The SKF ball bearing on display in the 1934 ‘Machine Art’ exhibition in the Museum of Modern Art is an icon referenced throughout visual culture studies but this article recognizes its materiality, identifying the corporate logotype and other branded markings that complicate its identity as anonymous or, in the words of museum curator Philip Johnson, as ‘plain’. SKF, Svenska Kullagerfabriken (The Swedish

Donatella Cacciola teaches design history, theories of design, and in the Masters programme in Museum Studies at the University of Bonn. She studied World Heritage Studies in Parma and received her PhD from the Delft University of Technology, Faculty of Architecture. Methodologically, she focuses her work strongly on archival sources (inter alia she worked and researched for several months in the archive

Summary This paper addresses a gap in research regarding the design of the main elevations of the Gordon Wilson Memorial Flats (GWF). The GWF is the only surviving post-war example of high-rise multi-unit state housing in New Zealand. Its identification as a heritage building has been controversial, but this status was recently confirmed in New Zealand’s Environment Court. This paper examines the GWF

This article examines domestic interior design developed and propagated by the home economics movement in post-war America for women physically disabled by the poliovirus and other causes resulting in similar impairments. It argues that domestic interior design was maximally assistive, facilitating the disabled in their everyday tasks, in particular domestic labour. This article shows that home economists

Summary How can an exhibition designer engage the visitor to 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

In design history discourse, modernity and tradition can be seen as intimately related rather than dichotomous. For example, Michelangelo Sabatino has noted the complex relationship between them in Italian twentieth-century architecture. What was the relationship between modernity and tradition in post-Independence Ireland? One way of investigating this is to consider the design of a quintessentially

Summary The development of commercial, wearable biosensors since the 1970s has been promoted as a rhetoric of optimization, in which one’s body can be improved through harnessing information. The wearable biosensor can therefore be understood as a tool of biomedicalization, in which patients are turned into consumers and health is a personal responsibility. This paper argues for a radical alternative

FaiersJonathan, Yale University Press, 2020. 240 pp., 29 b&w and 217 col. illus., cloth, $60.00. ISBN: 9780300227208.

TaylorLou and McLoughlinMarie (eds.), Bloomsbury, 2020. 360 pp., 239 col. illus., cloth, $115. ISBN: 9781350000261.

WeberSusan (ed.), Bard Graduate Center and Yale University Press, 2021. 1200 b&w and col. illus., 1008 pp., cloth, $300.00. ISBN: 9780300251043.

TraganouJilly (ed.), Routledge, 2020. 324 pp., 54 b&w and 16 col. illus., cloth, $160.00. ISBN: 9780815374220.

Critical Design in Japan: Material Culture, Luxury, and the Avant-Garde BartalOry, Manchester University Press, 2020. 248 pp., cloth, £80.00. ISBN: 9781526139979.

Reading Graphic Design History: Image, Text, and Context RaizmanDavid, Bloomsbury Visual Arts, 2021. 304 pp., 208 b&w and 33 col. illus., paper, $35.99. ISBN: 9781474299411.

SchuldenfreiRobin (ed.), Routledge, 2020. 210 pp., 91 b&w and 10 col. illus., paper, $35.96. ISBN 9781138392489.

Art, Politics and the Pamphleteer TormeyJane & WhiteleyGillian (eds.), Bloomsbury Academic, 2020. 384 pp., 250 b&w illus., paper, £24.29. ISBN: 9781350022461.

BurmanBarbara and FennetauxAriane, Yale University Press, London, 2019. 264 pp., 200 col. illus., paper, £19.99. ISBN: 9780300253740.

Victor Papanek: Designer for the Real World ClarkeAlison J., The MIT Press, 2021. 360 pp., 78 col. illus., cloth, $40.00. ISBN: 9780262044943.

Atari Design: Impressions on Coin-Operated Video Game Machines GuinsRaiford, Bloomsbury Visual Arts, 2020. 280 pp., 120 b&w and 16 pp. col. Plates, cloth, $81.00. ISBN: 9781474284547.

The promotion of design classics was established in Denmark in the 1960s, turning Danish Modern into a tradition, and today it is carried out through institutionalized discourses and multiple temporalities, as we show in the cases of the Wishbone Chair and the Vipp brand. There has been much critique of the canonization of design classics, but little research literature on the concept itself, compared

The Female Secession: Art and the Decorative at the Viennese Women’s Academy Brandow-FallerMegan, Penn State University Press, 2020. 304 pp., 60 b&w and 27 col. illus., cloth, $99.95. ISBN: 9780271085043.

Reframing Japonisme: Women and the Asian Art Market in Nineteenth-Century France, 1853–1914 EmeryElizabeth, Bloomsbury Visual Arts, 2020. 280 pp., 50 b&w illus., cloth, $120.00. ISBN: 9781501344633.

OrrEmily M., Bloomsbury Visual Arts, 2019. 208 pp., 50 b&w illus., and 16 col. plates, cloth, $120.00. ISBN: 9781350054370

KinmonthClaudia, Cork University Press, 2020. 576 pp., 454 b&w and col. illus., cloth, €39.00. ISBN: 9781782054054.

Summary This article explores the intersection of Bauhaus principles, communication design, transnationalism, and postwar global affairs present in Herbert Bayer’s World Geo-Graphic Atlas. The book was produced exclusively for clients of the Chicago-based Container Corporation of America in 1953 as part of the company’s unique patronage of artists and designers. Driven by the design prowess Bayer honed

Summary While historical accounts of the Art Deco style in the United States often focus on the cultural influence of France, this article examines the impact of Viennese design on American taste through the work of architect and designer Joseph Urban. In particular, it offers new evidence that Urban persistently worked to disseminate the design aesthetic of the Wiener Werkstätte beyond the establishment

PotvinJohn and MarchandMarie-Ève (eds.), Bloomsbury Visual Arts, 2020. 328 pp., 40 b&w illus., cloth, £76.50. ISBN: 9781350063792.

CondellCaitlin and OrrEmily M. (eds.), Rizzoli Electa and Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, 2020. 276 pp., col. illus., $65.00. ISBN: 9780847867745.

The seeds of modernism had been planted before the First World War, but it was in the post-war period that there was a true blossoming of self-consciously “modern” aesthetics and the new, “modern” woman. Although modernism is often associated with the masculine, urban, and geometric—indeed, women’s fashion took a more androgynous turn—influential couturières Madeleine Vionnet and Jeanne Lanvin still

Paula HohtiErichsen, University of Amsterdam Press, 2020. 364 pp., 114 col. illus., 13 tables, 9 tabular appendices, cloth, € 118.00; eBook PDF, € 119.00. ISBN: 9789563722629; eBook PDF: 9789048550265.

PotvinJohn, Manchester University Press, 2020. 352 pp., b&w and col. illus., cloth, £80.00. ISBN: 9781526134790.

This Virtual Special Issue includes twelve articles published in the Journal of Design History between 1988 to 2020 that focus on typographic histories. The selected articles address different aspects of the subject, ranging from designing letterforms and manufacturing typefaces to putting those letterforms to use—through typesetting and letterpress printing, typewriting, collage, lithography and photocopying

In 1935, Walter Paepcke, president of the Chicago packaging company Container Corporation of America (CCA), established an art department under the direction of Egbert Jacobson, whom he tasked with the development of a comprehensive corporate design programme. This article examines how CCA’s publicity translated the company’s vertically integrated organizational structure into visual form. In addition

This special issue on Material Displacements explores the intersection of materiality, design, and displacement, conceived of as rupture, transition, and traversal of borders, boundaries, and forms. This introduction outlines the role of displacement in various disciplines and theoretical approaches, highlighting those of new materialism, critical urbanism, deterritorialization, and border thinking

A Rare Treatise on Interior Decoration and Architecture: Joseph Friedrich zu Rocknitz’s Presentation and History of the Taste of the Leading Nations. Joseph Friedrich zu Racknitz & Simon Swynfen Jervis (ed. and trans.), Getty Publications, 2020. 368 pp., 58 b&w and 59 col. illus., cloth, $85.00. ISBN: 9781606066249.

This essay examines Elements of Design, a circulating exhibition poster set produced by MoMA in 1945 and distributed worldwide. Through an examination of archived drafts, this exhibition set is discussed as an example of how the museum refined its educational approach through an evolving understanding of modern art and design. In particular, Elements of Design reflects MoMA’s expanding notion of audiences

’This article presents a study of the design history of the snowsuit as a product type and explores the constitutive factors in its development. To shed light on the snowsuit as a designed object, the study draws on Actor Network Theory (ANT), particularly work linking ANT to design. In order to do this, the study focuses on the Finnish company Reima, which has been a leading producer of children’s

AbstractThe seventieth anniversary of the Festival of Britain occurs in May 2021, providing an opportunity to revisit various aspects of the Festival, not least the various archival collections. The Festival Office records at The National Archives U.K. comprises a range of materials with exciting research potential. This article introduces readers to the collection, highlighting the importance of these

This article reassesses the window displays created at Simpson’s, Piccadilly, from April 1936 until early 1937 by the Bauhaus master, László Moholy-Nagy. Although art historian and biographer, Krisztina Passuth, gave Moholy-Nagy the credit for bringing new display methods to Britain, my research reveals that modern methods of display were practised well before his arrival. His designs appear removed

Summary This article examines the shifting professional identities and forms of exhibition design that were activated by the post-war crisis in UK museums. Drawing on professional publications and museum archives across the UK, it focuses on museum exhibition design for ‘ethnographic collections’ between 1945 and 1965. It documents the sense of collections excess that occurred as objects returned from

Uniform: Clothing and Discipline in the Modern WorldTynanJane & GodsonLisa (eds.), Bloomsbury Visual Arts, 2019. 320 pp., 32 b&w illus., cloth, $99.00; EPUB, $28.76. ISBN: 9781350045552; 9781350045569.

Uniform: Clothing and Discipline in the Modern WorldTynanJane & GodsonLisa (eds.), Bloomsbury Visual Arts, 2019. 320 pp., 32 b&w illus., cloth, $99.00; EPUB, $28.76. ISBN: 9781350045552; 9781350045569.

Uniform: Clothing and Discipline in the Modern WorldTynanJane & GodsonLisa (eds.), Bloomsbury Visual Arts, 2019. 320 pp., 32 b&w illus., cloth, $99.00; EPUB, $28.76. ISBN: 9781350045552; 9781350045569.

Uniform: Clothing and Discipline in the Modern WorldTynanJane & GodsonLisa (eds.), Bloomsbury Visual Arts, 2019. 320 pp., 32 b&w illus., cloth, $99.00; EPUB, $28.76. ISBN: 9781350045552; 9781350045569.

What Can a Body Do? How We Meet the Built WorldHendrenSara, Penguin Random House, 2020, 240 pp., b&w illus., cloth, $27.00. ISBN: 9780735220003.

Gothic Architecture and Sexuality in the Circle of Horace WalpoleReeveMatthew M., The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2020. 280pp., 89 b&w and 59 col. illus., cloth, $74.95. ISBN:9780271085883.

The Wardle Family and Its Circle: Textile Production in the Arts and Crafts EraKingBrenda M., Boydell Press, 2019. 254 pp., 25 b&w and 29 col. illus., cloth, $45.00. ISBN: 9781783273959.

Design History Beyond the CanonKaufmann-BuhlerJennifer, PassVictoria Rose & WilsonChristopher S. (eds.), Bloomsbury Visual Arts, 2019. 272 pp., 93 b&w illus., cloth, $79.80; EPUB, $61.56. ISBN: 9781350051584; 9781350051591.

The Culture of Nature in the History of DesignFallanKjetil (ed.), Routledge, 2019. 258 pp., illus., paper, $49.95. ISBN: 9781138601918.