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This article investigates the role played by exhibitions of Finnish design in both promoting exports and coordinating ideas about Finnish national identity abroad in the period c. 1953-65. The work concentrates on two exhibitions held in Britain, 'Modern Art in Finland' (1953-4) and 'Finlandia' (1961-2), which were a representative part of a much larger project of overseas exhibitions of Finnish Design in the post-war period. The first section of the paper, set against an economic backdrop, presents an analysis of the development of export markets for Finnish design in the 1950s and early 1960s. This is followed by an interpretation of the two exhibitions in terms of the ideas about Finland, Finns and Finnish products that were being propagated by the exhibitions' Finnish organizers and the way these were digested, recycled and modified by British critics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article considers how the international exposition was represented in peepshow souvenirs, folding paper devices that gave a three-dimensional view of tile interior. Using Walter Benjamin's notion of the world's fair as a phantasmagoria, I argue that the optical souvenirs produced for international expositions reconfirmed the enchanted visual experience in a way that other mass-produced souvenirs could not and, moreover, that this held implications for both popular consumption and collective memory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Victory Over Japan exhibition opened during the heady days following the Allied victory in the Second World War. As one of a series of exhibitions organized by the Ministry of Information (MoI), with pioneering designer Misha Black, the Japan show attracted over one and a half million visitors in just four months. The MoI exhibitions were considered a primary means of wartime communication for the government and Black's pre-war ties to continental figures like Le Corbusier and Walter Gropius via the MARS Group ensured that the propagandistic successes of the progressive exhibition designs of the 1930s were seized upon for the war effort. Japan combined simulated jungle-like conditions with modernist idioms and used mixed media displays to create an immersive, sensory exhibition that could convince the public of difficult foreign policies through the construction of an 'official' narrative. This paper analyses Japan and other MoI exhibitions as a means of reflecting on the impact and influence of wartime exhibition design techniques. I argue that not only did the field of mixed media exhibitions develop throughout the war, but that it contributed in significant ways to the blossoming of modern forms of design and display in the post-war cultural arena. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

From May through December of 1904, St. Louis, Missouri hosted the largest World’s Fair ever devised, with thousands of buildings and concessions stretched across a carefully designed and meticulously organized park landscape. Most scholars regard the Fair primarily as a tableau for narratives of progress and for the rehearsal of imperial mastery. This paper argues that the Fair was also an elaborate argument for a civic design agenda, where the deployment of architecture, landscape architecture, and engineering would shape an orderly metropolitan future. To present this civic design agenda, Fair organizers drew upon a set of emerging urban practices to code a narrative of rational order, classical beauty, and progress through technology and industrial peace. Yet Fair designers expressed these meanings through an incoherent array of designs rendered in temporary, non-durable materials—a form of planned obsolescence. Ultimately, this incoherent and ephemeral design program would leave a mixed and elusive legacy both on the ground in St. Louis, and on the emerging urban professions in America. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper focuses on permanent displays of leading American manufacturers at the National Exhibits in Atlantic City, New Jersey, a major tourist resort on the east coast of the United States. Beginning in 1898, these displays expanded on corporate use of world’s fair exhibits as advertising. Exhibits relocated from world’s fairs to Atlantic City gradually were supplemented by original presentations. By the 1920s, the National Exhibits reflected a shift from celebrations of technological progress and corporate self-importance to public relations spectacles that promoted consumer products and the consumer lifestyle. Drawn by the millions of tourists who visited Atlantic City’s famous Boardwalk each year, corporations in the 1920s spent lavishly on their Atlantic City projects. Working with architects and advertising professionals, corporations expressed their identities through individual pavilions and seductive showrooms that immersed visitors in the personal benefits and aesthetic allure of automobiles, appliances, bathroom fixtures and other consumer durables. The National Exhibits were important precursors to corporate displays at US-based world’s fairs of the 1930s, where corporations demanded individual pavilions to convey their messages of economic redemption through applied science, technology and consumerism. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper discusses the Reimann School, a private school of German origin for practical design and the first commercial art school in Britain, as a case study of the migration of continental modernism and the development of display design as modern communication media in inter-war Britain. Special focus is on the role of immigrant artists and designers in Britain in the 1930s, and the Council for Art and lndustry's Sub-Committee on Presentation and Display, which made enquiries into the Reimann School's 'most advanced' window display courses. The Reimann provided an opportunity for widening the architecture-oriented view of exhibition and display design to a more interdisciplinary one based on a wider understanding of modernism in design. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Between 1909 and 1929, John Cotton Dana directed New Jersey's Newark Museum and pioneered the museum exhibition of mass-produced goods, initiating a trend among American art museums, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Through his work, Dana hoped to reform the museum community, society and industry. He saw his museum's activities as a progressive response to the problems of increased industrialization, an expanding consumer culture and the country's search for a national aesthetic based on the machine. This paper examines Dana's influence by investigating his correspondence, publications and exhibitions, including the first display in America of modern industrial design, the 1912 exhibit of the work of the Deutscher Werkbund. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Marie Neurath was a pioneer in information design who co-developed the graphic approach Isotype and co-founded the Isotype Institute. This article elaborates on Marie's creation of an educational exhibition in 1946 in Bilston, UK, advocating for a slum clearance project in a working-class neighborhood of Bilston. For over ten months, Marie carefully designed twelve charts that would help viewers understand the importance of the project for health and happiness. Despite being one of Isotype's most visionary schemes for public education, Marie's original contribution is unclear, in part because a new town clerk changed the housing exhibition at the last minute, bringing in "attractions" such as an ant farm and related cartoons. This article draws on correspondence, sketches, and notes from The Otto and Marie Neurath Isotype Collection at the University of Reading to show that Marie's work should be recognized as a central contribution in the Bilston work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Shortly after opening in 1936, the Finnish interior design company Artek organized two exhibitions in Helsinki: a model apartment showroom and a display within its shop, both involving a substantial presence of Amazigh carpets from the French protectorate of Morocco. This article analyses these rugs within Artek identifying them as "colonized textiles." This proposed concept aims to highlight textiles within the appropriation of non-Western cultural fragments by structures of imperialism and coloniality, while parallelly problematizing the inclusion of Amazigh rugs within architectural modernism. The movement of Amazigh rugs from Morocco to Finland, and their transition from Amazigh communities to European modernist interiors, are described through key events and exhibitions from the interwar era. The involvement of Artek actors and the process leading to the founding of Artek are highlighted within this context. Exhibitions are presented as a stage for the interaction of discourses on modernism and imperialism, and for the reiteration of constructed narrations directed by élite circles, supporting the appropriation and commodification of colonized textiles in Europe. Political agendas of cultural supervision within the French protectorate of Morocco are described while situating Amazigh rugs in this context. Parallelly, the relevance of textiles is highlighted within discussions on architectural modernism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How can an exhibition designer engage the visitor at a world's fair who has already spent hours walking around the grounds, visiting other attractions and countless national pavilions? This question drove many theoretical and practical considerations of exhibition design during the interwar period and preoccupied many designers and artists. As a very active participant in world's fairs at this time, Czechoslovakia established an intricate system of presenting its material production and cultural prowess which included careful design of the exterior of its pavilion as well as its interior. Using the Czechoslovak pavilion at the International Exhibition of Art and Technology in Modern Life in Paris, 1937, as a case study, this article examines how Czech designers developed their own original ideas about exhibition design informed by other disciplines. It offers a reading of exhibition design in parallel with stage design and claims that the two shared many techniques, aimed at attracting audiences. It stresses, on the one hand, the affiliation between the two design areas and on the other, the original contribution of designers from Czechoslovakia to the development of exhibition design as a self-sufficient field in the interwar period. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article lists books received by the publication including "Hybrids of Modernity: Anthropology, the Nation State and the Universal Exhibition," by Penelope Harvey, "The Camberwell Collection: The Object Lesson," edited by Jane Pavitt & Linda Sandino, and "The Tropical Asian House," by Robert Powell.

The article profiles British writer and socialist William Morris and his influence in Japan in 1904. It traces the development of his studies by taking into account three approaches that include the history of studies on Morris into three periods, the significance of his studies in conjunction to the social and cultural contexts in the country during the period it was made, as well as the comparison of his image in the country and in Great Britain. It notes that the centennial anniversary of his death in 1996 has arisen questions and insights on him. The celebration also highlights the opening of the William Morris exhibition at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London.

In many historical accounts exhibitions are considered in isolation, in relation to specific political or cultural events. This article instead interrogates exhibitions as interlinked sites of personal and professional 'entanglement', connected entities that have capacity to sustain and develop multiple relationships, in this case across the career of a single designer, Misha Black (1910–1977). Through successive commissions, Black developed ideas about exhibitions as communication and propaganda, as well as developing his network and modelling formations for professional design practice. Exhibitions Black worked on which are discussed here included The Ibero-American Exhibition, Seville, 1929–1930; MARS Group Exhibition, 1938; Glasgow Empire Exhibition, 1938; New York World's Fair, 1939–1940; Ministry of Information exhibitions mounted during the Second World War and the Festival of Britain, 1951. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Design historians frequently find their interest in a particular subject prompted by archival materials, or begin their research with collections of designed objects supported by online databases. While these are the raw materials, the primary sources of the design historian's work, they are also deserving of attention in their own right. This Virtual Special Issue is comprised of twelve articles drawn from past issues of the Journal of Design History's Archives, Collections and Curatorship section, drawing out key themes and highlighting ongoing dialogues between academic design historians, curators, librarians and archivists. This Introduction seeks to contextualise these within the wider discipline of design history, and to draw connections to scholarship beyond the Journal of Design History itself. Articles under the first heading look at archives, while articles under the second consider collections of objects. The third section turns to the related challenges of presenting design historical research to public audiences. This Virtual Special issue also offers a reminder that as both the processes and products of design move into the digital sphere, it is pertinent to ask what this means for the ways in which design historians, students, and the general public will engage with design history in future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mid-nineteenth century design reform and design education has generated recent scholarly interest, but much of this is London-focussed, and the designers themselves, mostly located in northern industrial towns, or the manufacturers that employed them, are rarely considered. This essay, which has emerged out of a study of the nineteenth-century Scottish printed cotton and woven damask industries, seeks to examine the character of provincial design employment, education and exhibition in two localities--Glasgow and Dunfermline--and in doing so provide an insight to a complex engagement with the processes of textile design. It includes discussion of family participation in textile design and related activities and the advertising for and employment of both freelance and salaried designers is explored. The functioning of design schools in Scotland forms another focus for analysis along with the associated local exhibiting of designs for prizes. Contrast is drawn between the printed cotton industry, which mainly employed in-house designers and the more prosperous linen damask industry, which generated a small group of financially successful and widely celebrated independent studio designers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This text is part of a larger research project on the visual results, the concepts and the debates behind exhibition making in Dachau from 1945 until the latest redesign finished in 2003. Exhibition making in Dachau is a worthwhile and complex field of study because of continuous debate on how the history of the concentration camp should be visually represented on site. Here, the interplay of political and creative considerations can be seen as an indicator of how the remembrance of Nazi crimes is dealt with in Germany. My focus in this article is about the exhibition that was set up during the creation of the Dachau memorial site in 1965. It was shown until 2002 and had, by that time, been visited by more than twenty-five million people. The year 1965 constitutes a clear break in the design history of the Dachau exhibitions because it was the first time that the exhibition was not created by survivors but commissioned from a professional designer. I will examine the occasion that gave rise to this commission and the exhibition that resulted before exploring historical prototypes for its concept and its reception, using literary texts as well as contemporary press material. I will comment on the relationship between the 1965 exhibition and its successor(s). Following a period of reconfiguration of all the main Nazi-crime memorial sites in Germany, today a discussion on its future design has already begun. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In the increasingly modernized Central Europe of the late nineteenth century, folk culture, with its alleged ancient character, was still understood by some scholars as the bearer of national identity. The Czechoslavic [sic] Ethnographic Exhibition, which took place in Prague in 1895, aimed to promote the idea of the ethnically unified, but at the same time regionally diverse, identity of the Czech-speaking people living in Bohemia, Moravia and Slovakia. Having to negotiate their identity with the ethnic Germans of Bohemia, the Czechs consciously excluded them from the event both as organizers and as exhibitors. The exhibition could therefore be seen as a symptom of its time—in the late nineteenth century Central Europe, locating national heritage was crucial and folk culture played an important role in the national politics, and not only for the Czechs. This article focuses mainly on the ethnographic exhibit entitled ‘the Exhibition Village’, which consisted of an eclectic selection of village houses and their imitations from Bohemia, Moravia and Slovakia. On this basis, it explores the political intentions behind the display of folk culture to both urban and rural audiences and brings attention to the question of integration of the diverse regional objects in a utopian national whole. The article thus also aims to demonstrate issues related to the use of folk artefacts for the purposes of cultural nationalism in Austria-Hungary in the late nineteenth century. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

To deal with design in museums today means not only to look at well-established design museums but also to integrate different resources and explore the potential of other types of institutions engaged in the preservation, study and exhibition of artefacts, documents and stories of the modern world. This article focuses on science and technology museums to suggest how they may contribute to improve and spread the understanding of this phenomenon among a wider public. Three cases of European museums, which already display an interest in design, are presented with the intent to show that these institutions should be regarded not only as repositories to draw on but also as autonomous interpreters of design. The aim is to provide a basis for further discussion, to eventually rethink the position of design in museums. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the 1890s, a new market was created for the Orkney straw-backed chair, which hitherto had been a vernacular product used largely in the homes of its makers on the Orkney Islands in the north of Scotland. This article discusses the standardization of the Orkney chair and its rapid acceptance into the houses of the British aristocracy and middle classes through the agency of the Scottish Home Industries Association. Within eleven years of its first display at an international exhibition the Orkney chair had inspired close copies and brand-new related designs made in the Netherlands by the Dutch firm of John Uiterwijk and Chris Wegerif. Its social rise was thus followed by geographical diffusion. This article also analyses the roles of the maker and of the promoter of an unusual item of furniture which has provided work for craftspeople in Orkney for over 100 years. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While the architectural and ideological programme at the Century of Progress International Exposition, the world's fair held in Chicago from 1933-4, sponsored modernism, a more complicated narrative was being woven within the realm of interiors. The eleven modern model houses, architecturally similar because they utilized tenets of The International Style, were some of the most popular attractions at the fair. The various interior styles shown within the houses represented a multitude of possibilities available to the American consumer, thus reflecting the complexities of American trends in design. In his interior design for one of these houses, the Design for Living, Gilbert Rohde successfully negotiated the divide between the conservatism of the Depression and the lure of modern design. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, the authors address a number of issues concerning the history of design. The authors begin with the relationship between design, craft and art. They explore the artifacts to examine their relationships. They also explore the evolving nature of design practice which defies categorization. The authors then recall the exhibition "Objects of Our Time" held at the Crafts Council in England in 1996. In addition, the authors explain the institutionalization of craft discourse as a historical and theoretical discipline.

In many Western countries the post-war period, up to the end of the 1950s, was characterized by a broad social, political and cultural debate about ideal or 'good' modem living. This debate had its roots in the period between the wars, but developed extensively after the war, owing to the enormous housing demand and expanding industrialization. This article aims to shed light on the lesser-known dissemination of modernist housing models in Belgium in the 1950s. More specifically, it focuses on the representation of domestic ideals in the Belgian Section of the Brussels World's Fair of 1958, an important breakthrough in the slowly developing popularization of contemporary design in Belgium. Several participants in the debate on good homes were present in the Belgian Section of the Brussels World's Fair: the Institut National du Logement, national societies for architects and building firms, a selection of avant-garde designers, etc. The presentations by these actors, clustered into several 'groups', reveal a set of independent approaches to the home. It is the thesis of this article that this heterogeneous promotion of modern domesticity in the Belgian Section of Expo 58 tellingly reflects the then fragmented national discourse on contemporary living. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores how the British Institute of Industrial Art (BIIA), the first governmental organization to deal specifically with modem industrial design, endeavoured to project the nation via design. The Institute held exhibitions at Knightsbridge, the Victoria and Albert Museum, in provincial cities and abroad. Its collaborations with the General Post Office and the Ministry of Transport gave birth to several products of modern design. It published a number of research reports on the varied aspects of industrial art. These achievements were later utilized at the Council for Art and Industry. The BIIA's history by no means indicates that it had a critical impact on the debate of modern taste, but it does demonstrate how the power structure within the debates shifted. It also marked a significant prelude to the state patronage, or institutionalization, of modern design. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the role of the 1906 Bucharest Jubilee Exhibition in the development of a Romanian 'identity' in visual art at the turn of the century. It argues that this event marked a pivotal point in official recognition of the need for a 'national style'. Yet the nature of this style is complex. Evolving within an independent kingdom, it eludes models of 'ethnic nationalism', as a peripheral reaction to imperial 'centres', which have been convincingly applied to neo-national styles in Poland, Hungary and Finland, among others. Instead, vernacular revivalism played a subsidiary role to the expression of Latin identity on the one hand and the celebration of Orthodox forms on the other. It is this duality, its sources, manifestation and manipulation that shaped the form of the 1906 Exhibition and had a lasting impact on notions of a 'Romanian' style in the early twentieth century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Photographic Library of the Council of Industrial Design now forms part of the Design Council Archive at the University of Brighton. This essay examines the early years of the Library concentrating on the reasons for its formation and the acquisition, classification and distribution of photography. I argue that the Council's dependence on photography was bound up in its wish to promote a particular formalist point of view that manifested itself in the reproduction of industrial design by photographic means. The Council promoted a 'way of seeing' as much as the industrially designed products it represented and photography became the key currency in this process, providing evidence of the Council's mediation between manufacturers and consumers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]