Report: Nordic Design in Translation: The Circulation of Objects, Ideas and Practices, edited by Charlotte Ashby and Shona Kallestrup (recipients of the Research Publication Grant)

14 October 2024 -

Dr Charlotte Ashby, Programme Director: History of Art Graduate Certificate, Diploma and Certificate, School of Historical Studies, Birkbeck, University of London, and Dr Shona Kallestrup, Lecturer in Art History, University of St Andrews, report on the publication of their edited volume: Nordic Design in Translation: The Circulation of Objects, Ideas and Practices which was published in December 2023 as part of Peter Lang’s series Internationalism and the Arts and was partly funded by the DHS Research Publication Grant.

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This collection of ten essays by a range of international contributors looks outside the box of regional art histories to consider Nordic design in terms of the transnational dynamics of cultural interaction that have shaped its development from the late nineteenth century to the present. Engaging with a range of Nordic and Nordic-inspired design, architecture, techniques and concepts, the essays explore the impact these have had on new cultural contexts, as well as the ways they themselves have been fashioned and refashioned by influences from abroad. In so doing, they unpack ‘invented tradition’ and complicate essentialist definitions of Nordic design.

The Design History Society’s award of a Research Publication Grant meant that the essays could be brought to life with 53 illustrations, 20 of them in colour. These enable contributors visually to probe constructions of identity, myth-making and meaning in design and analyse how these have been shaped by translations back and forth across international borders. Several illustrated chapters examine the ‘bricolage’ processes of appropriation, reinvention and reflection that accompanied the translation of international models into national iterative frameworks, both within the Nordic countries and in regions as diverse as Catalonia, Germany and Romania. Case studies include Bente Aass Solbakken’s examination of how Norwegian architects looked to English Norman architecture for traces of ‘lost’ Norse heritage at the turn of the century; Shona Kallestrup’s discussion of the ways in which Nordic models influenced national style debates in Romania in the same period; Tonje Haugland Sørensen’s study of Norway’s ‘travelling dragons’; Mia Åkerfelt’s exploration of the national and international mediation of the red-painted cottage; and Lucila Mallart’s analysis of interwar ‘transperipheral’ exchange between Catalonia and the Nordic countries.

Other chapters address the global promotion of Nordic design and how it was transposed into local languages, for example Mark Ian Jones’ study of Australian objects for the modern home in the 1940s–60s, and Karolina Jakaitė and Triin Jerlei’s investigation of Estonian and Lithuanian engagement with Finnish design during Soviet rule. Contributors also engage with the politics of design translation: Jeremy Howard unpacks the ‘designwash’ strategies used by the Nobel family in Russia to downplay their destructive activities as arms and oil industrialists, while Bart Pushaw offers a nuanced exploration of the failure of official narratives in Alaska to recognise the importance of trans-Indigenous mediation of duodji objects between Sámi migrants and the local Iñupiat. The volume concludes with Malene Breunig’s thoughtful analysis of myth-making and Nordicity in the design of Copenhagen’s Noma restaurant. Her exploration of authenticity builds on ideas that have resonated throughout the book and are picked up in Kjetil Fallan’s afterword, which reflects on how ‘meaning can be both lost and found in the process of translation’.

Especial thanks to the Design History Society for their patience with us over the course of the publication process that took longer than expected. And our very great thanks to all our contributors, whose insights have exceeded the expectations we had at the start of this project, which originated in a session at the NORDIK XII conference in Copenhagen 2018, organized by the Nordic Association for Art Historians.