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The Design History Society Student Conference Bursary award, granted me the generous opportunity to attend the 2016 Annual Design History Society Conference Design and Time at Middlesex University; where I presented the paper “The emergence of Social Design Through Time and Space”. This paper forms part of my ongoing PhD dissertation: “Designing a Future Practice: A genealogy of the Social Design Discourse in the UK, 1970s-present”, at the University of Brighton. The broader research project traces the inclusion of social responsibility within the design profession in the UK, from the 1970s to present in the context of conferences and exhibitions, as a backdrop from which to analyse discursive shifts.
Reports
The Annual Design History Society conference took place between 8 and 10 September at Middlesex University in London. It was followed by The International Conference on Design History and Design Studies organised in Taipei just a few weeks later. The temporal proximity of both events poses a question about the very nature of design history–its fragmentation into global, national or regional variants. Consequently, it makes us ponder a possibility of having a fruitful conversation between scholars dealing with those different design histories. It echoes an important question raised by Penny Sparke in her review of a recent conference in Paris and published on the blog earlier this year: Where is the History of Design Going?
Reports
This one-day conference took place at Brighton Museum in collaboration with departments from the University of Brighton and the University of Sussex, and included speakers from USA, Morocco and South Africa. It ran in conjunction with the Fashion Cities Africa exhibition, currently on display at Brighton Museum until 8 January 2017.
Reviews
In her article “Sticky Layers and Shimmering Weaves: A Study of Two Human Uses of Spider Silk”, featured in the Journal of Design History (Vol. 29, No. 1, 2016), artist and researcher Eleanor Morgan observes that spider silk has been collected and used for centuries in different parts of the world for varying purposes...
Reviews
Cabin Fever is an exhibition that documents the historical evolution of the cabin in North America — and, as a counterpoint, in Scandinavia — from the 1800s to present, with a particular emphasis on visual and material representation. The cabin is explored through four main themes: pragmatism; romanticism; the counter-culture...
ReportsHow much can we understand about the tastes, techniques and aesthetics of historic tables without experiencing them for ourselves? Design historians often look to the furniture, flatware, crockery and dressings of consumption to tell us about cultural contexts of taste – both sensorial and cultural. Documentation, however, from published compendiums...
DHS Events
Funded by the Leverhulme Trust, the ‘Artisans and the Craft Economy in Scotland, c.1780 – 1914’ project investigates the world of artisans and craft in Scotland, demonstrating that the craft economy was not destroyed by industrialisation, but rather it adapted and changed.
Reports
The one-day symposium Where is the History of Design Going? was organised by Stéphane Laurent of the University Pantheon-Sorbonne, Paris, to address the way in which the discipline of Design History has developed in both the UK and France and, more importantly, where it is heading, especially in the latter country.
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