Bücher der Reihe Studies in Design and Material Culture

Focussing on the consumer demand for goods in Renaissance Italy, The Material Renaissance establishes the dynamic social character of exchange. It demonstrates that the cost of goods, including the price of the most basic items, was largely contingent upon on the relationship between buyer and seller. -- .

This book productively contests the supposedly exclusive feminine aspect of the style moderne (Art Deco). Through a sustained focus on the figure of the dandy, the books claims an essential role and place of the male body and masculinity in the history of Art Deco. -- .

What did it mean to be an artisan in early modern London? Through an innovative and inter-disciplinary approach to urban social, cultural and architectural histories, this book examines how individual and corporate identities were forged through negotiation of the spatial and material cultures of the early modern city. -- .

This book advances a novel approach to a familiar eighteenth-century building type: the brick terraced house. Focusing on issues of design and architectural taste, it rehabilitates the reputation of the artisan communities of bricklayers, carpenters and plasterers responsible for its design and construction. -- .

This book examines Anna of Denmark's engagement with visual and material goods, including architecture, garden design, painting and jewellery. It contextualises the consort's place within the wider socio-political environment of the Stuart courts and provides a comprehensive understanding of her personal iconography, aims, interests and alliances. -- .

This is a timely exploration of the traffic between design and activism in the context of precarity - a social and material condition brought about by the growth of temporary, informal and irregular work. The book shows how design objects and practices open up possibilities to recode and reconfigure the effects of precarity. -- .

This book explores the origins of interior design in nineteenth-century France. It shows how new, modern techniques of image-making and reproduction enabled the still-unnamed profession of the interior designer to take shape. -- .

This book offers a new perspective on the history of Soviet design. It argues that the 'comradely objects' of Russian productivism were not just shabby copies of western commodities - they were agents of progressive social relations with a discernible inheritance from the 1920s avant-garde. -- .

This book aims to explore the designed landscapes associated with factories and corporations in the UK and US created since the industrial revolution. It is largely historical, focusing on the period between 1890 and 1930 but it comes right up to date with initiatives such as secret gardens and vegetable allotments at the London Google offices. -- .

Hot Metal focuses on the experience of Australian print-workers between the 1960s and 1980s, concentrating on labour, production, design and culture in the context of deindustrialisation. -- .

This volume brings together many aspects of the Tapestry: the practical skills involved in making the embroidery, aspects of its iconography, its first documented association with Bayeux in an inventory of 1476, its later copying and reproduction in different media and its role as a model for the production of stitched narrative friezes today. -- .

Explores the relationship between industry and the visual arts in the long nineteenth century, using new research to reveal surprising collaborations between craftspeople, inventors, engineers and educators. -- .

A critical reassessment of chinoiserie, a style both praised and derided for its triviality, prettiness, and ornamental excesses -- .

The first work to survey dress around the world, covering consumption, ethnicity, gender and the body, as well as anthropological accounts and studies of representation. The book also examines international western style dress, headwear, ethnicity, traditional dress, 'alternative' dressing, and T-shirts as markers of identity. -- .

The sixteen essays in this collection explore the surface as a site where complex forces meet, thorugh a wide range of subjects including avante garde fashion, the faking of antiques, postmodern architecture and design, and film costume. The book provides insights into the whole lifecycle of objects, not just their condition when new. -- .

Material relations tells the story of nineteenth and early twentieth century middle-class families by exploring the domestic spaces they inhabited and the material goods they prized. By opening the doors of the house, the book sheds new light on aspects of family life including love, marriage, sex, childhood and death. -- .

This book tells the story of critical avant-garde design in Japan. It challenge the characterisation of Japanese design as beautiful, sublime or a simple product of 'Japanese culture', and reveal the ways in which material and visual culture can serve to voice protest and formulate social critique. -- .

First full-length study on the 1951 Festival of Britain. An examination of how Britain and Britishness were portrayed in the 1951's Festival's exhibitions and events. Covers the Festival's history and historiography, purpose, representations of the future and past, the role of London and the 'local', the British Empire and finally its legacy. -- .

This fascinating collection provides a chronologically arranged set of case studies looking at how interior design has constantly redefined itself as a manifestation of culture, from the eighteenth century to the present day.

This illustrated survey of 600 years of fashion investigates its cultural and social meanings from medieval Europe to 20th-century America. It provides a guide to the changes in style and taste, showing that clothes have always played a pivotal role in defining a sense of identity and society.

Drawing on research and models from anthropology, material culture and art history, this study explores topics as diverse as Inka stonework, cork platforms for shoes and the Christian Eucharist. -- .

Crafting design in Italy is the first book to examine the role that craft played in post-war Italian design, one of the most celebrated design episodes in the twentieth century. Craft was vital to the development of Italian design, and it has been so far overlooked.This book examines the multiple ways craft shaped Italian design from 1945 to the 1980s in the context of bigger socio-economic, cultural and political change; from post-war reconstruction to the economic 'miracle' of the 1960s, to the rise of the countercultural Radical Design movement and advent of postmodernism. It consists of case studies on design areas including product, furniture, fashion, glass and ceramics to bring to light previously unknown makers and objects as well as re-examine design 'icons' such as Gio Ponti's Superleggera chair and Ettore Sottsass's Memphisware. It also offers a model for analysing design and craft's relationship in other contexts, including today.

Offers a retrospective view of the development of popular taste and the beginnings of a different phase in the rise of the consumer society in the post second world war period through a series of accounts of developments in modern design history.

This study focuses on the significance of the displays of stained glass at several international exhibitions held in Britain, France, the USA and Australia between 1851 and 1900. It provides new perspectives for the study of nineteenth-century stained glass, within these temporary secular exhibition contexts. -- .

This book examines the cultural impact of colonialism on both colonizer and colonized via analysis of the domestic interiors and public spaces of empire within the Indian Subcontinent, contrasting representations of such spaces within contemporary discourse with analysis of the evidence of actual interiors and the social practices there engendered. -- .

Focusing on the house-building boom of the interwar years, when Britain became a nation of homeowners, this book investigates the ways in which ordinary people expressed new class and gender identities through the design, architecture and decoration of their homes. -- .

What role does the craftsman play on the professional life of the designer? Is the craft of design threatened with deskilling by technology? These are among the questions discussed in this collection of essays about the relevance and place of handcraft in the late 20th century.

Carefully considers the complicated relationships between the modern queer bachelor and interior design, material culture and aesthetics in Britain between 1885 and 1957 -- .

Explores the relationship between industry and the visual arts in the long nineteenth century, using new research to reveal surprising collaborations between craftspeople, inventors, engineers and educators. -- .

This volume examines the cultural history of the fashion industry in the postwar era. Taking an original, interdisciplinary approach, it focuses on the internal culture of the trade, explaining the significance of value creation and assessing the transformation of local industries into global brands. -- .