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DO I SMELL? THE POMANDER AND ITS MATERIALITY
[by Luisa Coscarelli] When objects are analysed, they are mostly considered in terms of what they look like or how they feel. The senses of sight and touch are privileged over a sense I am particularly interested in, the sense of smell. This sensory dimension of objects was especially important in times of the plague. ...
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INTIMACY REVEALED: A FAMILY’S HISTORY IN PHOTOGRAPHED MOMENTS
[by Fanny Leluan] We all dream of having an Amelie moment. You know that moment when you found a box, right there in your house, and you uncover a whole past, materialised in objects and photographs. Recently, as I searched my house for a long lost book I stumbled across a box, not a tin, a rather ...
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SENSORY EXPERIENCE AT THE MUSEUM
[By Zenia Malmer] In 2011, I visited the Red Dot Design Museum in Singapore which was then showcasing the Red Dot design award winners. This is an international prize for the best design product of the year, an award which had been initiated by the Design Zentrum Nordrhein Westfalen in Essen, Germany in 1955. The ...
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BERLIN: HISTORY THROUGH DESIGN
[by Charlotte Flint] Whether it is through its numerous representations in literature, art, photography, film or personal experience, the German capital of Berlin is a city which has generated vastly differing interpretations throughout the years. A city destroyed by war, fragmented, divided and reunited, Berlin is a fascinating example of the effects of history in ...
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TO BYZANTIUM AND BEYOND…
[by Hollie Chung (text), Luisa Coscarelli and Annie Thwaite] AN IMPRESSION OF ISTANBUL For first year Asianist and Renaissance students, thinking globally has been the thrust of current research and teaching, causing us to pose questions and criticisms at eurocentrism and the clichés we comparatively apply to the wider world. In exploring cultural and technological ...
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MATERIALS MAKE PHENOMENA
[by Mariah Nielson] In 1975 at the conference Conceptual Architecture held at Art Net, there was a heated debate about the opposition between immaterial and material in the design process. Architectural historian Colin Rowe reminded the audience that material is essential for making space; that material is a vital aspect of process: Now I presume ...
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WILLIAM MORRIS: FOR A MODERN WORLD?
[by Andrea Tam] ‘Apart from the desire to produce beautiful things, the leading passion of my life has been and is hatred of modern civilisation.’[1] If you visit the William Morris Gallery, as I often do, you will find it interspersed with countless quotations from this very quotable man. In impeccable black text printed on ...
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FOOD FOR THOUGHT: STARCH IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
[by Rebecca Unsworth] While Lady Gaga’s now infamous meat dress may have seemed to have been a totally novel idea, it was not the first time that a food product had been used as a component of clothing. As far back as the sixteenth century, wheat was a part of most people’s fashionable ensembles, namely ...
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YOU’VE NEVER SEEN ANYTHING LIKE IT, CENTRAL MILTON KEYNES!
[by PLAZA] On 13 December 2012 PLAZA undertook a field trip to Milton Keynes. Milton Keynes (MK) is about 45 miles (72 km) north-west of London. It was formally designated as a new town on 23 January 1967 in order to alleviate the over-population of London, with aspirations to become a city in scale. Milton ...
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CHAOS, CONFUSION AND BEWILDERMENT! – WHAT IS APPROPRIATE DRESS FOR THE OUTBREAK OF WAR?
[by Heather Bennett] During the Phoney War period of World War Two, September 1939 to April 1940, Mass Observation (MO) creator Tom Harrisson commented that the prevailing fashion ‘reflects […] the bewildered and chaotic times in which we live’.[1] Bewilderment and chaos characterise the feeling of unease that resonated from a lack of clarity as ...
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GETTING PERSONAL WITH STARBUCKS
[by Imogen Adams] Starbucks is the epitome of a global chain, the corporation includes 20,891 coffee shops in 62 countries.[1] Such corporations operate by providing a replicable experience, they are valued by consumers for delivering a product they already know.[2] The number of tourists found in almost any Starbucks store can be baffling, even disheartening. ...
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BROKEN LIGHTS: TECHNOLOGY, NOSTALGIA AND THE DARK SIDE
[by Diane Stafford] It seems to be part of the human condition to be scared of the dark. Our eyes need light to perceive and process images, so in darkness we lose the sense we most routinely rely on, making us vulnerable and fearful. Conquest of the dark began with fire and continues with, among ...
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PICCADILLY CIRCUS AND APPROACHES TO THE MODERN CITY
[by Diane Stafford] I recently researched Piccadilly (the street itself, including Piccadilly Circus at its eastern end) in terms of design change from the late 1920s to the 1950s. Trying to write up my findings into a coherent piece of work proved a frustrating process. There is something deeply anarchic about a street that has ...
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VALENTINO: MASTER OF COUTURE. STYLE OVER SUBSTANCE?
[by Liz Tregenza] As Diana Vreeland once said, ‘I want to be drowned in beauty.’[1] This was certainly what I hoped for when I visited the exhibition Valentino: Master of Couture at Somerset House in January. Undoubtedly the exhibition fulfilled this aim, but I also left with a rather empty feeling. Valentino was an exhibition ...
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CROSSING HORNS
[by Jane Osmond] Ever wondered what the difference between paracetemol and ibuprofen is? Those of us less knowledgeable in pharmaceutical rhetoric may be aware that they are made of different ingredients, but a blurring of the two occurs because they both seem to achieve the same outcome; they are able to take away pain quickly. ...
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FISH x PRINT
[by Miranda Clow & Sadie Hough] Alive to the hubris of Gerald Ratner, who made jokes at the expense of his stock and watched as his brand of jewellers was wiped off the high street, I declare a problem at the heart of student publications. This declaration unrolls from my mind as we History of ...
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CRAFT OF A FORGOTTEN PEOPLE: VOICE OF A GARMENT
[by Pallavi Patke] Unfortunately, skirts such as the one above are not made any more, as the community which produced it no longer practices the traditional art of embroidery.[1] But this old embroidered garment, displaying invaluable skill and technique, remains as a testimony to a web of stylistic and regional influences. A very similar skirt ...
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“OBJECTIFYING” MAD MEN
[by Priya Khanchandani] The storyline and characters are certainly gripping, but the fetishised objects advertised by Sterling Cooper, the fictional advertising agency at the centre of Mad Men, are also at the heart of the show’s allure. In the ways in which they are advertised and consumed, objects in the show take on their own ...
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imWATCHING YOU: GOOGLE GLASS AND THE iWATCH, A BRIEF ON WEARABLE TECHNOLOGY
[by Elizabeth Cummings] In the twenty-first century, the body has become the chief component in the technological advances in the field of communication, not in the sense that it is perceived as a machine but as a portal in a complex network of communicative systems. These systems of communication are the configuration of the physical ...
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RECONSTITUTING SPACE: AN ATTEMPT TO FIGHT PAST’S EROSION?
[by Fanny Leluan] ‘Even if we recognize the variety of space experiences of past epochs, would we win already an insight into the special character of space?’ [1] In this article’s epitaph, Heidegger points out that even our acknowledgment of the variety of space experiences may not satisfy our curiosity for the specific notion and definition ...
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TRANS BODIES TRANS DESIGN
[by Lauren Fried] As a historian of the body currently working within the elastic confines governing the discipline of Design History, a sizable chunk of my research has involved a long-lasting fascination with, and an academic consideration of, the ways in which bodies might be thought of as designed. The most recent striation of this ...
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COTTON: AN INTERVIEW WITH GIORGIO RIELLO
[by Rebecca Unsworth] Rebecca Unsworth: What sparked your initial interest in cotton? Why did you decide to focus your research on it? Giorgio Riello: Research topics often have serendipitous origins. I was looking for a job more than a research topic. Cotton came as part of my “conversion” to global history. The London School of ...
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THOUGHTS FROM THE BARGAIN BIN: BLOCKBUSTER VIDEO AND THE QUAGMIRE OF LIQUIDATION
[by Jamie Sutcliffe] There are few businesses on the British high street whose market failure could dredge a tear of lamentation from my brand-hardened eyes. Because the past few years I feel like I’ve been knocked or nudged, like Dostoevsky’s Man of the Underground, off the pavement and into the gutter of pedestrian despondency by ...
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HORROCKSES: DESIGN AND MARKETING
[by Liz Tregenza] Horrockses is a name synonymous with British mid-twentieth-century design. Often the merits of the company focus on the innovative textile design championed by the brand, or their high quality cotton with its novel finishes. But who was the brains behind the brand? Who was the force that turned Horrockses into what was ...
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FACEBOOK: DESIGNING PROFILES, DESIGNING PEOPLES?
[by Imogen Adams] On 4 October 2012, it was announced that Facebook now manages over 1 billion users. The United States contains the highest number of users at 163,071,460, thus accounting for 52.56% of the nation.[1] The list of countries logged in is staggering; active users span the globe. And yet, Facebook’s design scheme is ...
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DESIGN BEYOND REPRODUCTION: THE OBJECT IN THE AGE OF DIGITAL REMIXING
[by Justine Boussard] A version of this article was originally published, alongside ‘Everything Can Serve’ by Emile de Visscher, in a brochure accompanying the exhibition Remix: New Ways of Making.[1] Remix, curated by Ben Alun Jones, explored how ideas of creativity, materiality and ownership are questioned by recent technological developments. The artists and designers involved, from the fields of ...
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GIOVANNI SACCHI’S WORKSHOP: A PLACE FOR MAKING, A SPACE ON DISPLAY
[by Mariah Nielson] One day in 1948 Marcello Nizzoli called on the pattern maker Giovanni Sacchi, and asked him to make a handle from a drawing. Nizzoli came back two days later, looked at the work done and expressed his satisfaction. But he asked if the handle could be made a little bit shorter. Although ...
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COLLECTING THINGS
[by Lauren Fried] My Grandfather filled his home with the objects, people and animals he loved and protected. Like so many Jewish refugees of the same generation, he collected. He amassed. He absorbed people and things to him like vital air. He was unable to pass a skip without peering in. The Baader-Meinhof spent one ...
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‘ASSASSIN’S CREED II’ AND THE VIRTUAL RENAISSANCE. PART II
[by Rebecca Unsworth] The computer game Assassin’s Creed II and its sequel Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood give the player the chance to “be” Ezio Auditore, a fictional Florentine noble and assassin in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. How useful is such an experience to the historian? Should all Renaissance students be required to play ...
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NOT MUCH OF A COOK
[by Esa Matinvesi] The late Japanese graphic designer Ikko Tanaka used to compare designers to chefs. Tanaka believed that both of these practices were fundamentally ephemeral art through their transient processes requiring ingenuity and technique. He said: ‘The designer shares the same fate as the chef who stands in the corner of the kitchen watching ...
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‘HOLY LINNEN – HAPPY SHROWD’: THE BODY IN SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY ENGLISH HERALDIC FUNERALS
[by Hannah Stockton] Past studies of early modern heraldic funerals, that is funerals organised by the heralds of the College of Arms and available to those bearing coats of arms, have generally minimised the importance of the individual to the ritual process. Nigel Llewellyn and Clare Gittings, amongst others, have stressed the significance of heraldic ...
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THE SMALL THINGS IN LIFE
[by Priya Khanchandani] A design exhibition currently on at MoMA called Born out of Necessity shows how design can be the product of a human need. Inventions like the LifePort Kidney Transporter (1998) that can increase the chance of an organ being reusable after a journey and a Sea Shelter boat (2004) designed by Nikhil Garde ...
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A RESPONSE TO ‘THE IMMORTAL CITYSCAPE’: WILLIAM THURMAN ON ROUEN
[by Fanny Leluan & William Thurman] In conjunction with my my post on ‘The Immortal Cityscape’, I asked William Thurman to respond to Francis Frith’s photographs of Rouen in the V&A. William focuses on notions of cityscapes, metamorphosis, and architectural style in the making of an urban identity. His work highlights the power of lines and angles in ...
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THE IMMORTAL CITYSCAPE: REPRESENTATIONS OF ROUEN IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
[by Fanny Leluan] To my grandparents, who lived with the sights and sounds of Rouen for forty-five years. Observing the architectural evolution of a city is an attempt to build an anthropology of past, present and future. Like the human organism, cities evolve, and decline; they are destroyed and rebuilt. Rouen, the capital of the ...
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INTUITIVE INNOVATORS: PARENTS DESIGNING HOME-WORK ENVIRONMENTS
[by Paulina Yurman] Over the past fifteen to twenty years, the rise of digital communications and the use of technological devices at work has allowed for increased nomadism in the work environment.[1] Thanks to portable computers, wireless telephones, the internet, email, and videoconferencing, work has moved from the traditional office space to satellite facilities, homes, cars, ...
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‘A PORTRAIT IN FLESH’: AN INTERVIEW WITH THE ASSISTANT CURATOR OF ‘DAVID BOWIE IS’
[by Lauren Fried] David Bowie, ‘Life on Mars’, 1973 David Bowie is will be opening at the Victoria and Albert Museum on 23 March 2013. Dr Kathryn Johnson, the assistant curator of the exhibition, talks to Lauren Fried about exhibition planning, pop culture’s relationship to museums, and getting to work with the David Bowie Archive. ...
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‘ASSASSIN’S CREED II’ AND THE VIRTUAL RENAISSANCE. PART I
[by Rebecca Unsworth] One of the most popular and commercially successful computer game series of the last few years has been Assassin’s Creed, which is one of the few available adventure games to be set in a historical period. The main storyline of the Assassin’s Creed games focuses on a fictional fight throughout history between ...
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LUBETKIN’S GHOST AND THE RUINS OF DUDLEY ZOO
[by Stephanie Sutton] There are two possible methods of approach to the problem of zoo design; the first, which maybe called the ‘naturalistic’ method […] the second approach, which, for want of a better word, we may call the ‘geometric’, consists of designing architectural settings for the animals in such a way as to present ...
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CONSIDERING SHOES
[by Heather Bennett] I am no Carrie Bradshaw when it comes to shoes; I am pretty much wed to my trusty Converse and rarely wear anything else. But there is something about shoes, something that resonates internally at the sight of an empty pair. I was reminded of this when, by accident, I stumbled across ...
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GOING UP THE AISLE
[by Imogen Adams] Supermarkets are a basic component of everyday life; the majority of people will visit one more than once a week and with the spread of “Express” or convenience style stores this is only increasing. Tesco, which holds the largest market share in the UK, reported a staggering revenue of £64.54 billion for ...
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‘FIELD CONDITIONS’ AT SFMOMA
[by Mariah Nielson] Can there be architecture without buildings? What if elements of architecture – such as a floor or a wall – extended endlessly? Joseph Becker, Assistant Curator at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, was motivated by these questions when organising the exhibition Field Conditions.[1] Field Conditions includes drawings, installations and video, ...
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CURATIONAL CONCERN
[by Lauren Fried] In June 2008, Fashion Theory published a special issue on Fashion Curation guest edited by Alistair O’Neill.[1] The journal focused its telescopic lens on the porous membrane between museological fashion and scholarly fashion education. The connection between education and the future development of a field founded increasingly upon this specific training featured ...
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BLOCKBUSTER MATERIALS: ‘BRONZE’ AT THE ROYAL ACADEMY
[by Rebecca Unsworth] The first room of the recent exhibition on Bronze at the Royal Academy houses just one object.[1] This is a sculpture of a figure engaged in some kind of movement, its whole body swept backwards as if in a wind tunnel, while its alabaster eyes give it an intense, almost haunted expression. ...
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DANCING MATERIAL: A TOP TEN OF RELATIONS BETWEEN DANCING AND FILM
[by Miranda Clow] For about ten years I have intended to migrate a list of my favourite dancing clips from my head onto a page. My intention was restrained by the fear that if I wrote them down, their spell might be broken. There is no doubt that watching with a view to characterising these ...
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CLOTHING CONSTRUCTION, CONFIDENTIALITY AND THE BODY IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY
[by Serena Dyer] Clothing is an intimate material object. Not only does it cover the body, but it interacts with it, concealing deformities and emphasising attributes. The London Tradesman of 1747 stated that the mantua-maker: must keep the secrets she is entrusted with ... for, though the stay-maker does his business as nicely as possible, ...
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EVERYDAY OBJECTS IN FINE ART: THE LIVERPOOL BIENNIAL 2012
[by Priya Khanchandani] In 1917, Marcel Duchamp took a porcelain urinal, scribbled ‘R. Mutt’ on it, and exhibited it as a piece of art. Ever since, it has widely been declared by critics to be the most influential piece of modern art ever created. From Duchamp’s Fountain to Andy Warhol’s ubiquitous Campbell’s Soup Cans (1962), ...
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AGAINST TECHNOLOGY? BIOPHILIA AND ITS APPLICATIONS IN DESIGN
[by Elizabeth Cummings] Eric Fromm first coined the word “biophilia” in The Heart of Man (1964); it means ‘love of life or the living world’. Twenty years later, Edward O. Wilson wrote Biophilia: The Human Bond with Other Species (1984), followed by The Biophilia Hypothesis (1994). These books, both reverential toward nature, are written on the ...
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ABANDONED SPACES: A MATERIALITY OF MEMORY
[by Fanny Leluan] During a visit to Ireland over the summer, I observed that many houses in the countryside of County Mayo seemed abandoned, haunted by the ghosts of their former inhabitants. With curtains and household materials still in place, these uninhabited homes looked lived in by an invisible yet very material presence. I was told ...
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BODIES IN THE MUSEUM: INSIDES OUT
[By Lauren Fried] There arises a very specific sense of unease that accompanies seeing certain things that one is not accustomed to seeing. Bound to this is the perilous and eerie knowledge that once something is seen, very rarely can it ever again be unseen. Images which shock, frighten or disgust exert a peculiarly pervasive ...
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SPACE & PLACE: FROM THERE TO INFINITY
[by Fanny Leluan & Mariah Nielson] This column will explore past, present and future theories, phenomena and objects relevant to the history of design which are concerned with place and space. Design histories, cultural and spatial theories, materiality and philosophy are all part of the investigative approach to spaces and places, whether constructed, found, permanent ...
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MATERIALS & MATERIALITY
[by Rebecca Unsworth] As design historians, the study of objects is one of our main focuses. We understand the value of learning more about a past society through an examination of its material culture. However, there is often a tendency to discuss objects purely from the point of consumption onwards, exploring how they were bought, ...
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EXHIBITING DESIGN
[by Lauren Fried] In the course of another mundane lesson in North London’s Camden School For Girls, Miss Beryl was lecturing our small art history class on Futurism, one of the more turbulent “isms”, obsessively dedicated to “A Cause”, which had tumbled, half-formed, out of the early decades of Western Europe’s twentieth-century art cannon. I ...
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EVERYDAY DESIGN: UNDER THE RADAR
[by Imogen Adams & Priya Khanchandani] All too often, design history is mistakenly perceived as a specialist subject. The blank stares which we encounter at parties following the inevitable question of ‘what do you do?’ testify to the misunderstood position of design. In actual fact, from the ways in which it mediates our environment – ...
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DESIGN, TECHNOLOGY & INNOVATION
[by Elizabeth Cummings] Design, Technology and Innovation (DTI) is a space for discussion of technology in design. I think it is fitting to begin this post by identifying a working definition of “technology”. The following definition is from the Oxford Online Dictionary. Technology is: (1.) ‘The application of scientific knowledge for practical purposes, especially in ...
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BODIES, DRESS, PEOPLE & IDENTITY
[by Emily Dunn & Heather Bennett] In this column, we are seeking to unpack and explore a multitude of different interpretations of, and interactions between, Bodies, Dress, People and Identity. Each facet of this column’s title is a hugely significant theme within the field of design history, and may be taken up and explored as ...
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BEYOND TEXT
[by Miranda Clow & Stephanie Sutton] Miranda: OK, so to kick off: last week I went to Patrick Keiller’s exhibition.[1] It’s a display of different objects of all different kinds; as well as paintings there is machinery from the industrial revolution, political pamphlets and handkerchiefs, meteors as museum objects, books. And there are references to ...
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UNMAKING THINGS RELAUNCHED
[by Rebecca Unsworth & Sadie Hough] Last October, when we were just beginning our first year of the V&A/RCA History of Design MA, a group of the second year students established a website. This site was Unmaking Things, an online studio space in which they could publish aspects of their work and discuss a wide ...
