Originally published in 1937, this book was created to provide a survey of the conditions and artistic value of design in British industries. Through interviews with manufacturers, managers of department stores and shops, principals and teachers of art schools, commercial designers, artists, and architects, principally in the Midlands area, a composite portrait is developed. This portrait emphasises the interaction of seemingly disparate elements in the production of quality design, and shows the complexity of the process whilst remaining concise and accessible. The text is also well...

For more than one reason Professor Pevsner, eleventh Slade Professor of Fine Art in the University of Cambridge, takes as the topic of his Inaugural Lecture Matthew Digby Wyatt, the Victorian architect and the first Slade Professor. He begins by inspecting some of Wyatt's major works - Addenbrooke's Hospital at Cambridge and the Paddington Station among them. Presently he allows himself to be diverted from his light architectural candour about Wyatt's buildings to an account of Wyatt's more general interests in design, and so to investigate the Victorian arena, with Pugin, Ruskin, and Morris,...

This book, written in 1952, examines the intrinsic design everyday household objects. It evaluates them, criticizes them, and investigates the difficulties encountered in producing them, marketing them, and advancing them. At the root of the author's mind is a conviction in the importance of effective design of these items despite methods of mass-production, which he believes should involve the same kind of devotion as has always inspired freelance craftsmen. Professor Pevsner, who initiated such a book in 1935, provides a foreword and a postscript of commentary about Mr Farr's book. The book...

Originally published in 1940, this book charts the origins and evolution of academies of art from the sixteenth century to the first half of the twentieth century. Pevsner expertly explains the political, religious and mercantile forces affecting the education of artists in various countries in Western Europe, and the growing 'academisation' of artistic training that he saw is his own day. This book will be of value to anyone with an interest in the various historical schools of art instruction and the history of art more generally.