Journal of Design History
Thursday, 26 November 2009
Journal of Design History is a leading journal in its field. It plays an active role in the development of design history (including the history of the crafts and applied arts), as well as contributing to the broader field of studies of visual and material culture. The journal includes a regular book reviews section and lists books received, and from time to time publishes special issues.
As a point of departure for this special issue of the journal, we turned to Clive Dilnot’s seminal two-part essay, ‘The State of Design History’, published in Design Issues. In these essays, Dilnot declares the imperative to place ‘socio-historical understanding’ at the centre of our ‘attempts to understand design activity’. Twenty-five years on the prescience of this call is underlined by the fact that scholarship has become more interdisciplinary, and the geographical foci of global discourses have been reassessed, certainly beyond Euro-American concern. This development is evident in the themes and content of more recent Design History Society conferences, such as the 2009 conference on design writing. To bring the debate both closer to home for us and into another forum, we convened and co-chaired a panel entitled ‘The Current State of Design History’ for the Design Studies Forum, held at the 2008 College Art Association (CAA) annual conference in Dallas, Texas. From the submissions, received from scholars working in the UK, Europe, Australia and the USA., we chose papers which together would present a diversity of perspectives and provide directions for the future. The essays contained in this issue are revised versions of some of the papers presented in that session. We also asked Clive Dilnot to reflect on the essays and on what he saw as the potential futures for design history. This introduction serves to place these contributions within the larger context of design history.
