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In the nineteenth century, acoustic hearing aids (such as ear trumpets or conversation tubes) became ubiquitous attributes of deaf people from polite society. These prostheses were a visible sign of otherwise invisible deafness. Although some deaf people used hearing aids openly and proudly, and constantly attempted to convince others that using them was nothing to be ashamed of, others wanted to hide these stigmatizing devices. Therefore, they were equally (or even more) concerned with their visibility than with their performance when buying these devices. For this reason, manufacturers tried to design instruments to meet the needs of their customers. This article investigates two design strategies that were used by ear trumpet producers to maneuver between the troubling visibility of these instruments and their performance: the first is hypervisibility—designing hearing aids as luxurious objects of conspicuous consumption; the second is invisibility, which was achieved with miniaturization and camouflage. Both these aesthetic strategies are considered in the context of Victorian technophilia and regimes of the body. As hearing aids became more accessible to the middle class, design patterns spread beyond elite consumption. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The year 1853 marks a landmark in the history of Japanese art exhibitions within Britain and Ireland, being the year when the first clearly identified exhibition of Japanese items was displayed in an international exhibition in the British Isles. The Great Industrial Exhibition, Dublin, 1853, is of importance because the Japanese exhibition loaned from a Dutch collection illustrates the Dutch playing a significant role in the introduction of Japanese works of arts and industry into Britain and Ireland. This study explores the means by which the 1853 Japanese exhibition was assembled and questions why it was never given the "credit of priority" during the 1870s, at a time when discussions on this issue focused on the Japanese displays in the International Exhibition, London, 1862, and the Exposition Universelle, Paris 1867. In relation to these discussions, two texts from the 1870s, R. Alcock, Art and Art Industries in Japan 1 and G. A. Audsley and J. L. Bowes, Keramic Art of Japan 2 have been singled out for discussion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Decolonial approaches foreground the necessity for design historians to rethink their methodologies and terms of debate to recognize the impact of colonial legacies. Only then is it possible to make changes toward social and cognitive justice. This piece explores new models for working collectively with history and memory across oral registers to include the colloquial and moments of pause, of taking breath. In mid-2020, four design historians teamed up to develop experimental, multimedia methods of working to explore new critical design histories. By using "otherwise" methods to look, listen, and read closely, this piece foregrounds the making of space for new interpretations of thinking and writing. The tensions between memories, stories, and histories are interpreted and challenged using concepts such as breath, voice, palimpsest, circle and rhythm. Exploring translation, opacity, embodiment, positionality, and nonlinearity emerged as crucial to questioning the terms under which design history can be transformed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article is the product of a research project about the role of image in the creation of the Colombian nation during the nineteenth century. Part of that image depended on the individuals it identified, their social status, their lifestyle, and their occupation. The image of fashion as a characteristic social identifier, as an icon, was a bearer of anthropographic symbols. In nineteenth-century Colombia, those symbols were connected to a republican identity characterized by its colonial heritage, determined by race, and by garments distinctive of specific social classes: formerly subjects and, later, citizens. Thus, the image that fashion conveyed as the "skin of the skin" of the republican ancestors, the elite, and the people constitutes a legacy that encompasses everything, from the manufacture of textiles and the indigenous ruana, to a kind of textile mestizaje with aspects of European provenance. Items from collections in museums, libraries, and archives, were compared to texts composed by travelers and illustrators, in order to unveil elements of national identity in what emerges as the landscape of fashion in Colombia during the nineteenth century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This Special Issue explores the relationship between architectural history and design history; two disciplines with close subject areas and methodological links, but which have developed distinct institutional and academic identities that often separate them. This introduction frames the articles contained in the issue—which in different ways demonstrate the compelling nature of research that straddles these disciplines—through an examination of the roots such research approaches have within the recent past of each field. Through a re-reading of key moments within the historiography of each discipline in the UK and USA since the Second World War, it is possible to understand how architectural and design history have evolved in relation to each other, and how the expansion of each into the territory of the other has emerged. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

'Histories of Design Pedagogy' gathers material from across three decades of the Journal of Design History to juxtapose distinct investigations into design education across various geographies, contexts, relationships and methodological concerns. By isolating three overarching themes to structure twelve articles, this introduction also makes an argument towards future design pedagogy, suggesting an Urmodell , or master plan, of elements in design pedagogy that is informed by key issues debated by and through the articles presented. 'Design Systems and Projects' addresses the meaning and concept of design, relationships between education and industry, and design training networks. 'Ethics and Methods' advocates greater attention to the identities, subjectivities and roles of the designer and of the user as stakeholders in a designed system, the increasing role of research in design practice, elements that affect practice from global design to emerging technologies, and object collections research. The final theme, 'Critical Histories and Theories', looks to changes in design history and design studies to inform interdisciplinary scholarship and the future of design practice. Tensions over proportions, boundaries and structures are addressed by this Urmodell , but in the preferred definition of modelling as a mediator, it exists here as a malleable framework over a steadfast solution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Queen's Hotel in Birmingham was one of the world's most pioneering railway hotels. However, it has particular characteristics that do not readily fit within conventional analyses of architecture: it was not purpose built but was rather the result of a building expansion and modification; it was neither the product of a single architect, nor rooted to a single location. To understand these transitions requires a different approach. This article draws upon current discourses at the nexus of Architectural History and Design History. It is through disciplinary overlap and 'messiness' that we can achieve new insights into the development of the Queen's Hotel during its first two decades. The rapidity of change during this period demonstrates how architecture was striving to keep pace with the progress of the railways. This article brings fresh understanding to the emergence of this particular form of railway hotel—which formed the frontispiece of the station—a typology that would become a dominant feature of Victorian England's major towns and cities and emblem of the new railway age. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The design languages and forms of knowledge used by architects and other designers indicate that they not only operate 'within the same domains of knowledge and action', but also share similar historical contexts. Latin American modern architecture and design histories constitute an account of cultural exchanges between architectural and design practitioners working on a trans-national and multidisciplinary basis. Reviewing these practices today may help break the tendency of historical accounts to focus on a 'diffusionist model' and reinforce the critical acknowledgement of the modern legacy in Latin America. The work of architect and designer Gio Ponti is an example of this. During the 1950s Ponti travelled to many countries and built one of his masterpieces, Villa Planchart, in Caracas. Although much has been published about Ponti's Venezuelan project, his letters reveal other lesser known but significant encounters with Latin American culture. Using his Domus editorials and readings from his correspondence as guidelines, complemented by articles, seminal books, and projects, this article will explore, from a more plural point of view, how Ponti's experiences and relationships developed in Latin America, especially those lesser known relationships in Brazil, helped shape some of his design processes and conceptualizations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Contempra is widely considered to be the first telephone designed and manufactured in Canada. Designed in 1967, Canada's centennial year, it was a conspicuous departure from prevailing conventions of North American telephone styling in both its conception and design. It was designated as an icon of Canadian modern design and became a symbol of Canada's identity as a modern nation at home and abroad. Its popularity in domestic and international markets set the stage for the transformation of its developer, Northern Electric, into a global telecommunication leader and Canada's most valuable corporation, eventually renamed Nortel Networks. The history of the Contempra's design and development offers an opportunity to consider how designed technological artefacts take on cultural and ideological meaning. Most accounts celebrate the Contempra as a distinctly Canadian design story, but do not elaborate on or question its 'Canadian-ness', and they are silent on the circumstances and events that culminated in the telephone's development. This article examines the historical events, ideological discourses, human relationships, design values and material constraints that set the stage for what can be best described as the Contempra telephone's performance of modern Canadian nationalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The legacy of colonialism in Australia has resulted in the devaluing and exploitation of Indigenous visual culture, design and representation. Through reinterrogating, revealing and documenting previously unacknowledged or omitted Indigenous contributions to communication design history in Australia, this article seeks to reposition examples of Indigenous visual culture as powerful sites of iconographic symbols, graphic forms and political posters. In this article, communication design as 'visual communication' is utilized as a framework to re-evaluate Indigenous contributions to Australian design history. This article presents a number of case studies of Indigenous contributions to communication design within a historical timeline, from prehistoric visual communication to twentieth-century examples—mirroring the development of the communication design industry. Parallel to the historical timeline, I note the emergence of recurring themes that are critical to the incorporation of Indigenous contributions into design history more broadly; notably effects of national politics, conflicted ideas around national identity, cultural ownership of work and the inclusiveness of the design industry. Through an applied retelling using a decolonizing historical paradigm, key Indigenous contributions are recognized and misappropriated work is repositioned, to acknowledge and give voice to Indigenous communication designs and their undeniable role in creating a national design style. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article argues for a necessary reinterpretation of 1970s Italian design, employing new analytical categories. In this case, the history of the impact of left-wing theory and politics, the reception of American counterculture movements and environmentalism, and the rhetorical strategies used to mediate an ecological awareness and collective consciousness in Italy, provide new insight into the cultural background of radical design. This essay considers a short period (1970-1976) in which the theories and initiatives of the Italian environmental movement intersected with those of design cultures. Editorial projects developed between 1970 and 1973 testify to the first steps towards ecological literacy in Italy. Se, an insert in Abitare exemplifies this approach. On the other hand, a pre-ecological reflection was promoted by radical design cultures. In 1970, Casabella, the most widely-read Italian architectural magazine, participated in a series of initiatives highlighting the speculative merits of participatory and socially impactful design. The pedagogical experiment proposed by the Italian avant-garde through the Global Tools collective between 1973 and 1975 documents the aspirations of a utopic narrative of sustainability, seeking a visionary answer through the retooling of design as a discipline. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article traces some of the historical roots of 'slow' through changes in ecology, design thinking and practice and implications for fashion and design histories. It sees 'slow', as present in slow design and slow fashion, as a contemporary idea that marks renewed interest in sustainability debates whilst indicating additional shifts since the second wave of environmentalism in the mid-twentieth century. As fashion and design history expands to incorporate environmental history, this article presents a historical case study of the material culture of the American activewear brand Patagonia. Their logo and early catalogues highlight some of the tensions between the differing schools of ecological thought and the problems presented by applying those values to design and sportswear practice. Similarly, sustainability has been linked to a variety of issues from environmental preservation and waste to sweated labour. Therefore, this article uses slow and its focus on locality and mindfulness as theoretical touchstones for environmental thinking in the histories of design and fashion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As part of a roundtable response to Peter Andersson's article 'How Civilized Were the Victorians', this paper argues that material culture studies can help us to articulate new historical narratives about the Victorian period. Post-structuralism helped to privilege linguistic analysis to the detriment of direct scrutiny of material culture while approaches aligned to archaeology and anthropology enable us to rediscover the significance of physical matter and those who shaped it. The opportunities for learning how to study material culture are limited but could be enhanced through the heritage sector. As a case study, the paper examines the first selected edition of Tennyson's verse. The covers, layout and design of the book clashed with the poet's ambition of publishing a cheap edition of his poetry for the working classes. The book generated a lot of profit and the selection provides evidence of Tennyson's attempts to be populist and patriotic. The posthumous description of this book, written by the poet's son, misrepresents it as a philanthropic gesture to poor readers while it was in fact a moderately expensive book pitched at middle-class readers. This interpretation of the book is only available though study of the artefact. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article explores the evolution of the concept of 'design' in Chinese academic discourse and how contextual factors affected the concept's development. It both gives a broader view of all design-relevant programmes, and also uses fashion design as a case study to demonstrate how the teaching contents of design programmes change. Since the PRC's establishment, 'design' has had two main corresponding Chinese words. Until the 1970s the term was gongyi meishu; since then sheji has been used. During Mao's era, the key debate was whether design was about traditional handicrafts or modern mechanical products; post-Mao, the question is whether design is an artistic or scientific activity. But in general, for over twenty years, in the PRC design has been misunderstood as 'drawing'. Through a case study of fashion design programmes, this article argues that the split of design into Arts and Engineering was initially a competition between artistic-oriented universities and engineering-oriented universities. Through a textual analysis of 'learning objectives', 'core subjects' and 'the learning outcome' of programmes listed in the National Catalogue, I argue that fashion design curricula in both disciplines are now moving toward a more comprehensive, innovation-driven and international vision. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An introduction is presented to this special issue focusing on topics related to the interrelationship between anthropology and design history.

Writers often portray the relationship between graphic design and commercial art as an unproblematic progression, with the term 'commercial art' as the simple precursor of the term 'graphic design'. I argue that this is an over-simplification of an altogether more complex and involved process. Within an Australian context, and particularly within Victoria, this article explores the emergence of commercial art in its historical specificity. It suggests that commercial art was a collection of disparate practices, excluded from the developing discourse of fine art because of their industrial application. Since commercial art never constituted an actual discourse of its own, this allowed for, or necessitated, both a decline in the standing of commercial art, and concurrently that a number of these practices be subsumed within the emergence of graphic design as a component of design discourse in the twentieth century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An introduction to this issue is presented which discusses topics including the 20th century history of the art craft movement in Korea known as gong-ye, art consumerism by the middle class in the early twentieth-century of Japan, and the influence of the German Bauhaus movement on modern Japanese architecture in the 1930s.

This study follows the historical evolution of Taiwan’s household appliances industry and reviews the establishment of design divisions in domestic household appliance manufacturers, including Tatung and Sampo. By examining historical documents and conducting interviews with senior industry personnel, this study explores the ways in which household appliance companies respond to domestic consumer characteristics. Further, this paper analyses the companies’ industrial policies in the mid-1980s under international economic liberalization and the technical support received from overseas partners. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The history of peripheral design in the 1960s and 1970s sketches a dynamic flow of designers and representative currents in different geographic scenarios, with interchange between Europe, North America and South America, permitting productive transfers of trans-local knowledge, reflected in the design of the 1968 Mexico Olympics and the 1978 Argentina Soccer World Cup. The two cases provide an opportunity to analyse the importation of ideas and their active appropriation by local peripheral cultures, revealing the circulation of international design trends and the processes of cultural transmission along the periphery. This comparative study reveals the similarities and differences between Mexico and Argentina in relation to how central models were received, particularly with regards to the early acceptance of the Ulm School of Design. The goal is to gain insight into the perspectives of the most important figures in the history of Latin American design. Within this framework, the after-effects of the Mexico Olympics are analysed to supplement other studies that lack a regional perspective. Latin America—viewed as ‘peripheral modernity’—was moulded by the tension between centre and periphery. The North-South shift favoured interrelations, enabling design to merge tradition with the contemporary while forging strong ties between nation and politics. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Taking its cue from Veronese’s lavish Wedding at Cana (1563), this article explores the meanings of fine and ordinary glassware, focusing on the performative value of Renaissance goblets. Drinking vessels are analysed here as tools for the gradual transformation of human behaviour, or the ‘Civilizing Process’ that sociologist Norbert Elias expounded. In the mid-sixteenth century, new designs for fine glasses supported and shaped the proper conduct expected of guests and servants in banquets. Iconographic sources such as the exquisite wine cups depicted by Veronese, didactic literature and the objects themselves document the kind of challenges and expectations that handling glass in public induced. By the end of the sixteenth century, the affordability of simple but elegant goblets allowed common people to adopt the drinking manners of the elite, thus furthering the association between glassware and the concept of civility. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

‘Kiwiana’ is the term used for New Zealand locally-produced objects from the post-war period: everyday objects, once prosaic, are now the stuff of wilful nostalgia. During that era one local ceramics manufacturer, Crown Lynn, dominated the New Zealand market. The household crockery Crown Lynn produced was valued because it was useful, affordable and readily available when imported goods were very scarce. The items made by that company have now become desirable collectibles. This is not because of perceptions of superior design elements inherent in those everyday goods, but because of their now revised status as sentimental socio-political symbols of nation. In the following ethnographic study, Crown Lynn tableware collectors explain their commitment to these objects as features of their own biography within the larger context of national history. Specific issues addressed include consumption and collecting; memories, nostalgia and fantasies about the past; the attachment of meaning to objects; and collectors as self-assigned saviours of a nation’s unique but potentially lost artefacts. Against the threat of globalisation and its obliteration of national distinction, and the deluge of anonymous cheap generic imported commodities onto the market, there is an enthusiasm for insistently local materiality. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article explores the centrality of projects focused on the theme of circulation through the city to the urban politics of Mexico in the years surrounding the organization and celebration of the Mexico City 1968 Olympics. It discusses the close interrelation between the urban strategies implemented as part of Mexico’68, and those that defined the contemporary construction of the Mexico City subway system. Scholarship has never explored the close interrelation between these two undertakings, which had a strong impact on the image and form of one of the world’s largest cities, during its period of most significant expansion and greatest political unrest. An analysis of these intersections reveals the extent to which the Mexican context participated in international debates, not only about the infrastructure of cities, but about the role that design could play as a technology of propaganda and social control. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

An introduction is presented in which the author discusses articles in the journal on the topic of the design histories of the Olympic Games.

This article documents the history of Gustav Stickley’s metal shop by examining the gulf it straddled between the ideals of the Arts and Crafts movement and the pressures of the factory system. A careful analysis of the shop’s productions, in concert with the extant business records at the Winterthur Library, provides a rare glimpse into Stickley’s operations, revealing a different structure to the workforce than previously presumed. By framing the metal shop as an example of batch production, the false binary of craft production / mass production tension dissolves, allowing for a more nuanced examination of the rhetoric and practice of labour. What emerges is not so much a view of the Arts and Crafts as a stylistic choice, and certainly not as reactionary and anti-modern, but as a strategy attempting to preserve the notion of ‘authenticity’ in a culture whose rapid change threatened to destabilize the traditional meanings of labour and craft. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Adolf Loos is now celebrated as an early critic of ornament and as a prophet of modernity. But he is rarely recognized for his equally innovative lighting layouts. Like his later inclusion of the Raumplan and his use of sumptuous materials, Loos’ lighting designs captured the essence of his design philosophy and replaced the need for ornament. In contrast to his Viennese counterparts, who used lighting as another means of decoration, he explored the functional role natural and artificial lighting could play in an interior. His forays into lighting design coincided with a period in his career when he was working almost exclusively on interior renovations. His tool palette was limited; lighting provided him a means to enhance the functionality and depth of his designs. In the Café Museum, the Kärntner Bar and the first Goldman and Salatsch shop, Loos revealed himself to be a designer capable of managing light and manipulating reflectivity to enhance his interiors and create spaces that were warm and inviting. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

With the development of design practice in Korea during the 20th century, especially intense design promotions since the last decade of 20th century, the study of design and design research gradually established its place in Korean design practice and education. Although Korean design history is yet to be established as an academic discipline in Korea, there has been a notable development of research and publications on various elements of Korean modern and contemporary design and visual culture in recent years, little of which is known to English speaking scholars. The part 3 of this series introduces major works on Korean design written in Korean language and discusses the key themes that have emerged from these studies. Finally, the conclusion summarizes the observation that was made in three parts and makes suggestions for a productive way to connect and engage with these studies. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The advertising design of the 1950s reveals a history of the economic and social conditions that changed the lives and institutions of the Kuwaiti people after the discovery of oil in 1938. It captures the behaviours and lifestyles influenced by consumer culture and indicates the values and rationales that reshaped and developed the country as a modern community. No research has examined what governed the establishment of advertising and what influenced its design in Kuwait during the 1950s. Therefore, this study explores how advertising design in 1950s Kuwait brought about sociocultural change and influenced consumers’ behaviours and lifestyles, and considers modern trends in printing techniques and the impact of machine operators on design making. Historical research and personal interviews are used. All the interviewees asserted that the social behaviour of the Kuwaiti people has been liberalized by adopting values of non-Kuwaiti consumer culture as influenced by print design. A content analysis of print designs in 385 advertisements also confirms the diverse influences on Kuwait’s culture in the 1950s, which have continued until today. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

William Kilburn (1745–1818) was an entrepreneur and designer in the English calico printing industry at the end of the eighteenth century. Born in Ireland, he moved to London and worked as a botanical illustrator before establishing a career in design for printed fabrics, and ultimately managing his own calico printing factory in Wallington, Surrey.The Victoria and Albert Museum holds an album containing 223 of Kilburn’s watercolour designs on paper, a proportion of which are dated between 1788 and1792. Many are representations of native British plants, and demonstrate his skill as a botanical illustrator. Among the designs are several that include depictions of seaweeds and other marine organisms, both in naturalistic and more stylized forms.Also in the Museum’s collection is a cotton gown from the end of the eighteenth century, block-printed in muted colours, which was acquired because of the textile’s possible attribution to Kilburn as a designer. This article establishes that the dress fabric was printed with one of the seaweed designs from the album, with the fine detail of the watercolour transformed through translation into the cruder lines of the wood block. The detail and complexity of the pattern entailed virtuosity both of naturalistic illustration and of the skills of the block-cutters.This was a time of growing fashionability of the coast as a destination for health and pleasure, and of great scientific interest in the classification and biology of marine organisms. Kilburn’s choice of seaweed motifs for his high-quality cotton fabrics was a carefully judged and timely strategy to distinguish his work for a discerning market of consumers. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article introduces a series of articles that will appear in upcoming issues of the journal that explore design history in East Asia. Also presented is the first article in the series, which focuses on Japan. It explores design history in Japan dating to the 1950s and discusses the associations and publications that have led developments in the field of design. It discusses the country's lack of a national design museum, but notes that the country boasts several notable exhibitions dedicated to the history of Japanese design. The article also examines significant Japanese publications and texts on design and discusses current trends in Japanese design.

The article presents an examination of German designer Margaretha Helm's 18th century patterns for embroidered clothing designs. It discusses how the authorship of Helm's work had remained unknown for some period of time and that the designs she produced made valuable contributions to the history of dress and design. It explores a collection of Helm's pattern books housed in the Victoria and Alberta Museum and provides a plate-by-plate examination of the books. The article discusses the context during which Helm's works were produced and attempts to date the books.

This article began as a talk given in response to some of the articles presented in this issue of the journal, which were first given as papers in a colloquium in Dallas in 2008. Its subject matter was what could be glimpsed in them for a possible future history of design. I would like to take one proposition from each paper that I see as indicative of possibility. This exercise in turn will allow the suggestion, within these analyses, of some axioms that might guide the future writing of histories in this field. Together, these two ambitions will describe the essay. Since it originated as a commentary I have retained the tone of a verbal presentation. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

As a point of departure for this special issue of the journal, we turned to Clive Dilnot's seminal two-part essay, ‘The State of Design History’, published in Design Issues. In these essays, Dilnot declares the imperative to place ‘socio-historical understanding’ at the centre of our ‘attempts to understand design activity’. Twenty-five years on the prescience of this call is underlined by the fact that scholarship has become more interdisciplinary, and the geographical foci of global discourses have been reassessed, certainly beyond Euro-American concerns. This development is evident in the themes and content of more recent Design History Society conferences, such as the 2009 conference on design writing. To bring the debate both closer to home for us and into another forum, we convened and co-chaired a panel entitled ‘The Current State of Design History’ for the Design Studies Forum, held at the 2008 College Art Association (CAA) annual conference in Dallas, Texas. From the submissions, received from scholars working in the UK, Europe, Australia and the USA., we chose papers which together would present a diversity of perspectives and provide directions for the future. The essays contained in this issue are revised versions of some of the papers presented in that session. We also asked Clive Dilnot to reflect on the essays and on what he saw as the potential futures for design history. This introduction serves to place these contributions within the larger context of design history. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In art and design programmes across the USA, the ‘history of design survey’ remains the first, and sometimes the only, formal exposure most design students will have to design history, especially that of the premodern period. In contrast to the model of the art history survey, in which painting and sculpture dominate, history of design surveys consider a range of disciplines from textile and furniture design to landscape, graphics and new media. Moreover, the history of design survey is an opportunity to introduce students not only to design history but also to the culture of these various disciplines within design practice. This greatly expands the scope of what is already a broad chronological study. The continuing debate within the field of design history over the very nature of what constitutes design further complicates teaching a survey. This paper presents a case study of ‘History of Design, 1850–2000’, the introductory-level design history survey course taught to design students at Parsons The New School for Design, New York. It is based on an overview of history of design courses currently being taught in the USA and on discussions with instructors in the field. It examines the challenges as well as the opportunities of teaching design history surveys and sets the Parsons course within continuing debates by exploring the ways history of design surveys might address more closely the needs and goals of future design practitioners. The article is intended to elucidate methodological and pedagogical perspectives that will help history of design surveys remain relevant to design students and useful in framing the field and propelling it forward. It invites disciplinary discussions of new strategies and approaches for teaching and learning the history of design. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Prompted by a 2003 Design Without Borders (DwB) report entitled ‘Design for Export-Oriented Production in Developing Countries: Case Bangladesh’, which identifies a glaring lack of export-oriented design, this article considers the implications of a defined design deficit for Bangladesh and for design history. It argues that the development of both Bangladeshi industrial design and design history depends on culturally negotiated definitions of design in the context of post-colonial social development. Two approaches help develop design discourse attentive to local identity premised on global exchangeability. First, a history of design and social development based on the works of Victor Papanek, Gui Bonsiepe and Victor Margolin contextualizes the social problem of a design deficit. Second, the philosophical perspectives of Theodor Adorno's principle of negation and Hannah Arendt's political assessment of work, together present a theoretical framework for post-colonial cultural negotiations about definitions of design and history. Supported by these disciplinary and philosophical approaches, this article concludes with a suggested framework and three product examples that begin a study of textile design in Bangladesh. In defining a design deficit in Bangladesh, the DwB report defines a discursive deficit in the standard definition of design and consequently design history. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The present article argues for the inscription of architecture-as well as studies of design in various spatial scales-within the field of design studies. It claims the need for bridging these two areas of inquiry, architecture and design studies, and for creating a new field that intersects architecture scholarship with design studies, but also with a variety of other fields, such as cultural and urban geography, vernacular studies, interior design, spatial anthropology, material culture, and media studies. This field could be tentatively named as architectural and spatial design studies, showing its affiliation with a broader range of spatial disciplines and practices that include-but are not limited to-architecture, as well as with the field of design studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Two British children's toys, the Tesselated Pastime (1843) and Architectural Pastime (1845), are opportunities to relocate the history of design reform away from the conventional perspective of governmental agenda and to situate the discourse amidst the domestic interior and middle-class family. Because the inventor of the toys was Henry Cole (1802-88), proponent of the Crystal Palace, South Kensington museum complex, and national design schools, the toys are worth considering in relation to the canon of design history and the question of representative artefacts. Investigating the relationship between printing technology and aesthetic taste, this article documents the ways that these toys express several important issues of the decade that came to a head in the Great Exhibition, such as aesthetic prescriptions, particularly the question of historical and representational ornament, the propriety and proper applications of new technologies and the edifying mass commodity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Seat furniture design peculiar to the Victorian era may be broadly divided into patent and parlour seating. These two seat furniture forms reflected the many contradictions that were the reality of the Victorian period. Patent seating offered a multiplicity of supported postures to facilitate task and prevent spinal ill health. While patent seating accorded with medical concepts of the day, it was not designed by medical personnel, but by inventors using craft knowledge, science and mechanization. Patent seating pre-empted modern ergonomic seating by 120 years. The Victorians, however, failed to appreciate the ingenuity and health benefits of such seating. To those in the hub of Victorian society, progress was represented not by technological advances but by refined behaviour. Using a chair to assist posture was considered crass and acceptable only for the infirm or the aged. On the other hand, maintaining a dignified, immobile, upright posture on rigid, unsupportive and erect parlour seating offered the opportunity to demonstrate refinement, willpower and hence morality. In the Victorian era such traits represented sophistication and modernity. This paper discusses some of the tensions that existed in Victorian society, and how these tensions influenced the design arid selection of furniture and the preference for parlour furniture over patent furniture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Two years ago (2006) was the 150th anniversary of the publication 0fThe 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. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The form of the display mediated the meaning of decorative objects in the encounter of 'Arts and Crafts' and 'Art Nouveau' at the First International Exhibition of Modern Decorative Art held in Turin in 1902. Most European displays featured model interiors with architectural fittings or the arrangement of furniture ensembles that located the decorative art in the private, domestic sphere. For example, Siegfried Bing recreated the dressing room designed by George de Feure, familiar from his popular 'Art Nouveau Bing' pavilion at the Paris exposition of 1900, in the French section. This article suggests that this type of display reaffirmed the pre-eminent status of the consumer. In contrast, the English section organized by the painter and designer Walter Crane under auspices of the Arts and Crafts Exhibition Society adopted a museum paradigm for their display. With objects hung on the gallery walls and arranged in vitrines, the Arts and crafts display focused on production and offered decorative objects as public works rather than private objects. As contemporary critics revealed, the rhetorics of these displays underscored the cultural and political tensions surrounding decorative objects and their meanings in this moment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Design historians are accustomed to dealing with 'the past' as they locate their work within particular periods and historicized frameworks. Yet, as well as a context for research, the past say be used in specific ways to give structure and to support persuasion within particular genres of social interaction, such as oral history interviews and design critiques. This paper uses discursive social psychology (DSP) as a tool to explore the micro-qualities of talk in twelve design history interviews and two design critiques. Through a DSP focus on 'particularization', the issues considered here are how, in the interviews specific terms concerning the past are used to help categorize its relevance for the interviews and how, in the critiques, specific terms related to the past are used to support arguments about current design work. The approach taken here, wherein details of talk are examined, demonstrates how historians who conduct interviews ascribe particular status to their interviewees and how contemporary design practitioners may actively use references they have garnered from the history of design. Thus , rather than considering oral history interviews in terms of what they tell us about the designers' pasts and rather than considering critique interactions in terms of what they tell us about 'good' design, the data are analysed here with regard to how particular references to the past help give meaning and persuasive power to the present activities of oral history and design practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents an overview of the historical development of video oral history, and the place it has achieved in the USA, including a report on the outcomes and studies conducted by the Smithsonian Institution in conjunction with the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation from 1986-92. It demonstrates how effective video oral history can be in documenting how graphic designers situate their works within the larger, global visual culture. As a case study, I reflect on video interviews conducted in Beijing with three generations of Chinese designers in 2004, which draw on my experience in art directing television newscasts in order to highlight parallels between video oral history and news documentaries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The history of design has natured considerably as an academic discipline over the past thirty years, benefiting considerably from an understanding of the ways in which a variety of methods and related disciplinary fields can enrich and enhance our understanding of the material world. However, research and publication have been geographically dominated by a focus on a comparatively limited number of countries in the industrialized world. In recent years a number of international conferences have been held with the aim of extending the territories of the world map generally delineated in histories of design. This has been accompanied by a number of propositions relating to the difficulties of constructing a world history of design. It is suggested here that professional design organizations, such as ICOGRADA , ICSID and IFI, with large memberships in all continents and a large number of countries and an impact on millions of designers throughout the world, may offer some means of beginning to redraw the design historical world map. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

World history, as an institutional enterprise with a community of scholars, a journal, and a professional association, is a comparatively recent phenomenon. Although comprehensive world histories continue to appear, design historians are only gradually confronting the question of how a world history of design might be written. A major problem is the Iimited definition of design that has, for many scholars, confined its study to industrialized regions of the world. We need to understand how different cultures have provided for their respective material needs, as well as how larger forces of politics and economics have shaped the conditions for material production in those cultures. Design is an integral component of modern production and a world history of design should argue for its vital role in economic development. Other issues include the rise of nationalism and the question of race. Looking at the history of design from a world perspective enables us to see that people of all ethnic backgrounds have been active designers within their own communities, even if they have largely worked outside the orbit of advanced industrialization. Writing a world history of design with an emphasis on how empires, nations, and other political entities have used it to advance their political and economic agendas links design to the larger problems of the world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Department-store patronage of painters contributed to the development of painting practice and commercial design during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in Japan. This article offers a case study of Takashimaya department store's employment of Kyoto painters of nihonga (Japanese-style painting) to create designs for both foreign and domestic markets. In their work for Takashimaya, these artists called certain images from the past and developed new types of imagery that have come to define Kyoto nihonga and that informed early Japanese commercial design. These images not only helped to promote the store's products, they also provided visual manifestations of Japanese national identity. Through investigation of Takashimaya's strategies of representation during this period and analysis of images that resulted from Takashimaya's patronage, this study will trace the path of this artistic development and examine its convergence with the formation of Japanese national consciousness during this period. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is widely accepted that William Morris and the Arts and Crafts movement played an important role in the rise of the decorative arts in Catalonia at the turn of the century, associated with the movement called Modernisme. This article studies the influence of English design reform in broad terms, comparing it with contemporary Catalan tendencies and approaches. Some interesting conclusions arise. First, Morris was not very well known at the time Modernisme emerged in the 1870s and 1880s. His influence would arrive later, in the 1890s, when a change of mind took place within Catalan Modernisme. Even then, however, Morris cannot be considered a major influence but, rather, a remote cultural reference. Secondly, Pre-Raphaelitism played an important role in the evolution of Modernisme mainly through the writings of Casellas and the work of Riquer. Thirdly, the Arts and Crafts movement and early Modernisme are too contemporary to find influences between them. The Arts and Crafts movement influenced Catalan arts but only later, when Noucentisme politicians were looking for forms of production outside industry and the social problems that it engendered. Finally, it will be suggested that the adoption of Arts and Crafts attitudes in the late Modernisme and Noucentisme periods was based on a 'high' Modernisme interpretation of Pre-Raphaelitism and this explains why Catalan industry and artists did not turn to industrial design as the Deutscher Werkbund and the British DIA had done in the same period. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Electric belts, devices typically overlooked by historians of both medicine and technology, offer important evidence that the motifs of electric energy and powerful bodies used in deco design of the 1920s were part of an actual attempt to add physical power to the body through electricity in the early twentieth century. In spite of their limited medicinal value, belts sold heartily between their introduction in the 1890s and their demise in the 1920s, primarily because they offered a method by which electrical energy could add to the body's vital reserves and overcome what were perceived to be masturbation's depleting effects. In doing so, they helped, primarily, male consumers understand technology as the means by which their bodies could achieve the physical power necessary to meet the modern era's public and private physical demands. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the nature and role of aluminium in twentieth-century furniture making. The connection between aluminium as a modern material and the representation of modernity is examined to establish how 'new' materials can rise from being a novelty to mainstream usage. The efforts of the aluminium industry, both in America and Europe, in developing furniture as an end-user marker for its products are also explored. The promotion of the material often meant that non-tradition makers entered the furniture market. The issues that are concerned with materials and their relation to design, especially in matters of imitation, are considered here. Aluminium was used to represent modernity, on he one hand, but in other cases was hidden within another style. Therefore in the course of this article I draw together business history, technology and design history to explore some of the interactions that are focused around materials use. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Several companies in the early 1900s offered high-quality, pre-cut and prefabricated houses in a great variety of styles. The most successful of these companies, in the years before the Second World War, was Sears, Roebuck and Company. Sears sold houses via mail-order catalogue and through their sales offices to nearly 100,000 clients between 1908 and 1940. Despite their widespread success, however, Sears' Home Construction Division ultimately failed. The reasons for this failure can be understood in the context of their design flexibility, marketing strategy, approach to financing and the process of selling, delivering and erecting the houses. Sears' concept of packaging and shipping high-quality pre-cut materials and precise instructions directly to the client was sound. It was especially effective when combined with their ability to maintain flexibility and to offer a wide variety of designs. The company's marketing strategy was very skilful, and they were successful in convincing thousands of Americans that a Sears house would bring them the comfort and security of their dreams. Financing decisions and short-sightedness rather than poor marketing strategies or a substandard product caused the downfall of Sears' Home Construction Division. Their liberal financing policies did not take into account the possibility of economic recession nor did they allow for the reduced need for housing after 1924. Even so, their experiences in prefabrication contributed to the current design and packaging of homes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]