- Faculty of Creative and Cultural Industries
University of Portsmouth
Winston Churchill Avenue
Portsmouth
PO1 2DJ
UK - +44 (0)23 9284 2990
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Falmouth University, Fashion & Textiles Institute, Faculty Member add
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Design History and Theory, Design History, Visual Culture, Material Culture Studies, Visual Anthropology, Art History, and 12 moreMaterial Culture, Interior Design, Theatre History, Design, Museums and Exhibition Design, Home Design, Housework, Pageants, Ideal Home Exhibition, Household Appliances, Labour-Saving, and Constance Spry edit
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I am Professor of Design History and Theory and Associate Dean (Research) in the Faculty of Creative and Cultural Ind... moreI am Professor of Design History and Theory and Associate Dean (Research) in the Faculty of Creative and Cultural Industries at University of Portsmouth (from September 2016). I was previously Associate Professor of History and Theory of Design and Head of Histories and Theories in the Fashion and Textiles Institute at Falmouth University. Having started my career as a curator at the V&A Museum in 1987, I went on to lecture at University of Wolverhampton, University of East London, University of Ulster and Loughborough University, joining Falmouth University in 2007. I have also held a Leverhulme Research Fellowship in Cultural and Historical Geography at Royal Holloway. I was academic convenor of 'The Politics of Design', the Design History Society annual conference, University of Ulster, 2004. I was a member of the editorial board of Journal of Design History from 2004-2010. I am a member of the AHRC's Peer Review College.
My research is on the experience of modernity in the twentieth century, with a particular emphasis on design and visual culture, spectacle, space, performance and communities. I was awarded a British Academy Mid-Career Fellowship for 2012-13 to support my research on the history of the home. As part of which, I undertook a programme of knowledge exchange activities with Media 10 Limited, owners of the Ideal Home Show. This research draws and extends my PhD ‘The Daily Mail Ideal Home Exhibition and Suburban Modernity, 1908-51' (1995) and ‘Ideal Homes', the exhibition that I curated for the Design Museum in 1993. My monograph Ideal Homes, 1918-39: Domestic Design and Suburban Modernism is published by Manchester University Press in 2018. I have recently written an essay on the history of the American kitchen for Adam Matthew's digital resource Trade Catalogues and the American Home (for which I am also on the advisory board). I was series consultant and on-screen expert for BBC2's A House Through Time (Twenty Twenty). I am currently writing a history of the kitchen for Reaktion Books and I'm a member of the advisory board for the V&A's forthcoming Food Futures exhibition.
I have published several articles on the revival of historical pageants and spectacle in Britain, the US and the British Empire in the twentieth century, mainly focusing on the work of pageant master Frank Lascelles. My most recent paper on this subject is ‘Spectacle, the Public and the Crowd: Pageants and Exhibitions in 1908’ is in The Edwardian Sense: Art, Design and Spectacle in Britain, 1901-1910, eds. M. Hatt & M. O’Neill, Yale University Press, 2010. edit
This book explores the aspirations and tastes of new suburban communities in interwar England for domestic architecture and design that was both modern and nostalgic. It investigates the ways in which new suburban class and gender... more
This book explores the aspirations and tastes of new suburban communities in interwar England for domestic architecture and design that was both modern and nostalgic. It investigates the ways in which new suburban class and gender identities were forged in the architecture, design and decoration of the home, through choices such as ebony elephants placed on mantelpieces and modern Easiwork dressers in kitchens. Ultimately, it argues that a specifically suburban modernism emerged, which looked to both past and future for inspiration. Thus the interwar 'ideal' home was both a retreat from the outside world and a site of change and experimentation. The book also examines how the interwar home is lived in today. It will appeal to academics and students in design and social and cultural history, as well as a wider readership curious about interwar homes.
Chapter 1: The interwar house: Ideal homes and domestic design
Chapter 2: Suburban: Class, gender and homeownership
Chapter 3: Modernisms: ‘Good’ design and ‘bad’ design
Chapter 4: Efficiency: Labour-saving and the professional housewife
Chapter 5: Nostalgia: The Tudorbethan semi and the detritus of Empire
Chapter 6: Afterword: Modernising the interwar home
Chapter 1: The interwar house: Ideal homes and domestic design
Chapter 2: Suburban: Class, gender and homeownership
Chapter 3: Modernisms: ‘Good’ design and ‘bad’ design
Chapter 4: Efficiency: Labour-saving and the professional housewife
Chapter 5: Nostalgia: The Tudorbethan semi and the detritus of Empire
Chapter 6: Afterword: Modernising the interwar home
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This essay explores the changing space and material culture of the American kitchen from 1850 to 1950. There were huge changes in what a kitchen is, what a kitchen does and who works there. The origins of the American kitchen are in the... more
This essay explores the changing space and material culture of the American kitchen from 1850 to 1950. There were huge changes in what a kitchen is, what a kitchen does and who works there. The origins of the American kitchen are in the Colonial ‘keeping room’ or ‘hall’, which was prevalent from 1700-1839. Located on the ground floor of dwellings, the keeping room was a space in which cooking was done on a massive hearth, alongside day-to-day living activities.
In the mid-nineteenth century, the kitchen continued to be the space for family meals and activities in rural areas. However, in middle-class households in urban areas the kitchen became the space for the activities of domestic servants and family life moved into the parlour and the dining room. The kitchen tended to be located in the basement to separate the dirty work of the kitchen, smells of cooking and activities of servants from middle-class residents. From the 1870s, when apartment houses or buildings rather than townhouses and brownstones were built, kitchens were located on the first floor, at the rear of the home. Thus the location of the kitchen made it a workroom rather than the heart of the home.
This designation of the kitchen as a workspace was further exacerbated by its diminishing size in the 1920s and 1930s, influenced by domestic reformers such as Christine Frederick who advocated the introduction of the work triangle in galley, U or L-shaped floor plans. These shifts in the location of the kitchen were intrinsically tied to the role of the mistress of the house and the shift in her status from mistress to professional housewife in the 1930s, alongside the declining availability of domestic servants. By the 1940s the multipurpose kitchen as a space for food preparation, cooking, eating and living became popular. Thus the kitchen was returned to the heart of the home.
All these changes in the space of the kitchen are reflected in the trade catalogues of the period. Furniture and cabinetry took on an increasingly factory-like appearance, firstly, with freestanding Hoosier cabinets, influenced by the Beecher sisters. The introduction of the fitted kitchen with white-painted wooden or metal cabinets developed this tendency further. The use of bold primary colours in the 1940s, followed by softer pastel shades in the 1950s made the kitchen an attractive space for the housewife. Together with the introduction of kitchen islands and L-shaped counter extensions with stools in the late 1940s, this facilitated the kitchen’s redesignation as a combined living and workspace.
Trade catalogues of the period illustrate vividly changes in food preparation and storage, cookery, washing up and laundry. Technologically driven changes in cooking appliances, aided by the availability of gas and electricity, meant that they could be maintained and used firstly by a greatly reduced household staff and then by the housewife herself. The cooking hearth gave way to the iron cookstove and the range. The introduction of refrigeration, and later freezers, revolutionised food preparation and storage, along with pre-prepared and convenience foods. New chemicals, detergents and washable wallpaper, flooring, and work surfaces facilitated hygiene. Labour-saving appliances were said to take the place of servants and reduce some of the drudgery of cookery, laundry and housework. Ironically, some of these developments meant that higher standards of housewifery and housework became desirable, which in Ruth Schwarz Cowan’s words, created ‘more work for mother’, meaning that the housewife did not actually save any labour.
In the mid-nineteenth century, the kitchen continued to be the space for family meals and activities in rural areas. However, in middle-class households in urban areas the kitchen became the space for the activities of domestic servants and family life moved into the parlour and the dining room. The kitchen tended to be located in the basement to separate the dirty work of the kitchen, smells of cooking and activities of servants from middle-class residents. From the 1870s, when apartment houses or buildings rather than townhouses and brownstones were built, kitchens were located on the first floor, at the rear of the home. Thus the location of the kitchen made it a workroom rather than the heart of the home.
This designation of the kitchen as a workspace was further exacerbated by its diminishing size in the 1920s and 1930s, influenced by domestic reformers such as Christine Frederick who advocated the introduction of the work triangle in galley, U or L-shaped floor plans. These shifts in the location of the kitchen were intrinsically tied to the role of the mistress of the house and the shift in her status from mistress to professional housewife in the 1930s, alongside the declining availability of domestic servants. By the 1940s the multipurpose kitchen as a space for food preparation, cooking, eating and living became popular. Thus the kitchen was returned to the heart of the home.
All these changes in the space of the kitchen are reflected in the trade catalogues of the period. Furniture and cabinetry took on an increasingly factory-like appearance, firstly, with freestanding Hoosier cabinets, influenced by the Beecher sisters. The introduction of the fitted kitchen with white-painted wooden or metal cabinets developed this tendency further. The use of bold primary colours in the 1940s, followed by softer pastel shades in the 1950s made the kitchen an attractive space for the housewife. Together with the introduction of kitchen islands and L-shaped counter extensions with stools in the late 1940s, this facilitated the kitchen’s redesignation as a combined living and workspace.
Trade catalogues of the period illustrate vividly changes in food preparation and storage, cookery, washing up and laundry. Technologically driven changes in cooking appliances, aided by the availability of gas and electricity, meant that they could be maintained and used firstly by a greatly reduced household staff and then by the housewife herself. The cooking hearth gave way to the iron cookstove and the range. The introduction of refrigeration, and later freezers, revolutionised food preparation and storage, along with pre-prepared and convenience foods. New chemicals, detergents and washable wallpaper, flooring, and work surfaces facilitated hygiene. Labour-saving appliances were said to take the place of servants and reduce some of the drudgery of cookery, laundry and housework. Ironically, some of these developments meant that higher standards of housewifery and housework became desirable, which in Ruth Schwarz Cowan’s words, created ‘more work for mother’, meaning that the housewife did not actually save any labour.
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In 1993 Ideal Homes, a survey of the history of the Daily Mail’s Ideal Home Exhibition (founded in 1908), opened at London’s Design Museum. It drew the highest visitor numbers to the museum at that date, many of whom although Ideal Home... more
In 1993 Ideal Homes, a survey of the history of the Daily Mail’s Ideal Home Exhibition (founded in 1908), opened at London’s Design Museum. It drew the highest visitor numbers to the museum at that date, many of whom although Ideal Home Exhibition regulars were new to the Design Museum. As curator of Ideal Homes I aimed to challenge the established approaches in museums of design and decorative arts in exhibiting design history. In particular, influenced by feminist design histories and anthropology and ethnography, I wished to move away from reading objects through aesthetic, primarily modernist, considerations of form and function and consider instead objects as bearers of social relations. I also aimed to subvert the white cube of the museum and capture some of the carnivalesque pleasures of the Ideal Home Exhibition in the presentation and design of Ideal Homes at the Design Museum.
This chapter reflects on the curatorial process of Ideal Homes and the conflicts that it created within the Design Museum. It contrasts this with its favourable reception by the public and positive media coverage. It particularly focuses on critical issues raised around ‘good design’, gender and the domestic sphere in relation to both Ideal Homes and the Ideal Home Exhibition proper, which it argues were intrinsically bound up with modernist curatorial practices. It also discusses the ways in which these issues were raised again by the Design Museum’s controversial Constance Spry exhibition in 2004, which led to the resignation of the Museum’s chairman James Dyson.
This chapter reflects on the curatorial process of Ideal Homes and the conflicts that it created within the Design Museum. It contrasts this with its favourable reception by the public and positive media coverage. It particularly focuses on critical issues raised around ‘good design’, gender and the domestic sphere in relation to both Ideal Homes and the Ideal Home Exhibition proper, which it argues were intrinsically bound up with modernist curatorial practices. It also discusses the ways in which these issues were raised again by the Design Museum’s controversial Constance Spry exhibition in 2004, which led to the resignation of the Museum’s chairman James Dyson.
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This chapter considers how institutions, individuals and industries responded to new circumstances of manufacturing the British product from the 1960s onwards. New forms of education for industrial design resulted in the emergence of the... more
This chapter considers how institutions, individuals and industries responded to new circumstances of manufacturing the British product from the 1960s onwards. New forms of education for industrial design resulted in the emergence of the consultant designer and in design consultancies that worked in partnership with industry in Britain and abroad. As British manufacturing evolved within a changing world economy, a decline in R&D in some fields was matched by an equal (though less well-documented) investment in other areas. In the meantime, the tradition of the British inventor and design entrepreneur was far from dead. More hidden was the role of women, but here too female designers and consumers played important roles. Britain also became a workshop in innovation and creativity, set against the backdrop of Swinging London, developing new technologies and exporting design expertise.
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This article investigates the ways in which new suburban identities were forged through the architecture, design, and decoration of the modest mock-Tudor semi-detached house in the interwar years in England. It focuses particularly on the... more
This article investigates the ways in which new suburban identities were forged through the architecture, design, and decoration of the modest mock-Tudor semi-detached house in the interwar years in England. It focuses particularly on the tensions between the longings for the past and aspirations for the future displayed in the architecture and interiors of “Tudorbethan“ houses. It argues that such houses embodied a specifically suburban modernity, which looked backwards to the past whilst looking forward to the future. Although contemporary critics dismissed it as ersatz and backward-looking, the Tudorbethan semi signified a coming together of nostalgia and a particularly suburban form of modernity. Speculative builders created Tudorbethan houses with modern methods of construction that combined half-oak timbering with concrete. Furthermore, whilst some of the furniture that filled the Tudorbethan semi may have been nostalgically Jacobethan in its styling, it was modern in its purpose, with metamorphic designs that made the most of small spaces. This article challenges the dominance of Modernist aesthetics and values on writing on design, architecture, and consumption by exploring popular conceptions of the “modern“ that accommodated past and present, nostalgia and modernity.
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This essay examines exhibitions and pageants in 1908. This year marked the pinnacle of public spectacle in the Edwardian period, encompassing the Franco-British Exhibition and the Olympic Games, both at White City in West London, and also... more
This essay examines exhibitions and pageants in 1908. This year marked the pinnacle of public spectacle in the Edwardian period, encompassing the Franco-British Exhibition and the Olympic Games, both at White City in West London, and also an extraordinary number of commercial exhibitions, including the first Daily Mail Ideal Home Exhibition. For the fourth year running, local historical pageants were staged across England, spreading to Scotland and even Canada. In addition, the suffragettes put public spectacle to political ends in a series of spectacular parades. The use of spectacle, however, was not simply a top-down hegemonic process, despite its utilization by the state and various organizations for purposes of propaganda, in the coronationand other spectacular events. As Alison Light has pointed out, faced with “the staggering spectacle of the coronation . . . with all the sumptuous excess of a displayed Empire,” we need to “gauge the appeal of such imagery.” Thus the focus of this essay is the interplay between the Edwardian sense of spectacle and spectatorship.
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In 1907 a wave of 'Pageantitis' swept across Britain and Frank Lascelles, a professional actor, artist and Oxford graduate, staged the Oxford Historical Pageant. At least six other events were inspired by the success of the 1905 Sherborne... more
In 1907 a wave of 'Pageantitis' swept across Britain and Frank Lascelles, a professional actor, artist and Oxford graduate, staged the Oxford Historical Pageant. At least six other events were inspired by the success of the 1905 Sherborne Historical Pageant, produced by Louis Napoleon Parker. Staged outdoors, preferably in a place of historical interest, pageants told the history of places in a series of episodes. Crucial to their success was the participation of the general public as actors - or pageanteers - in huge numbers. Relying on visual spectacle rather than the spoken word, pageants were a popular and influential form of early-twentieth-century visual culture that constructed public memories.
This article focuses on the ways in which Lascelles and his pageant reconfigured and visualized memories of Oxford's past in its present. It pays particular attention to the interaction of performers and audience in the pageant, giving them agency in the invention of tradition. Furthermore, by demonstrating the enormous influence the Oxford Pageant had on the development of the genre in both Britain and the United States, this article challenges and revises the historiography of the modern pageant. It also argues for the distinctiveness of Lascelles' visual sensibility and its impact on the development of the genre.
This article focuses on the ways in which Lascelles and his pageant reconfigured and visualized memories of Oxford's past in its present. It pays particular attention to the interaction of performers and audience in the pageant, giving them agency in the invention of tradition. Furthermore, by demonstrating the enormous influence the Oxford Pageant had on the development of the genre in both Britain and the United States, this article challenges and revises the historiography of the modern pageant. It also argues for the distinctiveness of Lascelles' visual sensibility and its impact on the development of the genre.
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This paper draws on and extends the author’s earlier work on the history of the Daily Mail Ideal Home exhibition and suburban modernity in Britain. It contributes to historical research in material culture studies and design history on... more
This paper draws on and extends the author’s earlier work on the history of the Daily Mail Ideal Home exhibition and suburban modernity in Britain. It contributes to historical research in material culture studies and design history on modernity and domesticity, drawing on contemporary ethnographic methodologies. It explores the ways in which new domestic technologies helped form modern identities for women as housewives and consumers in the inter-war years in Britain. It rejects functionalist critiques of domestic labour-saving technologies by feminists and Modernist design historians. It argues that for many women who lived in the new suburbs the significance of technology was in its symbolism rather than its rational claims to functionalism and efficiency. It posits that although appliances did not necessarily save labour, they enhanced the status of the task, by recognising women’s labour. It argues that domestic appliances were not just valued for their labour-saving potential; they were also valued for the images of modernity that they projected. Moreover, it argues that the motive for the acquisition of appliances could be to participate in a shared sociability.
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In 1913 ‘”An Dhord Fhiann”: an Irish Historic Pageant’ was performed in the Sixty-Ninth Regiment Armory in New York City by a cast of five hundred, under the auspices of the Gaelic League. It depicted two epochs from Irish history; ‘The... more
In 1913 ‘”An Dhord Fhiann”: an Irish Historic Pageant’ was performed in the Sixty-Ninth Regiment Armory in New York City by a cast of five hundred, under the auspices of the Gaelic League. It depicted two epochs from Irish history; ‘The Proclaiming of Finn’ and the sixth century ‘Convention of Dromceatt’. The Irish Historic Pageant was part of the new pageantry that emerged simultaneously in Britain and America at the start of the twentieth century. Pageants were dramas in which the place is the hero and its history is the plot, performed by huge casts of amateurs of all classes in the open air. The pageant’s American writer, Anna Throop Craig, a passionate defender of Irish culture, together with its director John P. Campbell, an artist and a prominent member of the Celtic Revival in Belfast, visualised Irish heritage to show not only the resilience of Irish culture in the face of upheaval and oppression, but also its superiority. Thus the pageant was intended to educate and induce national pride for Ireland’s heritage in its Irish-American audience. This remembering of the past stood in stark contrast with the notorious annual St. Patrick’s Day parade that performed Ireland’s heritage in New York.
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IIn this chapter I consider the ways in which the urban ceremony and display of the Pageant of London depicted the capital as an imperial city, paying particular regard to the uses of landscape and space in the pageant performance.... more
IIn this chapter I consider the ways in which the urban ceremony and display of the Pageant of London depicted the capital as an imperial city, paying particular regard to the uses of landscape and space in the pageant performance. Despite such public display, however, pageants were not simply state propaganda. Like exhibitions and other forms of spectacular entertainment, it was the element of participation and the possibilities that pageants gave to their performers to make their own entertainment that was crucial to their success. A diary/scrapbook compiled by a young woman who performed in the Pageant of London vividly illustrates the personal investments and meanings that performers gained from pageants which subverted their organisers’ educational and imperial intentions.
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By the mid-1920s most furniture retailers in Britain sold at least one style of kitchen cabinet or ‘commodious cupboard’. Made of wood or metal, kitchen cabinets took the form of a single free-standing cupboard with multiple doors and... more
By the mid-1920s most furniture retailers in Britain sold at least one style of kitchen cabinet or ‘commodious cupboard’. Made of wood or metal, kitchen cabinets took the form of a single free-standing cupboard with multiple doors and drawers. They were organised into compartments to allow for the storage of food and equipment associated with food preparation and sometimes cleaning equipment. The British kitchen cabinet had its origins in the American Hoosier cabinet, which was first manufactured in Indiana from the late 1890 until the 1930s, with production peaking in the 1920s when more than one in ten American households owned a Hoosier brand cabinet. In Britain, kitchen cabinets were produced in a range of sizes, prices and specifications. Some retailers even supplied them fully stocked with food and speculative builders frequently installed them in compact kitchenettes as part of the purchase price of new suburban houses.
Marketed by companies such as Easiwork as efficient and space saving, the kitchen cabinet was promoted as a rational and hygienic solution to food preparation and storage needs in the ‘servantless’ house. This paper discusses the response to the kitchen cabinet by the British domestic advice writer, lecturer and broadcaster Nancie Clifton Reynolds who devoted several pages of her 1929 Easier Housework to a detailed discussion of its pros and cons for the housewife. This paper argues that the kitchen cabinet is best understood through a dynamic network of actors in the interwar suburban house, including the cabinet itself, the compact space of the kitchen and the housewife. It may speak the discourse of labour-saving and easier housework but only if certain sets of efficient actions are performed. Nevertheless, it could also signify the professionalization of the housewife and her modernity and serve as partial recognition of her labour.
Marketed by companies such as Easiwork as efficient and space saving, the kitchen cabinet was promoted as a rational and hygienic solution to food preparation and storage needs in the ‘servantless’ house. This paper discusses the response to the kitchen cabinet by the British domestic advice writer, lecturer and broadcaster Nancie Clifton Reynolds who devoted several pages of her 1929 Easier Housework to a detailed discussion of its pros and cons for the housewife. This paper argues that the kitchen cabinet is best understood through a dynamic network of actors in the interwar suburban house, including the cabinet itself, the compact space of the kitchen and the housewife. It may speak the discourse of labour-saving and easier housework but only if certain sets of efficient actions are performed. Nevertheless, it could also signify the professionalization of the housewife and her modernity and serve as partial recognition of her labour.
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Aided by the housebuilding boom, the notion of the professional housewife emerged in the interwar years. Mass Observation diaries, reports and surveys serve as correctives to idealised discourses of efficiency, labour-saving and the... more
Aided by the housebuilding boom, the notion of the professional housewife emerged in the interwar years. Mass Observation diaries, reports and surveys serve as correctives to idealised discourses of efficiency, labour-saving and the kitchen found in magazines, exhibition catalogues, domestic advice manuals and advertisements. One of the most fascinating eyewitness accounts in the MOA can be found in the day surveys of 38-year old Respondent 82 from Marlow, Buckinghamshire, written in 1937-8. She was a member of the ‘new rich’, originally from a working-class family but having achieved new respectability through her residence in a new semi-detached house with five rooms and a bathroom and a good-sized garden in respectable suburbia. In contrast, her husband had fallen down the social scale, coming from a solidly middle-class background and trained as an engineer but reduced to working as a much less prestigious bus driver after the war.
This paper discusses the ways in which Respondent 82’s reports reveal anxieties about her ‘new rich’ status, her husband’s ‘new poor’ family and her neighbours’ respectability, played out through the minutiae of housework. Running her house without servants or casual help, her reports capture the drudgery and frustrations of her domestic work. However, they also reveal how she shaped her housework routines around her own needs and interests to give her time for activities that were a source of pleasure, satisfaction and self-improvement. Thus the interrogation of a single respondent’s reports of everyday life reveals bigger themes about gendered domestic practices, social status and agency that encapsulate the interwar suburban experience of homeownership and class mobility.
This paper discusses the ways in which Respondent 82’s reports reveal anxieties about her ‘new rich’ status, her husband’s ‘new poor’ family and her neighbours’ respectability, played out through the minutiae of housework. Running her house without servants or casual help, her reports capture the drudgery and frustrations of her domestic work. However, they also reveal how she shaped her housework routines around her own needs and interests to give her time for activities that were a source of pleasure, satisfaction and self-improvement. Thus the interrogation of a single respondent’s reports of everyday life reveals bigger themes about gendered domestic practices, social status and agency that encapsulate the interwar suburban experience of homeownership and class mobility.
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Pageants are often thought of as archaic, backward-looking and the antithesis of modernity. Scholars have also tended to overlook their identity as forms of visual culture and spectacle. In this paper I challenge these views by focusing... more
Pageants are often thought of as archaic, backward-looking and the antithesis of modernity. Scholars have also tended to overlook their identity as forms of visual culture and spectacle. In this paper I challenge these views by focusing on the distinctive pageants of Frank Lascelles, ‘the man who staged the Empire’. I examine Lascelles’ Pageant of Empire, held at the old Wembley or Empire Stadium in 1924 as part of a programme of music festivals and sporting events accompanying the British Empire Exhibition. I focus on the ways in which Lascelles and his collaborators, notably the artist-craftsman Frank Brangwyn, transformed the architecture and space of Wembley Stadium. Through ambitious props and scenery that incorporated the 100,000 strong audience into the spectacle of the pageant, Lascelles and Brangwyn turned the stadium into an amphitheatre, staging tableaux of the British Empire. The enormous cast of over 15,000 volunteer ‘pageanteers’, including visitors from the Dominions and Colonies and an assortment of exotic animals, were drilled in a semblance of spontanaeity into massed formations, making striking use of colour to abstract effect, to music by Edward Elgar and others rather than spoken words. Both pageanteers and audience were active participants in the spectacle of the pageant, re-imagining the stadium through different times and places. Focusing on the material and visual culture of the Pageant of Empire, I argue that the polymaths Lascelles and Brangwyn transformed Wembley Stadium into a new ‘modern’ form of spectacle that went beyond theatre and drama, drawing on their experience and innovation in architecture, interiors, decorative arts, craft and design.
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On Friday 9 October 1908 the first Daily Mail Ideal Home Exhibition opened at Olympia in London on the tail end of the Franco-British Exhibition, which had closed after a run of five months. The timing was certainly effective; by the time... more
On Friday 9 October 1908 the first Daily Mail Ideal Home Exhibition opened at Olympia in London on the tail end of the Franco-British Exhibition, which had closed after a run of five months. The timing was certainly effective; by the time the exhibition closed two weeks later it had attracted some 160,000 visitors. Originally conceived by the Daily Mail’s advertising department as a form of “special publicity” for the newspaper and as a way of attracting new advertisers, the Ideal Home Exhibition’s success with the public took them by surprise. They soon realised that it was a valuable way of appealing to their aspirational middle-class readers, especially female ones. After at some points appearing in terminal decline, the renamed Ideal Home Show continues to thrive with renewed vigour and direction that has returned it to some of its founding principles after a change of ownership in 2009, bringing increasing audiences.
This paper examines the founding of the Ideal Home Exhibition in 1908. It looks at the value of exhibitions in general and the Ideal Home Exhibition in particular to the Daily Mail. It considers in detail the first four pre-first World War exhibitions. Home was the centre of new forms of consumption in Edwardian Britain. The Ideal Home Exhibition acted as a three-dimensional household advice manual in new modern ways of homemaking. It linked consumer desires, retailing, manufacturing and leisure through its spectacular displays of suburban modernity. The notion of the “ideal home” invoked both orderly angels in the house and also wanton free-floating feminine consumer desires. Home and homemaking also had patriotic connotations as the heart of Britain’s empire. However, at a time of concerns about the effects of poor housing on the working classes and demands for female suffrage the notion of the “ideal home” was also contested within the exhibition.
This paper examines the founding of the Ideal Home Exhibition in 1908. It looks at the value of exhibitions in general and the Ideal Home Exhibition in particular to the Daily Mail. It considers in detail the first four pre-first World War exhibitions. Home was the centre of new forms of consumption in Edwardian Britain. The Ideal Home Exhibition acted as a three-dimensional household advice manual in new modern ways of homemaking. It linked consumer desires, retailing, manufacturing and leisure through its spectacular displays of suburban modernity. The notion of the “ideal home” invoked both orderly angels in the house and also wanton free-floating feminine consumer desires. Home and homemaking also had patriotic connotations as the heart of Britain’s empire. However, at a time of concerns about the effects of poor housing on the working classes and demands for female suffrage the notion of the “ideal home” was also contested within the exhibition.
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In the interwar years there was a housebuilding boom in England, which led to the expansion of suburbia. Nearly three million houses, many of them suburban semis, were built by speculative builders for private sale and over a million... more
In the interwar years there was a housebuilding boom in England, which led to the expansion of suburbia. Nearly three million houses, many of them suburban semis, were built by speculative builders for private sale and over a million houses were built by local authorities for rental. From 1932 the lower prices of smaller three-bedroom semis, together with the increased availability of mortgages with cheap interest rates and small deposits made home ownership even more affordable. Many of the residents of these houses were from working-class and lower middle-class backgrounds and their occupation of new homes represented a move up the social scale and changing consumer aspirations and tastes. In this period the effects of the Modern Movement in architecture and design were beginning to be felt in Britain through the influence of design reform organization such as the Council of Industrial Design and an influx of European émigré architects and designers. However, the actual influence of Modernism in Architecture and Design was limited in the average English semi, much to the chagrin of design reformers, designers and architects who despaired of its ‘bad design’.
This paper will argue that despite the apparent rejection of the ‘good design’ of Modernism by the residents of interwar suburbia, they were intensely interested in creating a ‘modern home’. This was influenced by a plethora of advice in women’s and homemaking magazines, displays in furniture stores and events such as the Ideal Home Exhibition. Consumers embraced, for example, colourful wallpapers in ‘jazz modern’ styles and bright paints, multipurpose metamorphic furniture that fused ‘traditional’ invented Jacobethan styles with ‘modernistic’ styling. There was also a craze for modernizing existing furniture and decoration, as evidenced in the advice column of Modern Home magazine, launched in 1928. For some, the purchase of a new house offered even more opportunities to be modern in that they were able to work with the builders and choose all their own fixtures and fittings.
The consumer choice possibilities offered in the purchase of a new home are vividly illustrated in a house purchase file that was donated to Middlesex University’s Museum of Domestic Design and Architecture, which forms the central case study for this paper. Found on a skip in 2001, the file details the purchase of a semi-detached house in Southgate in North London by Marks and Tilly Freedman from Walworth in South East London. It contains extensive correspondence between Marks Freedman and the builder, A.T. Rowley of Tottenham, regarding the completion and fixtures and fittings of the house. Its contents reveal the Freedmans’ intense desire to make modern choices such as a wall-mounted gas fire with chrome surrounds, rubber flooring and a wireless point in the kitchen. However, time and time again the Freedmans had to reign in their consumer desires and economise due to costs. Thus this case study reveals interwar owner-occupiers as discriminating consumers actively engaged in the formation of suburban modernity in the decoration and furnishing of their homes.
This paper will argue that despite the apparent rejection of the ‘good design’ of Modernism by the residents of interwar suburbia, they were intensely interested in creating a ‘modern home’. This was influenced by a plethora of advice in women’s and homemaking magazines, displays in furniture stores and events such as the Ideal Home Exhibition. Consumers embraced, for example, colourful wallpapers in ‘jazz modern’ styles and bright paints, multipurpose metamorphic furniture that fused ‘traditional’ invented Jacobethan styles with ‘modernistic’ styling. There was also a craze for modernizing existing furniture and decoration, as evidenced in the advice column of Modern Home magazine, launched in 1928. For some, the purchase of a new house offered even more opportunities to be modern in that they were able to work with the builders and choose all their own fixtures and fittings.
The consumer choice possibilities offered in the purchase of a new home are vividly illustrated in a house purchase file that was donated to Middlesex University’s Museum of Domestic Design and Architecture, which forms the central case study for this paper. Found on a skip in 2001, the file details the purchase of a semi-detached house in Southgate in North London by Marks and Tilly Freedman from Walworth in South East London. It contains extensive correspondence between Marks Freedman and the builder, A.T. Rowley of Tottenham, regarding the completion and fixtures and fittings of the house. Its contents reveal the Freedmans’ intense desire to make modern choices such as a wall-mounted gas fire with chrome surrounds, rubber flooring and a wireless point in the kitchen. However, time and time again the Freedmans had to reign in their consumer desires and economise due to costs. Thus this case study reveals interwar owner-occupiers as discriminating consumers actively engaged in the formation of suburban modernity in the decoration and furnishing of their homes.
Research Interests:
Elephants, made of ivory, ebony or teak, were the most popular animals to be found in Mass Observation’s 1937 survey of what objects people put on their mantelpieces. The elephant had long been a symbol of strength, intelligence, wisdom... more
Elephants, made of ivory, ebony or teak, were the most popular animals to be found in Mass Observation’s 1937 survey of what objects people put on their mantelpieces. The elephant had long been a symbol of strength, intelligence, wisdom and loyalty. In the interwar years, the elephant was tied intrinsically to empire. It was the prey of big game hunters, featuring frequently in popular memoirs and imperial adventures. This paper explores the elephant’s particular appeal as an everyday ‘exotic’ object in the home at a time when there ambivalence about the future of the empire. The elephant was testament to the imperial networks that many families had, washing up in the home as part of the detritus of empire. It was sent as a gift from the colonies to family and friends and it was brought back to Britain by old colonials. It could also be purchased in Britain from catalogues and shops. There was an understanding and appreciation of the elephant as an object, as well as stories and memories attached to it as a souvenir of places visited and lives lived.
Research Interests:
"There is yet a third type of furniture which has the merits neither of the genuine or reproduced antiques, nor of the well-made modern pieces, It is the furniture which fills many genteel lower-middle-class homes; furniture which is at... more
"There is yet a third type of furniture which has the merits neither of the genuine or reproduced antiques, nor of the well-made modern pieces, It is the furniture which fills many genteel lower-middle-class homes; furniture which is at once pretentious and vulgar in design, shoddy in manufacture; in two words – utterly meretricious.
(Birnstingl 1928: 75).
This paper explores the design, decoration and furnishing of the inter-war home, focusing primarily on what Birstingl termed the ‘third type of furniture’. Such furniture was made of cheap woods such as deal, stained in a variety of finishes from ‘labour-saving’ limed oak to ‘Jacobean’ dark oak. Stock parts in a variety of styles such as Queen Anne, Jacobean, ‘labour-saving’ or ‘modern’ were combined with decorations such as geometric and stylised floral carvings. These formed both supposedly ‘traditional’ types of furniture such as sideboards and court dressers or new types such as the telephone table and the tea trolley that responded to new modern ways of daily life in the interwar home. This paper focuses particularly on new types of ‘metamorphic’ multi-functional furniture, such as coal-scuttles combined with bookcases, which emerged as a direct response to the extremely small spaces of local authority and speculatively built houses occupied by the new respectable working classes and lower middle classes who benefited from the inter-war house-building boom.
This ‘third type of furniture’ was condemned by critics and reforming organisations such as the Design and Industries Association as ‘bad design. It has also been overlooked in histories of domestic design because it does not fit easily into existing categories such as ‘Modernism’, ‘antique’, ‘traditional or ‘reproduction’. Furthermore, it is not adequately categorised by the retrospective and invented term of ‘Art Deco’ or the contemporary terms of ‘Jazz Modern’, ‘Moderne’, or ‘Modernistic’. It has also been excluded because there has been a reluctance to consider aspirational working and lower-middle-class taste – often seen by contemporary observers as feminised - while at the same time extolling the virtues of working-class vernacular furniture or the connoisseurship and cultural capital of the middle and upper-class taste for the antique. The ‘third type of furniture’, it is argued, represented a very real response to the condition of suburban modernity and the processes of modernisation, which simultaneously looked backwards to the past while looking forward to the future.
"
(Birnstingl 1928: 75).
This paper explores the design, decoration and furnishing of the inter-war home, focusing primarily on what Birstingl termed the ‘third type of furniture’. Such furniture was made of cheap woods such as deal, stained in a variety of finishes from ‘labour-saving’ limed oak to ‘Jacobean’ dark oak. Stock parts in a variety of styles such as Queen Anne, Jacobean, ‘labour-saving’ or ‘modern’ were combined with decorations such as geometric and stylised floral carvings. These formed both supposedly ‘traditional’ types of furniture such as sideboards and court dressers or new types such as the telephone table and the tea trolley that responded to new modern ways of daily life in the interwar home. This paper focuses particularly on new types of ‘metamorphic’ multi-functional furniture, such as coal-scuttles combined with bookcases, which emerged as a direct response to the extremely small spaces of local authority and speculatively built houses occupied by the new respectable working classes and lower middle classes who benefited from the inter-war house-building boom.
This ‘third type of furniture’ was condemned by critics and reforming organisations such as the Design and Industries Association as ‘bad design. It has also been overlooked in histories of domestic design because it does not fit easily into existing categories such as ‘Modernism’, ‘antique’, ‘traditional or ‘reproduction’. Furthermore, it is not adequately categorised by the retrospective and invented term of ‘Art Deco’ or the contemporary terms of ‘Jazz Modern’, ‘Moderne’, or ‘Modernistic’. It has also been excluded because there has been a reluctance to consider aspirational working and lower-middle-class taste – often seen by contemporary observers as feminised - while at the same time extolling the virtues of working-class vernacular furniture or the connoisseurship and cultural capital of the middle and upper-class taste for the antique. The ‘third type of furniture’, it is argued, represented a very real response to the condition of suburban modernity and the processes of modernisation, which simultaneously looked backwards to the past while looking forward to the future.
"
Research Interests:
In 1993 Ideal Homes, a survey of the history of the Daily Mail’s Ideal Home Exhibition (founded in 1908), opened at London’s Design Museum. It drew the highest visitor numbers to the museum at that date, many of whom although Ideal Home... more
In 1993 Ideal Homes, a survey of the history of the Daily Mail’s Ideal Home Exhibition (founded in 1908), opened at London’s Design Museum. It drew the highest visitor numbers to the museum at that date, many of whom although Ideal Home Exhibition regulars were new to the Design Museum. As curator of Ideal Homes I aimed to challenge the established approaches in museums of design and decorative arts in exhibiting design history. In particular, influenced by feminist design histories and anthropology and ethnography, I wished to move away from reading objects through aesthetic, primarily modernist, considerations of form and function and consider instead objects as bearers of social relations. I also aimed to subvert the white cube of the museum and capture some of the carnivalesque pleasures of the Ideal Home Exhibition in the presentation and design of Ideal Homes at the Design Museum.
This paper reflects on the curatorial process of Ideal Homes and the conflicts that it created within the Design Museum. It contrasts this with its favourable reception by the public and positive media coverage. It particularly focuses on critical issues raised around ‘good design’, gender and the domestic sphere in relation to both Ideal Homes and the Ideal Home Exhibition proper, which it argues were intrinsically bound up with modernist curatorial practices. It also discusses the ways in which these issues were raised again by the Design Museum’s controversial Constance Spry exhibition in 2004, which led to the resignation of the museum’s chairman James Dyson.
This paper reflects on the curatorial process of Ideal Homes and the conflicts that it created within the Design Museum. It contrasts this with its favourable reception by the public and positive media coverage. It particularly focuses on critical issues raised around ‘good design’, gender and the domestic sphere in relation to both Ideal Homes and the Ideal Home Exhibition proper, which it argues were intrinsically bound up with modernist curatorial practices. It also discusses the ways in which these issues were raised again by the Design Museum’s controversial Constance Spry exhibition in 2004, which led to the resignation of the museum’s chairman James Dyson.
Research Interests:
The opening and closing ceremonies for the 2012 Olympics and Paralympics have transformed the Olympic stadium from an arena of sport into an amphitheatre of pageantry and display telling stories of British national identity. There is a... more
The opening and closing ceremonies for the 2012 Olympics and Paralympics have transformed the Olympic stadium from an arena of sport into an amphitheatre of pageantry and display telling stories of British national identity. There is a striking precedent for these events in the Pageant of Empire staged at the old Wembley or Empire Stadium in 1924 by the pageant master Frank Lascelles. Demolished in 2003, the old Wembley Stadium is best known as a venue for sporting events including the 1948 Olympics and especially football. Built in 1923 for the British Empire Exhibition the following year with a capacity of over 100,000 and covering over 10 acres, its design was intentionally vast and imposing with distinctive twin towers. It was originally intended to be demolished after the exhibition closed. The pageant was part part of the exhibition, one of a programme of music festivals and sporting events that continued until the opening of the football season. Originating in 1905, by the time the pageant was staged at Wembley, historical pageants were a well-established form of popular entertainment in Britain, the British Empire and the United States with their own conventions and several individuals made a living as full-time pageant masters. Lascelles was one of the most prolific and his imperial triumphs earned him the epithet 'the man who staged the empire'.
This paper considers the ways in which the vast space of Wembley Stadium was used in the Pageant of Empire by Lascelles and his collaborators. The pageant had a cast of over 15,000 volunteer ‘pageanteers’, including visitors from the Dominions and Colonies, an assortment of exotic animals, music by Edward Elgar and scenery by the artist craftsman Frank Brangwyn. The pageant was Lascelles’ most ambitious and complex undertaking. It was staged over a period of 5 weeks in three parts with each one on a separate day. It told the story of the founding of the British Empire from John Cabot in 1496 via London, Newfoundland, Canada, South Africa, India, New Zealand and Australia, ending with a finale of Empire. Both pageanteers and audience were active participants in the spectacle of the pageant, re-imagining the stadium through different times and places.
This paper considers the ways in which the vast space of Wembley Stadium was used in the Pageant of Empire by Lascelles and his collaborators. The pageant had a cast of over 15,000 volunteer ‘pageanteers’, including visitors from the Dominions and Colonies, an assortment of exotic animals, music by Edward Elgar and scenery by the artist craftsman Frank Brangwyn. The pageant was Lascelles’ most ambitious and complex undertaking. It was staged over a period of 5 weeks in three parts with each one on a separate day. It told the story of the founding of the British Empire from John Cabot in 1496 via London, Newfoundland, Canada, South Africa, India, New Zealand and Australia, ending with a finale of Empire. Both pageanteers and audience were active participants in the spectacle of the pageant, re-imagining the stadium through different times and places.
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
This surprisingly sweet and quietly insightful documentary about the so-called “seventh life” of Brighton eccentric Drako Zarharzar takes us into the home – and by extension, the mind – of its amnesiac subject, who appears to have found... more
This surprisingly sweet and quietly insightful documentary about the so-called “seventh life” of Brighton eccentric Drako Zarharzar takes us into the home – and by extension, the mind – of its amnesiac subject, who appears to have found happiness living in the moment after brain damage robbed him of his short-term memory.
Toby Amies traces Drako’s strange history, fragments of which adorn every inch of his flat – plastered upon the walls, scattered across the floor, hanging on strings from the ceiling. In between breakdowns, accidents and attempted suicides, Drako worked with Salvador Dali. Tattooed on his forearm are the words “trust absolute unconditional”, the mantra by which he opted to live when other certainties failed him. He makes for an extraordinary subject, clearly much loved by family, friends and film-maker alike, his repeated cry of “love it all” a strangely sincere vindication of his life less ordinary.
Director Toby Amies will be in conversation with Dr Deborah Sugg Ryan (Associate Professor of History and Theory of Design, Falmouth University) after the film, followed by a Q&A.
Toby Amies is a filmmaker, photographer, broadcaster and DJ. Toby Amies for Succulent Pictures/perfect motion is association with Dandy Films has been shortlisted for a Grierson 2014: The British Documentary Awards for Best Newcomer Documentary for The Man whose Mind Exploded.
Deborah’s research explores the history of the home and the domestic interior.
http://thepoly.org/the-man-whose-mind-exploded-with-director-toby-amies/
Toby Amies traces Drako’s strange history, fragments of which adorn every inch of his flat – plastered upon the walls, scattered across the floor, hanging on strings from the ceiling. In between breakdowns, accidents and attempted suicides, Drako worked with Salvador Dali. Tattooed on his forearm are the words “trust absolute unconditional”, the mantra by which he opted to live when other certainties failed him. He makes for an extraordinary subject, clearly much loved by family, friends and film-maker alike, his repeated cry of “love it all” a strangely sincere vindication of his life less ordinary.
Director Toby Amies will be in conversation with Dr Deborah Sugg Ryan (Associate Professor of History and Theory of Design, Falmouth University) after the film, followed by a Q&A.
Toby Amies is a filmmaker, photographer, broadcaster and DJ. Toby Amies for Succulent Pictures/perfect motion is association with Dandy Films has been shortlisted for a Grierson 2014: The British Documentary Awards for Best Newcomer Documentary for The Man whose Mind Exploded.
Deborah’s research explores the history of the home and the domestic interior.
http://thepoly.org/the-man-whose-mind-exploded-with-director-toby-amies/
Research Interests:
The first “House of the Future” appeared at the Ideal Home Show in 1928. Designed by S. Rowland Pierce and R.A. Duncan it predicted life in the year 2000. Futurology was most commonly used as strategy in the exhibition to accommodate the... more
The first “House of the Future” appeared at the Ideal Home Show in 1928. Designed by S. Rowland Pierce and R.A. Duncan it predicted life in the year 2000. Futurology was most commonly used as strategy in the exhibition to accommodate the architecture and design of the Modern Movement and commonly featured alongside the “Tudorbethan” houses that represented the present-day ideals of its audience. This talk considers a range of forecasts of the future, including Alison and Peter Smithson’s 1956 example and Nigel Coates’ 1998 Oyster house, as well as less obviously modernist, but perhaps more accurate, predictions of the future such as the 1951 Women’s Institute House.
Research Interests:
This paper considers the popular appropriation of the Modern Movement in the suburban interwar home. It examines instances where modernist architects, designers and critics brought their ideas about ‘good design’ to the wider public in... more
This paper considers the popular appropriation of the Modern Movement in the suburban interwar home. It examines instances where modernist architects, designers and critics brought their ideas about ‘good design’ to the wider public in articles in the popular press and women’s magazines, radio broadcasts, lectures and exhibitions. However, the builders who produced modernist houses and retailers who stocked modernist furniture were not necessarily wholesale converts to the cause of good design and continued to build and stock other styles that were deemed ‘bad design’. Furthermore, Modernism was often watered down, or ‘bastardised’, according to critics, and combined with elements from (what we now call) Art Deco to create the ‘moderne’ or ‘modernistic’. This appropriation of masculine rationalism was denigrated as feminine and trivial, especially in the ways it signified the luxury, escapism and consumer desires of the Odeon cinema and 1930s Hollywood. A suburban modernity emerged that addressed the needs of new homeowners living in small houses without servants through modern Tudorbethan houses filled with labour-saving devices and metamorphic furniture that made the most effective use of limited space.
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
"""Kenneth Grange is one of Britain’s best known industrial designers and a founding member of the design consultancy Pentagram. He was the subject of a retrospective exhibition at the Design Museum in 2011 and his work was featured... more
"""Kenneth Grange is one of Britain’s best known industrial designers and a founding member of the design consultancy Pentagram. He was the subject of a retrospective exhibition at the Design Museum in 2011 and his work was featured prominently in British Design 1948-2012 at the V&A in 2012. Still designing in his 80s, he is also a visiting professor at the RCA.
The scale and range of Grange’s designs from his long career over the last 60 years is breath taking - including exhibitions, packaging, street furniture, transport, domestic appliances and consumer products. He designed icons such as the parking meter and the InterCity 125 high speed train and also worked closely with a number of companies over many years including Kodak and Kenwood.
Grange’s designs are always grounded in his research and development. They are not a mere restyling of a product but often arise from, in Nigel Cross’s words, ‘a fundamental reassessment of the purpose, function and use of a product’.
Grange is in conversation with design historian Dr Deborah Sugg Ryan (UCF) who was on the advisory panel to the V&A's British Design exhibition and wrote about Grange's work in the catalogue.
"""
The scale and range of Grange’s designs from his long career over the last 60 years is breath taking - including exhibitions, packaging, street furniture, transport, domestic appliances and consumer products. He designed icons such as the parking meter and the InterCity 125 high speed train and also worked closely with a number of companies over many years including Kodak and Kenwood.
Grange’s designs are always grounded in his research and development. They are not a mere restyling of a product but often arise from, in Nigel Cross’s words, ‘a fundamental reassessment of the purpose, function and use of a product’.
Grange is in conversation with design historian Dr Deborah Sugg Ryan (UCF) who was on the advisory panel to the V&A's British Design exhibition and wrote about Grange's work in the catalogue.
"""
Research Interests:
The speculative building boom and public housing building programme of the inter-war and post-war years led to Britain becoming a nation of homeowners. People moved up the social scale through new forms of non-manual work and developed... more
The speculative building boom and public housing building programme of the inter-war and post-war years led to Britain becoming a nation of homeowners. People moved up the social scale through new forms of non-manual work and developed new consumer aspirations, aided by hire purchase. This talk focuses on how the Ideal Home Exhibition catered to this audience by educating and entertaining them with displays of modern (but not necessarily modernist) mass-produced furniture, which allowed people to simultaneously dwell in the past and look forward to the future. This culminated in the 1950s with two competing views of modern furniture: the Women’s Institute ‘house that women want’ and Alison and Peter Smithsons’ ‘house of the future’.
Research Interests:
David Olusoga tells the story of those who lived in one house in Liverpool, from the time it was built until now. Deborah Sugg Ryan is series consultant and on-screen expert for all 4 episodes
Research Interests:
With new homes being built at the fastest rate for a decade, business is booming again for Britain's house builders. Profits are up and sales are surging, as companies like Barratt, Persimmon and Taylor Wimpey tempt customers into the... more
With new homes being built at the fastest rate for a decade, business is booming again for Britain's house builders. Profits are up and sales are surging, as companies like Barratt, Persimmon and Taylor Wimpey tempt customers into the biggest purchase of their lives. With access to the lead players in the British house-building industry, Hot Property reveals the inner workings of this business and discovers why it is such a source of controversy and conflict.
Exploring the all-important quest for land, the art of winning over the planners and the public, and the science of designing the ideal home for prospective buyers, this is the fascinating story of how house builders have shaped our landscape and our lives. Over the years, they have learned to be very choosy about where they build, and very cautious about only building as many houses as they can sell. From stand-offs with NIMBYs to run-ins with politicians, this is a business like no other.
Deborah Sugg Ryan appears as on-screen expert.
Exploring the all-important quest for land, the art of winning over the planners and the public, and the science of designing the ideal home for prospective buyers, this is the fascinating story of how house builders have shaped our landscape and our lives. Over the years, they have learned to be very choosy about where they build, and very cautious about only building as many houses as they can sell. From stand-offs with NIMBYs to run-ins with politicians, this is a business like no other.
Deborah Sugg Ryan appears as on-screen expert.
Research Interests:
Laurence Llewelyn Bowen explores the history of our homes from the 1920s to the present day. In episode 10 Laurence talks to philosopher Alain de Botton about how our ideas of the home have changed and what the future holds, while... more
Laurence Llewelyn Bowen explores the history of our homes from the 1920s to the present day.
In episode 10 Laurence talks to philosopher Alain de Botton about how our ideas of the home have changed and what the future holds, while taking a look around the 100th Ideal Home Exhibition.
Deborah Sugg Ryan appears as an expert.
In episode 10 Laurence talks to philosopher Alain de Botton about how our ideas of the home have changed and what the future holds, while taking a look around the 100th Ideal Home Exhibition.
Deborah Sugg Ryan appears as an expert.
Research Interests:
No 57: The History of a House is a fascinating 200-year journey through the history of British interior design. It examines how design has affected one Georgian house and its inhabitants in Bristol, from when it was first built in the... more
No 57: The History of a House is a fascinating 200-year journey through the history of British interior design. It examines how design has affected one Georgian house and its inhabitants in Bristol, from when it was first built in the year 1779 up to the present day. Written in six installments, History of a House begins by looking at No. 57 when it was first built, during a speculative building boom in 1779, and covers through the year 1845. Episode 2 looks at the years 1849-1879 and shows how the rise of an eclectic style of interior design and developments in engineering, science and manufacturing influenced what people could have in their home. Episodes 3 and 4 get through the turn of the century all the way to the year 1930 and episodes 5 and 6 bring the viewer past the houses dramatic restoration in the 1960s up to the present day. Throughout the series, presenter Maxwell Hutchinson, a former president of the Royal Institute of British Architects, reveals how fashions in interior design have mirrored social, political and economic trend.
Deborah Sugg Ryan appears as an on-screen expert.
Deborah Sugg Ryan appears as an on-screen expert.