Crafting design in Italy is the first book to examine the role that craft played in the history of post-war Italian design, one the most celebrated episodes in twentieth century design. Craft was vital to the development of design in Italy from 1945 to the 1980s, and yet as often as this story has been told, it is incomplete. Missing is the overlooked but multiple role that craft played - as a method of manufacture, set of disciplines and traditions, materials and ideas.
This book examines the multiple ways that craft shaped Italian design from 1945 to 1981. It is organised in four...

The bachelor has long held an ambivalent, uncomfortable and even at times an unfriendly position in society. This book carefully considers the complicated relationships between the modern queer bachelor and interior design, material culture and aesthetics in Britain between 1885 and 1957. These bachelors of a different sort created spaces that were centres of community, creativity and companionship, since long forgotten. The seven deadly sins of the modern bachelor (queerness, idolatry, askesis, decadence, the decorative, glamour, artifice) as the author has identified them, comprise a...

This book aims to make sense of the Bayeux Tapestry by bringing together answers to a number of questions which this famous hanging presents to the viewer.
How did the embroiderers organise the stitching of the Bayeux Tapestry? Are its limited colours used with greater sophistication than viewers have recognised? What do we know of the Tapestry's supporting cast: naked figures in the margins and clerics present at events in the main register? Can we learn anything about the original purpose of the Tapestry from detailed examination of Bayeux Cathedral's 1476 Inventory, the first known...

The world of work is tightly entwined with the world of things. Hot metal illuminates connections between design, material culture and labour between the 1960s and the 1980s, when the traditional crafts of hot-metal typesetting and letterpress were finally made obsolete with the introduction of computerised technologies. This multidisciplinary history provides an evocative rendering of design culture by exploring an intriguing case: a doggedly traditional Government Printing Office in Australia. It explores the struggles experienced by printers as they engaged in technological retraining,...

The period since 1945 has been a transformative era for the fashion industry. Over the course of seventy years, the fashion world has moved from celebrating the craftsmanship of haute couture to revelling in ever-changing fast-fashion. This volume examines the transition from the old system to the new in a series of case studies grouped around three major themes. Part I focuses on Paris as a creative hub, aiming to understand how the birthplace of haute couture adapted to late-twentieth-century developments. Part II considers the retailer's role in shaping taste, responding to consumer...

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. -- .

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. -- .

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. -- .

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 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. -- .