how a particular combination of artistic and commercial approaches to interior design in Australia resulted from the merging of British design ideas with Australian economic and cultural conditions. Such practices are, in this article, considered amongst the international foundations of the professionalization of interior design.

Nancy Vincent McClelland (1877-1959): Professionalizing Interior Decoration in the Early Twentieth Century

May, B. — 2008-05-14

This paper explores the beginnings of professionalization in interior decoration during the early twentieth century mainly within the context of the writings and professional activities of Nancy Vincent McClelland. A member of the first generation of women decorators in the USA, she was a respected interior decorator, author, lecturer and expert in antiques and wallpapers. McClelland was also a life-long advocate of education and professional standards, including licensing, for decorators. She made important contributions to the field in these and other areas through her writing, speaking and activities in professional organizations. Her colleagues acknowledged her zeal for professionalization by electing her as the first woman to be national president of the American Institute of Interior Decorators, now the American Society of Interior Designer. Following a brief overview of the role of women as professional decorators, the paper documents some of the first steps in the professionalizing process of interior decoration and McClelland's contributions to and ideas about that process. It also suggests some of the strategies she and other women decorators used to compete and succeed in the predominantly male business and professional world.

Designing Synthetics, Promoting Brands: Dorothy Liebes, DuPont Fibres and Post-war American Interiors

Blaszczyk, R. L. — 2008-05-14

This article examines the relationship between design consultants and big business in post-war America by focusing on hand weaver Dorothy Liebes and her most important client, the chemical giant E. I. du Pont de Nemours & Company. Between 1955 and 1971, Liebes was DuPont's principal home-furnishings consultant, helping the world's largest manufacturer of synthetic fibres to build commercial markets for dramatically new products like Orlon acrylic and Dacron polyester. Based in New York, Liebes created modernist ‘idea fabrics’ that showed designers, textile mills, architects, and interior decorators how synthetics might be used in draperies, upholstery, and carpets. As part of the U.S. fibre industry's most advanced marketing effort, Liebes—who served as DuPont spokeswoman in public appearances and on television—helped overcome elitist biases against ‘unnatural’ materials and make synthetics the fibre of choice among interior designers.

Interior Decoration and Haute Couture: Links between the Developments of the Two Professions in France and the USA in the Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries--A Historiographical Analysis

Sparke, P. — 2008-05-14

This essay sets out to map a field of secondary sources which could be used to address the links between developments in the professions of interior decoration and haute couture in France and the USA in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and to speculate upon and outline some of the themes that would inform such an investigation.

Medievalism, The Middle Ages in Modern England

Buchanan, A. — 2008-05-14

The Emergence of the Interior. Architecture, Modernity, Domesticity

Keeble, T. — 2008-05-14

Paul T. Frankl and Modern American Design

McNeil, P. — 2008-05-14

The Expert Consumer: Associations and Professionals in Consumer Society

Whitworth, L. — 2008-05-14

Books received

2008-05-14

Notes on Contributors

2008-05-14

Eighteenth-Century Interiors Redesigning the Georgian: Introduction

Greig, H., Riello, G. — 2007-12-10

From the Interior to Interiority: The Conversation Piece in Georgian England

Retford, K. — 2007-12-10

This article explores the Georgian interior as represented in conversation piece portraits. It discusses the relationship between real and depicted rooms and furnishings and considers the meanings and values conveyed by painted interiors. The article begins by examining the relatively bare settings of Arthur Devis, which emphasized restrained good taste, in contrast to William Hogarth's more lavish scenes of refined consumption. It then discusses the implications of Devis's reuse of the same interiors for different patrons. Such settings were not intended to represent specific spaces. Rather, like the interiors of Hogarth's modern moral subject paintings, they were to be understood as signifiers of abstract virtues—their generic quality enhancing their legibility. Moving on to the 1760s, the article considers Johan Zoffany's revitalization of the conversation piece, combining lavish description of things with a new sense of intimacy and affect. In contrast to Devis, Zoffany notably depicted rooms and objects owned by his patrons, albeit combined in invented ways and with fictive possessions in order to strengthen their iconographic power. The article ends by speculating about some of the reasons for this distinction, including the social status of their patrons, the changing nature of the art world and developments in the luxury debate.

Public Images for Private Spaces? The Place of Sculpture in the Georgian Domestic Interior

Baker, M. — 2007-12-10

This paper examines the increasing prominence of sculpture within the Georgian interior in terms of the relationship between the (apparently) public nature of sculpture and recent discussions of the Habermasian public sphere. In what way was the ‘publicness’ of sculpture constituted and to what degree is it legitimate to read this mode of representation in terms of its role within the emergent public sphere? How might the incorporation of sculpture within the interior then be understood? The use by neo-Palladian architects of reliefs and busts within the interior registers the complexity of the relationship between public and private. If the public was embedded in the private, this was manifested in material terms through the greater visibility of sculpture within the interior. Just as sculptures such as statues and monuments were being reconfigured so as to take account of new expectations of what constituted the public, so the apparently public art of sculpture could be more easily accommodated within the seemingly private spaces of the domestic interior.

Representing the Georgian: Constructing Interiors in Early Twentieth-Century Publications, 1890 1930

McKellar, E. — 2007-12-10

This paper examines the construction and representation of eighteenth-century interiors in journals and books of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. It is concerned with establishing why, despite a widespread revival of interest in the Georgian from the 1890s onwards, Georgian interiors received relatively little attention until the post-First World War period with the emergence of scholars such as Margaret Jourdain. It is argued that this deficit sprang from the maintenance of an essentially Arts and Crafts approach and mentality towards the new classical subject matter. Such an approach privileged the material and the architectonic and militated against any understanding of the interior as a physical or spatial entity in its own right. The paper explores these issues in relation to the contemporary publishing context. This period witnessed a significant expansion of publishing activity and key changes in the technology available for the reproduction of images. The paper examines the significance of a variety of representational practices pursued in both drawings and photographs in relation to these changes and their role in constructing ideas about the Georgian interior.

Curating the Georgian Interior: From Period Rooms to Marketplace?

Bryant, J. — 2007-12-10

Biedermeier. The Invention of Simplicity

Buenger, B. C. — 2007-12-10

Vrouwen in de vormgeving in Nederland 1880 1940

Flore, F. — 2007-12-10

From Submarines to Suburbs: Selling a Better America 1939 1959

Votolato, G. — 2007-12-10

Britain * Modern Architectures in History

Welter, V. M. — 2007-12-10

Gilding the Market: Luxury and Fashion in Fourteenth Century Italy

Matchette, A. — 2007-12-10

Selling Shaker, The Commodification of Shaker Design in the Twentieth Century

Ponsonby, M. — 2007-12-10