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1 2 3 4 GLOBAL DESIGN HISTORY 5 6 7 8 9 0 11 12 Globalism is often discussed using abstract terms, such as ‘networks’ or ‘flows’ and usually in 13 relation to recent history. Global Design History moves us past this limited view of globalism, 14 broadening our sense of this key term in history and theory. 15 Individual chapters focus our attention on objects, and the stories they can tell us about 16 cultural interactions on a global scale. They place these concrete things into contexts, such 17 as trade, empire, mediation, and various forms of design practice. Among the varied topics 18 included are: 19 • the global underpinnings of Renaissance material culture 20 • the trade of Indian cottons in the eighteenth century 21 • the Japanese tea ceremony as a case of ‘import substitution’ 22 • German design in the context of empire 23 • handcrafted modernist furniture in Turkey 24 • Australian fashions employing ‘ethnic’ motifs • an experimental UK–Ghanaian design partnership 25 • Chinese social networking websites 26 • the international circulation of contemporary architects 27 28 Featuring work from leading design historians, each chapter is paired with a ‘response’, designed to expand the discussion and test the methodologies on offer. An extensive 29 bibliography and resource guide will also aid further research, providing students with a user 30 friendly model for approaches to global design. 31 Global Design History will be useful for upper-level undergraduate and postgraduate 32 students, academics and researchers in design history and art history, and related subjects such 33 as anthropology, craft studies and cultural geography. 34 Glenn Adamson is Deputy Head of Research at the Victoria and Albert Museum, where 35 he leads a graduate programme in the History of Design. He is co-editor of the Journal of 36 Modern Craft, and author of Thinking Through Craft (2007) and The Craft Reader (2010). 37 Giorgio Riello is Associate Professor in Global History and Culture at the University of 38 Warwick. He is the author of A Foot in the Past (2006) and has recently co-edited The Spinning 39 World: A Global History of Cotton Textiles, 1200–1850 (2009) and The Fashion History Reader 40 (2010). 41 Sarah Teasley is Research Tutor in the History of Design and Liaison Tutor in Critical and 42 Historical Studies at the Royal College of Art. She is co-author of 20th Century Design History 43 (2005), and a specialist in the history of design for mass production in modern Japan. 44

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1 2 3 4 GLOBAL DESIGN 5 6 7 HISTORY 8 9 0 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 Edited by Glenn Adamson, 18 Giorgio Riello and Sarah Teasley 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44

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1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 11 12 13 14 15 16 First edition published 2011 by Routledge 17 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, OX14 4RN 18 Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 19 270 Madison Ave, New York, NY 10016 20 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business 21 Editorial selection and material © 2011 Glenn Adamson, Giorgio Riello 22 and Sarah Teasley 23 Individual chapters and chapter responses © 2011 the contributors 24 The right of Glenn Adamson, Giorgio Riello and Sarah Teasley to be identified as the authors of the editorial material, and of the contributors for their individual 25 chapters, has been asserted, in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the 26 Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. 27 Typeset in Bembo by 28 Keystroke, Station Road, Codsall, Wolverhampton Printed and bound in Great Britain by 29 TJ International Ltd, Padstow, Cornwall 30 All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized 31 in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or 32 hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. 33 British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data 34 A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library 35 Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data 36 Global design history / edited by Glenn Adamson, Giorgio Riello and Sarah 37 Teasley. — 1st ed. p. cm. 38 Includes bibliographical references. 39 1. Design—History. 2. Culture and globalization. I. Adamson, Glenn. II. Riello, Giorgio. III. Teasley, Sarah, 1973– 40 NK1525.G58 2011 41 745.409—dc22 2010037066 42 ISBN 13: 978–0–415–57285–9 (hbk) 43 ISBN 13: 978–0–415–57287–3 (pbk) 44 ISBN 13: 978–0–203–83197–7 (ebk)

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1 2 3 4 CONTENTS 5 6 7 8 9 0 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 Illustrations 00 18 Contributors 00 19 Preface 00 20 21 Introduction:Towards global design history 00 22 Sarah Teasley,Giorgio Riello and Glenn Adamson 23 24 1 The Global Renaissance: Cross-cultural objects in the early 25 modern period 00 26 Marta Ajmar-Wollheim and Luca Molà 27 28 29 Response 00 30 Dana Leibsohn 31 32 2 Global design in Jingdezhen: Local production and global 33 connections 00 34 Anne Gerritsen 35 36 Response 00 37 Beverly Lemire 38 39 3 Indian cottons and European fashion, 1400–1800 00 40 John Styles 41 42 Response 00 43 Prasannan Parthasarathi 44

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vi Contents

1 4 Import substitution, innovation and the tea ceremony in 2 fifteenth and sixteenth-century Japan 00 3 Christine M. E. Guth 4 5 Response 00 6 Maxine Berg 7 8 5 The globalization of the fashion city 00 9 Christopher Breward 0 11 Response 00 12 Simona Segre Reinach 13 14 6 Performing white South African identity through international 15 and empire exhibitions 00 16 Dipti Bhagat 17 18 Response 00 19 Angus Lockyer 20 21 7 ‘From the far corners’:Telephones,globalization, and the 22 production of locality in the 1920s 00 23 24 Michael J. Golec 25 Response 00 26 27 Anne Balsamo 28 29 8 The globalization of the Deutscher Werkbund: Design reform, 30 industrial policy,and German foreign policy,1907–1914 00 31 John Maciuika 32 33 Response 00 34 Paul Betts 35 36 9 Where in the world is design?:The case of India, 1900–1945 00 37 Victor Margolin 38 39 Response 00 40 Christopher Pinney 41 42 10 ‘Handmade modernity’:A case study on post-war Turkish 43 modern furniture design 00 44 Gökhan Karakus¸

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Response 00 1 Edward S. Cooke, Jr. 2 3 11 Old empire and new global luxury: Fashioning global design 00 4 Peter McNeil 5 6 Response 00 7 Shehnaz Suterwalla 8 9 12 Analyzing social networking websites:The design of Happy 0 Network in China 00 11 12 Basile Zimmermann 13 14 Response 00 15 Ngai-Ling Sum 16 17 13 From nation-bound histories to global narratives of architecture 00 18 Jilly Traganou 19 20 Response 00 21 Lucia Allais 22 23 14 e-Artisans: contemporary design for the global market 00 24 Tom Barker and Ashley Hall 25 26 Response 00 27 Shannon May 28 29 30 Bibliography 00 31 Resource Guide 00 32 Index 00 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44

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1 2 3 4 ILLUSTRATIONS 5 6 7 8 9 0 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 1.1 Table carpet, Cairo, Egypt, mid-16th century 00 18 1.2 Ewer; brass engraved and damascened with silver with filling of 19 black lacquer, left side view with The Arms of Molino of Venice, 20 Flemish with the decoration Italian (Venetian Saracenic), late 21 15th century 00 22 2.1 Underglaze porcelain dish made in Jingdezhen c.1770. The landscape 23 on this dish represents the traditional Chinese landscape theme, but 24 recreated in Europe and transmitted to China to be reproduced on 25 Chinese porcelain for export to Europe. The design became a staple 26 of European chinoiserie and ‘rococo’ styles 00 27 2.2 Early 15th-century large porcelain serving dish made in Jingdezhen 28 for consumers in the Middle East. The rim is scalloped, and the 29 central area is decorated with floral motifs, while the cavetto features 30 large individual blossoms surrounded by smaller ones 00 31 2.3 Blue-and-white porcelain dish made in Jingdezhen between 1595 32 and 1625. These wares, commonly known as kraak porcelain, were 33 mass produced, and thus within reach of a wide spectrum of 34 European consumers. The Dutch referred to this type of bowl as a 35 kraaikop (‘crow cup’), after the bird painted in the well of the cup 00 36 4.1 Luzon tea leaf storage jar, 16th century 00 37 4.2 Shigaraki tea leaf storage jar, 1400–1500, Museum No: FE 20-1984 00 38 4.3 Bizen freshwater jar, c.1590–1605, stoneware with natural ash glaze 00 39 6.1 View of the Cape Dutch exterior (1), British Empire Exhibition, 40 1925 00 41 6.2 View of the Cape Dutch exterior (2), British Empire Exhibition, 42 1925 00 43 7.1 From the Far Corners of the Earth. Promotional booklet front cover 00 44

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1 7.2 The Story of Silk in Your Telephone. Excerpt from a promotional 2 booklet 00 3 9.1 The Tata factory, courtesy of Tata Central Archives 00 4 9.2 Maharajah Cigarettes, marketing material, courtesy of Osian’s Image 5 Gallery 00 6 10.1 Azmi and Bediz Koz designed this interior and furniture for 7 architects Nes¸et and S¸aziment Arolat, Ankara, Turkey, in the 8 mid–1960s. This private apartment shows the type of chunky 9 handmade wooden furniture being produced by Ankara’s 0 cabinetmakers from the 1950s inspired by Danish models mixed in 11 with ethnic Turkish glass and textiles. (Couch concept design by 12 Nes¸et and S¸aziment Arolat.) 00 13 10.2 The interior of the Interno shop in the mid–1960s in Istanbul, 14 Turkey. Interno was a showcase for the icons of modern design 15 favored by the young design team of Yıldırım Kocacıklıo_lu and 16 Turhan Uncuo_lu. Due to a ban on imports these pieces were 17 handmade, locally-produced copies 00 18 11.1 Easton Pearson, Designers. Picos bolero, spring/summer 2004, 19 cotton net, hand embroidered with raffia, silk lining. Ciel dress, 20 spring/summer 2004, cotton net, hand embroidered with raffia and 21 decorated with stone chips, silk lining. Berri skirt, spring/summer 22 2004, grosgrain viscose belt 00 23 11.2 Easton Pearson, Designers. Detail. Berri skirt, spring/summer 2004, 24 cotton net, hand embroidered with raffia and decorated with stone 25 chips, wired tiers and silk lining 00 26 11.3 Easton Pearson, Designers. Coro shirt, spring/summer 2004, 27 stripe-weave shirting cotton, hand cut and stitched. Esme top, 28 spring/summer 2004, crystal dobie cotton, hand decorated. Larkin 29 skirt, spring/summer 2004, screenprinted cotton, hand decorated 30 with plastic sequins. Grosgrain and silk belt, spring/summer 2004, 31 hand made 00 32 11.4 Easton Pearson, Designers. Detail. Larkin skirt, spring/summer 2004, 33 screenprinted cotton, hand decorated with plastic sequins. Grosgrain 34 and silk belt, spring/summer 2004, hand made 00 35 12.1 Screenshots of Parking Wars on Facebook and Happy Network. The 36 grey patches have been added to hide users’ names and avatars 00 37 12.2 Comparison of screenshots of on Facebook and Happy Network 00 38 14.1 Examples of project collaboration – the final products 00 39 40 41 42 43 44

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1 2 3 4 CONTRIBUTORS 5 6 7 8 9 0 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 Glenn Adamson is Head of Graduate Studies and Deputy Head of Research at 18 the Victoria and Albert Museum, London. 19 20 Marta Ajmar-Wollheim is Renaissance Course Tutor at the Victoria and Albert 21 Museum. 22 23 Lucia Allais is Cotsen Postdoctoral Fellow at the Society of Fellows in the Liberal 24 Arts, Princeton University. 25 26 Anne Balsamo is Professor at the University of Southern California, School of 27 Cinematic Arts. 28 29 Tom Barker is Professor of Architecture, Innovation and Design, University Of 30 Technology, Sydney. 31 32 Maxine Berg is Professor in History at the University of Warwick and Director of 33 the Warwick Global History and Culture Centre. 34 35 Paul Betts is Reader in History at the University of Sussex. 36 37 Dipti Bhagat is Senior Lecturer in the Department of Art, Media and Design at 38 London Metropolitan University, and the Chair of the Design History Society. 39 40 Christopher Breward is Head of Research at the Victoria and Albert Museum. 41 42 Edward S. Cooke, Jr., is Charles F. Montgomery Professor in History of Art, 43 American Decorative Arts and Material Culture at Yale University. 44

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xii Contributors

1 Anne Gerritsen is Associate Professor in History at the University of Warwick. 2 3 Michael J. Golec is Associate Professor in Art History, Theory and Criticism at 4 the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. 5 6 Christine M. E. Guth is Asian Course Tutor at the Royal College of Art and 7 Victoria and Albert Museum. 8 9 Ashley Hall is Deputy Head of the Innovation Design Engineering Department, 0 Royal College of Art and Imperial College. 11 Gökhan Karakus¸ is a research curator at the Garanti Galeri, Istanbul. 12 13 Dana Leibsohn is Associate Professor of Art at Smith College, Massachusetts. 14 15 Beverly Lemire is Henry Marshall Tory Chair in the Department of History and 16 Classics at the University of Alberta, Canada. 17 18 Angus Lockyer is Lecturer in the History of Japan at the School of Oriental and 19 African Studies, University of London. 20 21 John Maciuika is Associate Professor of Art and Architectural History at Baruch 22 College, City University of New York. 23 24 Victor Margolin is Professor Emeritus of Design History at the University of 25 Illinois at Chicago. 26 27 Shannon May is an anthropologist with an expertise in China. She is co-founder 28 of Bridge International Academies, which opened its first school in Nairobi, Kenya, 29 in 2009. 30 31 Peter McNeil is Professor of Design History, School of Design, University Of 32 Technology, Sydney, and Professor of Fashion Studies at Stockholm University. 33 Luca Molà is Associate Professor in History at the University of Warwick. 34 35 Prasannan Parthasarathi is Associate Professor in History at Boston College. 36 37 Christopher Pinney is Professor of Anthropology and Visual Culture at University 38 College London. 39 40 Simona Segre Reinach is a fashion historian at IULM University, Milan, and 41 IUAV University, Venice. 42 43 Giorgio Riello is Associate Professor in Global History and Culture at the 44 University of Warwick.

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John Styles is Research Professor in History at the University of Hertfordshire. 1 2 Ngai-Ling Sum is Co-Director of the Cultural Political Economy Research 3 Centre, Lancaster University. 4 5 Shehnaz Suterwalla is a PhD student on the Royal College of Art/Victoria and 6 Albert Museum course in the History of Design. 7 8 Sarah Teasley is Tutor in History of Design and Critical and Historical Studies at 9 the Royal College of Art. 0 11 Jilly Traganou is an architect and Assistant Professor in Design Studies at Parsons, 12 The New School for Design in New York. 13 Basile Zimmermann is Maître Assistant at the Unit of Chinese Studies of the 14 Faculty of Arts in the University of Geneva. 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44

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1 2 3 4 PREFACE 5 6 7 8 9 0 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 This volume, which addresses the phenomenon of global interaction in design and 18 history, is itself a product of such interaction. The project had its roots in two sites: 19 the first, a scholarly network collaboratively organized by the University of 20 Warwick, the Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A), and the Ashmolean Museum, 21 Oxford, under the title ‘Global Arts’. With funding from the Arts and Humanities 22 Research Council, this series of seminars brought together curators and academics 23 to discuss globalism and material culture in the early modern period. 24 As is often the case when academics meet to discuss new research horizons, these 25 discussions led naturally to the prospect of a book. It was clear, however, that such 26 an undertaking would need to be extended. It would need to come right up to the 27 present day, and would need to encompass the work of a wider community of 28 scholars. At this point, the project in the UK converged with ‘Towards a History 29 of Design in the Global Economy’, an exploratory research project focusing on 30 modern and contemporary design and architecture funded by the Florence H. and 31 Eugene E. Myers Charitable Trust Fund at Northwestern University. Events 32 organized at the V&A and the Royal College of Art laid further groundwork for 33 the volume, while the Design History Society generously offered to act as the book’s 34 primary sponsor. The Alice Kaplan Institute for the Humanities at Northwestern 35 University provided further support. 36 The course in the History of Design at the Royal College of Art, run collab- 37 oratively with the V&A, has been an ideal base of operations for two of the book’s 38 editors. This course is the leading programme in the subject area, and its recent 39 addition of a specialism in Asian Design History (under the leadership of 40 Dr. Christine M. E. Guth) has been an important context for the project. Similarly, 41 it would be impossible to imagine this volume without the support of the Global 42 History and Culture Centre at the University of Warwick, a pioneering undertaking 43 to broaden the methodology of the study of globalism. 44

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xvi Preface

1 The editors would also like to acknowledge the generosity of the contributors 2 to this volume, who have been unstinting with their time, efforts, and expertise. 3 They have allowed their work to be paired up into a call-and-response structure, 4 which makes for good reading but also (potentially) nervousness for the authors 5 involved. We thank them all for entering into the project’s spirit of debate and 6 collaboration. 7 Elizabeth Bisley, a graduate of the RCA/V&A course, ably provided research 8 support for the bibliography and resource guide that appear at the back of this 9 volume. Like everything else about this book, and indeed the project of global 0 design history itself, these are to be taken as indicative rather than comprehensive, 11 and an invitation to further research. 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44

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1 2 3 4 INTRODUCTION 5 6 Towards global design history 7 8 9 Sarah Teasley, Giorgio Riello and Glenn Adamson 0 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 The past decade has seen an explosion in discourse on ‘the global’ as a condition, 18 an approach and sometimes a problem. Most visibly, the impact of economic and 19 manufacturing globalization appears daily through the food we consume, the 20 products we buy, and the news that we watch. Media coverage spectacularizes both 21 global trade and anti-globalization activism; in the meantime, the sheer volume of 22 images and products now literally ‘beamed’ into our daily lives inures us to both 23 globalization’s implications and the anti-globalization movement’s rhetoric. Simply 24 put, the global has become commonplace. 25 This double condition – in which people are at once acutely located in global 26 networks yet increasingly dulled to the implications – has shaped the way we both 27 build new networks and respond to changes in existing ones. Thus, while such 28 global scares as terrorism, financial collapse and pandemics remind us precisely how 29 interconnected we have become, and flows of people, information, capital and 30 goods across national and geographical borders accelerate, we see attempts to block 31 movement through immigration controls, tariffs and other trade barriers, browser- 32 blocking software and stricter controls on banking transactions. Within the design 33 world, offshore manufacturing, digital design and manufacturing technologies and 34 automated distribution systems have meant the intensification of transnationally- 35 travelling images and objects, from the latest trends in high-end footwear and avant- 36 garde museum architecture to engine parts, oranges and the lowly kitchen sponge. 37 This condition inevitably raises political issues: is such global connectivity desirable, 38 even ethical? What kind of system might best manage global flows? Should we 39 privilege optimal efficiency or human rights, and are these two goals inseparable or 40 mutually incompatible? And to what extent can or even should we attempt to design 41 and control the parameters of global interactions? Arguably, right-wing economic 42 free market ideologies and left-wing arguments for market controls might be 43 understood as forms of design in their own right. An explicit assessment of the 44

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2 Sarah Teasley, Giorgio Riello and Glenn Adamson

1 politics of the global is not the principal goal of this volume, but each contributor 2 addresses the political implications of design’s imbrication in global networks, either 3 directly or indirectly. 4 As transnational flows become even more recognizably present within daily life, 5 scholars have paid increased attention not only to the politics of globalization, but 6 its other registers as well. Global history has become a recognized area of study, with 7 dedicated journals and research centres. Geographers have been quick to map its 8 effects, and anthropologists and sociologists too have focused their attention on such 9 topics as migrant populations and the impact of global economic and information 0 networks on local life. In design history, the ‘global turn’ has largely taken the form 11 of an expanded geography, both in topics researched by design historians and in the 12 sites of design historical practice. This tendency, which often draws inspiration from 13 intellectual movements such as post-colonialism and world history, seeks to correct 14 the dominant, lopsided representation of the history of design as occurring primarily 15 in Western Europe and the United States, particularly in the modern period, by 16 expanding the field of vision to include design as it is practiced and consumed 17 around the world. Modernist design history’s triumphalist narrative of progress 18 emanating from industrializing Europe after 1850 is simply out of date. 19 One prominent example of this approach in action has been the International 20 Conference on Design History and Studies (ICDHS), a biannual meeting of design 21 historians, theoreticians and practitioners concerned with making connections 22 between design historical work in different national, regional and linguistic com- 23 munities, and recognizing the multiple sites at which this work is done. The 24 ICDHS first convened in 1999 in Barcelona, and has since met in Havana, Istanbul, 25 Guadalajara, Helsinki, Osaka and Brussels, with participants from five continents. 26 As befits such an international gathering, ICHDS meetings address ‘world’ themes 27 such as peripheries and metropoles, the rewriting of narratives, and the cartography 28 of design, and have generated new scholarship on what such an expanded and – 29 some would argue – more accurate and even ethical history of design should do. 30 We should be careful, however: does ‘global’ mean the same as ‘world’ or ‘trans- 31 national’? While ‘world’ has tended to emphasize areas that might be civilizations 32 or empires through juxtaposition in a comparative approach, and ‘transnational’ 33 refers to movements across national borders, engaging with the nation as a basic unit 34 and then transcending it, a ‘global’ approach works with connections and to a lesser 35 extent with comparisons. A ‘global’ study does not necessarily concern the entire 36 world; rather, it might address the impact of long-distance forces on the local, as in 37 Anne Gerritsen’s essay in this volume, or movement within a particular region as 38 embedded in larger networks, as in Christine Guth’s essay. 39 Is ‘the global’, then, simply about globalization: about cultural, economic, politi- 40 cal and other exchanges and contacts between nations and regions? We are con- 41 cerned that design history reflects design’s appearance around the world, but neither 42 global power networks nor geography itself are necessarily the concern of every 43 chapter in this volume. Similarly, in our working definition, ‘global design history’ 44 is not a world design history, that is to say, an attempt at comprehensively mapping

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Introduction 3

the history of design in all its geographical nooks and crannies. Global design history 1 is not a topic but a methodology, one that acknowledges that design as a practice 2 and product exists wherever there is human activity, on axes of time as well as space, 3 and recognizes the importance of writing histories that introduce the multi-sited 4 and various nature of design practices. Global design history begins from the 5 conviction that knowledge is always fragmentary, partial and provisional, and only 6 comes into its own through the unexpected challenges, confirmations, elaborations 7 and unsettlings that result from encounter. Such a stance is imperative, we feel, 8 particularly for students now adopting the methods they will use to understand the 9 world through their own research. 0 Far from an overarching narrative, then, global design history is a sited approach 11 that recognizes the multiplicities and fragmented condition in which we experience 12 and enact design, as part of being in the world. It is the recognition of inter- 13 connectivity, of situation within networks, often of asymmetrical power and 14 exchange. And it can only be written through collaboration. In other words, Global 15 Design History is emphatically not an attempt to write a new master narrative. Rather, 16 this book asks three interrelated questions: what might an awareness of design 17 contribute to global history? What might an awareness of the global contribute to 18 the history of design, and to the practice of design itself? And how might increased 19 attention to the global nuances of design practice today challenge and advance the 20 practice of its history? 21 22 23 Models 24 The contributions included in this volume show the wealth and diversity of focused 25 studies within the developing field of global design history. Our contributors borrow 26 approaches from the social sciences, in particular economics and sociology, from 27 visual and material culture studies, and from the emerging field of global history in 28 the humanities. 29 Two approaches to global history have been key in recent debates: connections 30 and comparisons. Connections are perhaps the easiest way to understand globalism 31 and processes of globalization. Several contributions in this volume show how 32 connections not only contribute to the exchange, trade and circulation of goods or 33 objects; they are themselves shaped by such material artefacts. This demands a 34 ‘centre-less’ logic for design history, in which the place/space of creation, and the 35 spirit of the ‘pioneer’ or creative mind, are sidelined in order to privilege the 36 interactive movement of things and ideas, and the processes of cross-fertilization of 37 taste. One might think about the different meanings assumed by a specific object 38 when moving across cultures; or the power of communication for ideas, images, 39 and concepts concerning material or immaterial products, as illustrated by Michael 40 Golec in the case of the American telephone systems of the 1920s. 41 Communication is a particularly important concept in design history, most readily 42 theorized in terms of codification and de-codification of design specifications, but 43 also by skills and knowledge of productive processes and ideas about artefacts. As 44

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4 Sarah Teasley, Giorgio Riello and Glenn Adamson

1 Gerritsen and Guth make clear in their essays, it is not just a matter of highlighting 2 conceptual and material channels of communication, or of demonstrating how 3 medium affects message and vice versa. As theories of communication make clear, 4 connections often happen in an unstructured manner. They are affected by material 5 and social conditions – a hill is easier to cross than a lake, and a friendly government 6 is preferable to an enemy one. Like our image of history itself, lines of communi- 7 cation are malleable entities that are continuously re-cast. Historians like to talk about 8 ‘entanglements’ not just to underline the human nature of connections, but also their 9 messiness, complexity and impermanence. Such old-fashioned concepts as ‘influence’ 0 (a hobby-horse in art historical circles) can be revivified through epidemiological 11 metaphors to explain global processes of conception, success, as well as the phe- 12 nomena of ‘bubbling up’, diffusion and ‘de-fusion’ of taste, fashion and design. 13 In both its theoretical and practical forms, design has embraced the notion of 14 networks. While establishing the importance of tracing the movements and agency 15 of individual actors, network analysis links design to forms of professional organ- 16 izations influenced by modern media of communication. Network theory helps us 17 to understand how knowledge (of any form, from a decorative pattern or method 18 of weaving to an industrial technique or piece of proprietary software) is transmitted 19 across cultures. Symmetries and asymmetries of information – as economists remind 20 us – account for profound differences in design across the globe, even in the present 21 age of so-called cultural homogeneity. Papers in this volume address these issues in 22 various ways. For example, John Maciuika’s essay on the global networks of the 23 Deutscher Werkbund shows the making and unmaking of specific forms of design 24 networks supported by forms of political power. Christopher Breward focuses on 25 ‘fashion cities’ to reflect on the role of individual nodes within a globally networked 26 system. 27 Many connective historical narratives focus on questions of progress or modern- 28 ization. These may combine economic explanations (trade, production, etc.) with 29 cultural aspects (reception, negotiation, refusal, etc.). Conversely, comparative forms 30 of global/world history focus on differences, discontinuities and fractures. Economic 31 historians have contributed to comparative forms of global history through a decade- 32 long debate over the so-called ‘great divergence’, the idea that the European 33 economy ‘industrialized’ and society ‘modernized’ during the eighteenth century, 34 while other parts of the world did not. Within this narrative, the twenty-first-cen- 35 tury industrialization of India and China is seen as part of a process of ‘convergence’. 36 While potentially compatible with the Eurocentrism that somewhat ironically haunts 37 global history, the problem of why Europe grew rich and Asia did not in the modern 38 period (and the consequent problem of how and why Asia is becoming as rich as 39 Europe now) is indeed an important question for design history, a discipline that 40 has long considered its subject matter central to processes of economic development. 41 In this volume, the contribution by Victor Margolin on India vis-à-vis Europe, and 42 John Styles’ look at early English importation of Indian cotton textiles, address issues 43 of comparative development and thoughtfully raise the question of what made 44 European design, innovation and associated economic growth, distinctive.

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Comparative methodologies are not widely used in design history. This is sur- 1 prising if one thinks about the wealth of studies on different nations – both in Europe 2 and also, increasingly, outside the borders of the Western world – that have 3 addressed implicitly transnational topics such as the professionalization of design, the 4 emergence of specific stylistic vocabularies, or the cultural embeddedness of design. 5 The juxtaposition and eventual cross-referencing of existing research is one of the 6 areas of great potential for the study both of design and design history. As Basile 7 Zimmermann’s paper analysing online social networks in contemporary China 8 shows, this approach can shed light not only on cultural similarities and differences 9 but also on ideas of ‘cultural suitability’, attitudes to reproduction and copying. 0 Comparisons also help us in understanding forms of hybridism and the borrowing 11 of conceptual and material language, as Gökhan Karakus and his respondent, Edward 12 S. Cooke, Jr., indicate in their discussion of modernism in Turkey. 13 So how might design history add to these attempts to model the global? What 14 appears distinctive to the field, when compared to other forms of history, is the 15 materiality of its subject matter: the object. Objects are both the outcomes and the 16 conveyors of design. The concept of reification (the process of making real) might 17 appear rather crude and old-fashioned in an age when digital creation and com- 18 munication seem to be separating creativity from materiality. However, several of 19 the essays included here find in the confined, concrete space of the ‘designed object’ 20 a way to deal with sometimes bewildering geographies and chronologies. For 21 instance, Marta Ajmar-Wollheim and Luca Molà’s analysis of the famous Molino 22 ewer, now preserved at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, presents it as 23 the product of cross-cultural networks of manufacturing. This is one object that 24 captures in its materiality complex relationships of production, taste and meaning 25 that developed in space from Northern Europe (where the main body of the object 26 was made), to Syria/Egypt (where it was inlaid in silver), and Venice (where it was 27 used by the Molino family). 28 The aspiration of global design history is not to privilege a special class of ‘global 29 design objects’, those artefacts that represent processes of globalization better than 30 others do. In fact, objects can only ever be local, but they capture in their material 31 folds processes and ideas that are often super-local. The object is therefore never the 32 final topic of research; it is the methodological tool through which innovative forms 33 of research take shape. In her response to Ajmar-Wollheim and Molà, Dana 34 Leibsohn refers to ‘difficult objects’ that challenge and disrupt established narratives. 35 Curators refer to ‘surviving objects’ that testify to events and historical processes that 36 other sources cannot reveal. Other essays in this volume, including Peter McNeil’s 37 analysis of the collections of Australian designers Easton Pearson, creatively move 38 from the materiality of artefacts to their linguistic valences, zooming in and out to 39 connect the object with large-scale processes or to contextualize specific historical 40 issues within what we might call ‘object-scapes’. 41 The importance given to objects in design history is perhaps second only to the 42 importance given to people. Even more than objects, human beings are space- and 43 time-bound. Gerritsen uses ceramics, their Chinese producers and their cosmopolitan 44

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1 consumers to highlight the relationship between the local and the global and their 2 mutual influence. Tom Barker and Ashley Hall, in their account of a collaborative 3 project between London- and Accra-based design schools, NGOs and governmental 4 organizations, stress the importance of particular personal actions and relations in 5 shaping the course of the project. Recent global history has given great attention to 6 the role of individuals in the attempt both to connect the micro and the macro, and 7 to better understand agency (that is, the question of who decides what). Processes 8 that might appear impersonal and supra-human in nature can be partly grasped 9 through attending to particular life histories – which may or may not be treated as 0 exceptional. Individuals express agency through objects and their design. A design 11 history with global ambitions cannot ignore the role of consumers, and their 12 attraction to ideas such as the ‘exotic’, the ‘ethnic’, ‘authenticity’ and ‘origin’. Nor 13 should consumers’ capacity to refuse and negotiate design and artefacts be overlooked. 14 Today, as McNeil makes clear, these phenomena are particularly clear in the field of 15 fashion, where diasporic influences, cosmopolitan ideals, and local stereotypes inform 16 not just the ways in which fashion is represented on catwalks or in magazines, but 17 also the choices of consumers around the world. 18 This brief discussion of models prompts a further question: in a field of subject 19 matter that is for all practical purposes infinite, what sort of priorities might a global 20 history of design set itself? We have already argued that a large-scale story, which 21 tries to explain everything, is unsuitable to a field whose complexity and nuances 22 should be preserved and safeguarded, even highlighted. One of the current pre- 23 occupations is revisionism. Classic interpretations of design as characterized by the 24 double-breasted straitjacket of modernity and industrialization are already being 25 challenged by global approaches. A half-century ago, in Pioneers of Modern Design 26 (1936), Nikolaus Pevsner accepted that design was both ‘modern’ and quintessen- 27 tially ‘industrial’, but by doing so placed it within a history that was both European 28 and Eurocentric. A global perspective seriously questions such assumptions, and the 29 grand narrative of design evolution they imply. Furthermore, it more accurately 30 reflects design’s actual situation as a globally always-local practice, thus opening 31 doors for history’s participation in the present. In this volume, the concept of design 32 is proved to be useful in the study of periods prior to Pevsner’s ‘modern’, and in 33 places where neither modernity nor industrialization are concepts of much heuristic 34 power. However, we should not see the present ‘global-mania’ as just an occasion 35 for disciplinary reassessment. 36 37 Subjects 38 39 Where does global design history belong, then? Not only where it might seem most 40 obvious – along the sailing routes of the East India Company, say, or sweatshops in 41 the so-called ‘Third World’. Paradoxically, to be concerned with the global is in some 42 ways to think independently of geography. Global design history is not a matter of 43 studying ‘hot spots’ of exchange; it demands that all design be understood as 44 implicated in a network of mutually relevant, geographically expansive connections.

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It is therefore helpful to think about certain characteristic subjects that act as 1 helpful points of entry to the global. Amongst these, one of the most obvious is 2 exchange. By this, we mean the simple movement of things in cultural space. 3 Exchange is a term that can be applied not only to commodities intended for the 4 market, but also tools, images, ideas and prototypes. Under this heading can be 5 placed such diverse subtopics as commercial trade, scientific correspondence, the 6 transplanting of plants and animals, and objects carried during migration (both 7 voluntary and enforced). Design history is a unique way to link these disparate 8 phenomena together. As Guth’s essay, amongst others, makes clear, focusing on 9 objects permits us to see exchange as a materialized totality, not limited to particular 0 frameworks such as economics, aesthetics, or technology. 11 Any instance of exchange finds three key variables at work: value, information, 12 and time. When an object moves across a boundary, its value is invariably re- 13 determined – often increased, sometimes reduced, and certainly altered. (One can 14 even argue that ‘boundaries’ are little more than lines, legal and otherwise, that 15 mark such shifts.) How objects gain, retain, or lose value is partly determined by 16 the information they might carry. How well can objects be read by those who 17 come into contact with them? This depends very much on the things and people 18 involved, but regardless, translatability is one clear advantage that artefacts have over 19 texts. The content they carry, insofar as it is grounded in matters such as func- 20 tion and materiality, travels more easily than information embedded in written 21 language. This is true for historians as well. Anyone who has tried to study the 22 history of exchange archivally, by examining ships’ logs and bills of lading for 23 example, will immediately grasp the usefulness of artefacts. Lists of numbers may 24 represent one facet of the trading experience (a narrow definition of value), but they 25 leave much unsaid. Nor is the historian’s viewpoint disconnected from that of 26 the consumer. Much of the way that an object’s value and information are assessed 27 within the market, both by the sender and the receiver, is a function of time. When 28 an object is novel within a certain context, it may attain value simply through its 29 newness. But precisely because of that unfamiliarity, it may not successfully trans- 30 mit useful knowledge. The elapse of time may bring understanding, but perhaps 31 also disregard. Value and information thus have a dynamic relation to one another 32 over time. 33 Moving beyond the central fact of exchange, we might also consider structures 34 that encourage and shape movement. Empire and tourism are arguably amongst the 35 most important examples. Both are social systems that pave the way for objects and 36 people to travel. They set things and people into motion, and determine their routes. 37 Both obviously incorporate power relations. In the case of empire, one geographical 38 locale exerts control over its colonies or ‘margins’, thus defining itself as a ‘centre’. 39 Tourism is less clear-cut, and can involve a degree of mutuality (Koreans go to 40 France, and vice versa). But within the experience of any given person, the touristic 41 site is rendered into a curiosity, while ‘home’ is tacitly rendered normative. Designed 42 objects can mediate this dynamic, amplifying or contesting the flow patterns of 43 empire and tourism: from the classical fragments sold to Grand Tourists in the 44

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1 eighteenth century, to the ‘authentically’ crafted curios of the nineteenth, to the 2 protest posters and T-shirts of today. 3 Then there are design phenomena that incorporate the global within themselves. 4 These are structured in the same geographically encompassing fashion that global 5 design history itself aspires to, and are therefore unusually apt subjects for study. First, 6 there are contexts that claim to represent the world objectively, such as exhibitions 7 (notably the ‘world’s fairs’ of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries) and museums 8 that aspire to a degree of comprehensiveness. Such institutions are attempts to grasp 9 the world, and it is no surprise that historically they have been intimately intertwined 0 with both empire and tourism. While the two would seem to be roughly analogous 11 – the temporary and permanent versions of a single phenomenon – it is worth noting 12 that exhibitions have tended to be more explicitly ideological, whereas museums 13 cloak themselves in a neutrality or objectivity that is in fact a form of ‘path 14 dependency’. If a one-off exhibition can nakedly serve the interests of its sponsors, 15 a permanent collection must in some sense constantly reaffirm its own past premises. 16 It takes on its own logic and life. But exhibitions and museums do have in common 17 the effort to miniaturize or edit the world, so that it can be comprehended. In the 18 process, as Dipti Bhagat argues in her study of South African participation in 19 expositions, they ‘perform’ the prejudices and objectives of their creators. This 20 explicitly global vision, which may be inspiring or dismaying (or both), makes 21 exhibitions and museums ideal candidates for the study of the design historian. 22 Without any claim to such objectivity, but equally explicit in their global 23 ambition, are multinational corporations. In recent years these entities have achieved 24 such prominence within discussions of globalization (and anti-globalization) that 25 they sometimes seem to define the politics of the subject. In this book, relatively 26 little attention is paid to the subject, except as a backdrop to more small-scale or 27 localized design innovation (as in the chapters by Zimmermann, McNeil and 28 Karakus). This was not intentional on the part of the editors, but it does suggest that 29 the role of companies in determining the course of global design has been somewhat 30 overplayed in popular accounts, and points to the persistent power of objects and 31 personal contact. Nevertheless, there is no denying the power and pervasiveness of 32 corporations, and the degree to which they have reconfigured design’s impact on 33 culture. Design historians may contribute to an understanding of these complex and 34 ever-changing entities in at least two areas. First, one might look at the way that 35 corporations consciously deploy design, as Golec does in his contribution to the 36 book. Branding, architecture, and even the dress and deportment of employees, 37 might be analysed either in strategic terms, or alternatively in a deconstructivist 38 mode, as chinks in the armour of frictionless capital. Second, the design historian 39 might look comparatively at zones of corporate influence, studying local variations 40 in consumption of supposedly all-pervasive companies like Coca-Cola, McDonalds, 41 Carrefour, Sony, or Disney. 42 A final subject for global design history is the designer her- or himself. As discussed 43 by Jilly Traganou, globetrotting architects – the likes of Zaha Hadid or Rem 44 Koolhaas – have emerged as key cultural brokers for the early twenty-first century.

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Koolhaas in particular has made globalization both the subject and mechanism of 1 his practice, writing on Lagos as a city of the future, and designing Beijing’s CCTV 2 tower as an emblem of Chinese nationalism. Barker and Hall’s account documents 3 the movement of young designers, a less ‘glamorous’ but equally salient example of 4 designers’ travel. The history of individual practitioners who refuse to be pinned 5 down in space is much older than the ‘superstar’ designer or travelling studio, 6 though. Earlier models of transnational practice can be found in the early modern 7 artists who hopped from court to court, offering their services; craftspeople working 8 in the conditions of a diaspora; designers associated with the military; and couturiers, 9 who began using internationalism as a fashionable calling card in the late nineteenth 0 century. There is no doubt, though, that technology has increased the incidence 11 and ease with which design practice becomes global. After all, even the most rudi- 12 mentary web page is a global artefact. 13 14 15 Conclusion 16 Global design history might profitably address many other subjects: the recycling of 17 goods; the influence of television, film and websites on taste; the effect of chain 18 stores in retail environments; and many others. Indeed, there are few subjects within 19 design history that would not profit from a global view. Even the most insular design 20 phenomenon takes its meaning partly from what it excludes. In this sense, the 21 present book offers a range of approaches for analysing the history of design in a 22 global context, not in a spirit of comprehensiveness, but in the hopes of spurring 23 further work. The bibliography of global design history resources – archives, 24 organizations, existing research and the like – included with this book is intended 25 as a further springboard for such research. 26 The book has a simple structure, based on the principle of scholarly exchange. 27 We offer a series of short case studies by a range of specialist design historians, 28 designers and scholars in related disciplines including anthropology, sociology, art 29 and architectural history. The chronological range is wide, from the early modern 30 period to the present day, and so too is the breadth of subject matter. Essays address 31 the whole gamut of design, from relatively traditional areas such as fashion, arch- 32 itecture and products, to new and emerging fields such as interaction and system 33 design. Each chapter is followed by a short response by a scholar with related (but 34 not identical) expertise, intended to focus key themes, to situate the essay within 35 existing scholarly discussion, and to invite further engagement on the part of the 36 reader. In some cases, we have paired specialists in the same area of the world; more 37 often we have brought together researchers working on similar issues from different 38 geographical and sometimes disciplinary bases. The implication here is that global 39 design history cannot be a solo affair. It requires collaboration. In assembling the 40 book, we sought to include contributors who could reflect knowledgeably on the 41 discipline, as well as the specifics of their chosen topic. This has inevitably and rather 42 ironically led to a tilt toward regions where design history is particularly well- 43 established as an academic discipline and area of scholarly research: Europe and 44

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1 North America. However, we have tried to reflect perspectives from other locations, 2 and have consciously sought to achieve some breadth of geography in the book’s 3 coverage – though we make no claims to even-handedness, much less compre- 4 hensiveness, in this respect. 5 Despite the range and quality that we hope to have achieved in this book, global 6 design history is a practice in its very infancy. And while we hope that anyone 7 interested in design history, global history or design practice in a global context will 8 find the volume useful, we are particularly excited for a response from the next 9 generation of researchers and designers: students who are still forming their 0 intellectual paths, and who might define their careers in other ways than area-specific 11 expertise. The expectations that face these emerging researchers are high. Language 12 study, methodological sophistication, and creative empirical research of a high 13 standard are all absolute requirements. This poses real challenges, both to educators 14 and students. We feel strongly however that the effort is not only worthwhile, but 15 absolutely necessary. Since the 1990s, design history’s relevance within the human- 16 ities and social sciences has been based primarily on an interest in consumption 17 studies, shared by historians, sociologists, economists, and anthropologists. All of 18 these disciplines are now undergoing their own ‘global turns’. As was the case with 19 consumption, design history has a crucial contribution to make in such a context. 20 Design may be only one piece of the big puzzle of global history, but it connects 21 other factors in a uniquely lateral way. Go-between; communicative sign; com- 22 modity; weapon; souvenir; tool: an artefact can be all of these things, and more. 23 Design has always been a fluid, global affair. It is now time for historians to use our 24 discipline to reflect this fact, and place our own voices in truly, responsibly global 25 discussions. 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44

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1 2 1 3 4 THE GLOBAL RENAISSANCE 5 6 7 Cross-cultural objects in the 8 early modern period 9 0 11 Marta Ajmar-Wollheim and Luca Molà 12 13 14 15 16 17 In his advice book aimed at the gentleman, first published in 1546, the Italian friar 18 and scholar Sabba da Castiglione outlines the ornaments suitable for the interior: 19 20 Others furnish and adorn their rooms with tapestries and textiles from Flanders 21 with figures, foliage and greenery; some with Turkish and Syrian carpets and 22 bed covers; . . . some with ingeniously wrought leather hangings from Spain; 23 and others with new, fantastic and bizarre, but ingenious things from the 24 Levant or Germany . . . And all these ornaments I recommend and praise, 25 because they sharpen one’s intellect, politeness, civility and courtesy.1 26 27 The international range of the furnishings listed is dazzling, and at odds with a notion 28 of the Italian Renaissance object-scape as the quintessential expression of a pre- 29 dominant and self-contained culture. If we compare Sabba’s description with 30 contemporary inventories and account books, we can see that his is not just an 31 aspirational list compiled in the tradition of humanistic rhetoric, but an accurate 32 reflection of current practice. As this text also makes clear, the display of foreign 33 goods is not a purely aesthetic exercise, but an activity at the core of early modern 34 self-fashioning strategies. What does ‘the Renaissance’ have to do with this 35 globalized view of material culture and, in turn, what does material globalization 36 have to do with current conceptualizations of ‘the Renaissance’?2 37 The ‘Global Renaissance’ is an ongoing research project aimed at exploring for 38 the first time through objects, pictures and texts the impact that the European 39 Renaissance had on the rest of the world and, in turn, how this period, generally 40 presented as a quintessentially Western phenomenon, was in fact widely informed 41 by cultures from around the globe. Spanning the centuries between 1300 and 1700, 42 the project aims at setting European material culture against the global background 43 of intensifying cultural and economic connections. It also questions traditional views 44

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1 of this period, dominated by narratives of the emergence of European nation states 2 and a growing divide between ‘the West’ and the rest of the world.3 Instead, by 3 looking at the relationship between Europe, the Islamic world, sub-Saharan Africa, 4 India, China, Japan and America, it transcends narrow geographical boundaries and 5 explores through material, visual and written culture how Renaissance Europe 6 informed and responded to the rest of the world. Tapping into a growing interest 7 by scholars in global connections, the project intends to offer a fresh perspective on 8 the Renaissance. 9 The notion of a ‘Global Renaissance’ is seemingly a paradox, although it is 0 intriguing to observe, with a Jakob Burckhardt’s hat on, how many civilizations 11 around the world – from the Ottomans to the Mughals, from the Italians to the Ming 12 – experienced some kind of ‘efflorences’ between the fourteenth and the seventeenth 13 centuries.4 It is not, however, the conventional meaning of ‘Renaissance’ as essentially 14 a ‘movement’ limited to the sphere of high culture that we intend to explore.5 In 15 this limited perspective, it would be undoubtedly absurd to suggest that the whole 16 world experienced a process of cultural ‘rebirth’ closely comparable to that of Europe. 17 Our approach, by contrast, aims to consider the implications that the revival of 18 antiquity and the diffusion of humanism – with its positive appreciation for the 19 classical notions of ‘magnificence’ and ‘splendour’ – had for the emergence of new 20 models of consumption, at first among Italian elites and then throughout the 21 continent, creating a distinctive Renaissance material culture that in various degrees 22 informed all aspects of European societies.6 If we, therefore, understand the 23 Renaissance as primarily an all-embracing phenomenon based on a distinctive and 24 innovative way of using objects as social and cultural signifiers with an inner civilizing 25 dynamic, then the process of global exchange and the complex system of inter- 26 connections that developed during the fourteenth to seventeenth centuries would 27 have enabled some aspects of the Renaissance, particularly those embedded within 28 material culture, to have a genuinely global reach. It is thus not so far-fetched to assert 29 that the cultural and material vitality of the Renaissance was not a ‘local’, if pan- 30 European, phenomenon, but instead the result of a network of impulses that went 31 far beyond Europe or even the Middle East, encompassing China and the New 32 World. Moreover, this approach will allow us to detect the development of an 33 ecumenical visual and material language on a global scale, and the emergence of an 34 international community of taste.7 35 The growing integration of global markets in the early modern period opened 36 up new possibilities and provided a fundamental stimulus for the production in 37 Europe of goods that were meant to cross cultural divides. Among the industrial 38 artefacts with a global dimension, glass is certainly one of the most interesting and 39 less studied. The skilled glassmakers of Murano were able to devise and produce a 40 variety of different objects aimed at the growing Renaissance global market.8 If the 41 full-size enamelled and bejewelled set of armour for parade made entirely of crystal 42 glass and complete with a glass scimitar and saddle – based on an original metal 43 armour brought from Syria – that Venetian merchants planned to commission from 44 a famous workshop in Murano in 1512 remains a unique piece of inventiveness,9

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the production and exportation of vases and mosque lamps with Islamic inscriptions 1 for the markets of Damascus, Cairo and Istanbul was a common occurrence. Pilgrims 2 going to the Holy Land on board Venetian galleys mention them already in the late 3 fifteenth century, and drawings with precise specifications and measures were sent 4 to Murano by Venetian diplomats residing in the Ottoman Empire during the late 5 sixteenth century.10 6 A much wider and truly global market was available for glass beads in various 7 shapes and colours (in the documentary sources called rosette, smaltini, paternostrami, 8 contarie, margaritine) that imitated precious stones or had multicoloured designs within 9 them, and whose technology underwent a continuous evolution throughout the 0 Renaissance. Indeed, Venetian artisans and merchants supplied Seville, Lisbon and 11 Amsterdam with a wide range of beads that the Spanish, Portuguese and Dutch 12 traders afterwards exchanged for much more valuable products in the markets of 13 Asia, Africa and America.11 According to a secret report written for the Grand Duke 14 of Tuscany in the early 1590s, among the main export markets for Venetian beads, 15 mirrors, and crystal objects in the shape of lions, ships or fountains were the Iberian 16 peninsula and the Indies, a trade that was worth tens of thousands of ducats every 17 year.12 Interested in the commercial possibilities that this information documented, 18 the Florentines were soon able to attract Venetian artisans to Pisa, where, on 19 commission from a Portuguese converso (former Jew belonging to the Sephardic 20 community) merchant based in Antwerp, they started producing a peculiar type of 21 round bead with a light blue-yellowish hue that imitated a Western African marble 22 much in demand on the coastal markets of Angola.13 23 Silk fabrics, too, were one of the most important global commodities during the 24 Renaissance, being highly appreciated and frequently craved by the elites and middle 25 classes in all continents. A piece of brocaded silk velvet with a crimson colour 26 produced in Venice around the middle of the sixteenth century provides us with 27 one of the best examples of a ‘virtual’ Renaissance global object, which could have 28 been made – and probably was made – by processing and assembling together raw 29 and semi-finished materials coming from all the known corners of the world. 30 Indeed, for heavy fabrics such as brocades Venetians commonly employed silk 31 threads originating in different parts of Asia, where local reelers – usually women – 32 joined together smaller or greater numbers of cocoons’ filaments in order to obtain 33 a thread with variable degrees of thickness. Caravans loaded with thick silk pro- 34 duced in the regions around the Caspian Sea arrived from Persia to the eastern 35 Mediterranean shores, where they were joined by hundreds of parcels of thinner 36 Syrian threads and then carried on board ships to Venice. Here the two different 37 types of silks were mixed together to form the warp and weft of luxury textiles such 38 as our brocaded velvet. The pigments employed for dyeing these silks in crimson – 39 the most valuable and noble of all colours – had also for a long time been supplied 40 by the Asian continent. In the early 1540s, however, a new red dye arrived for the 41 first time in Venice from the New World and quickly conquered the greatest share 42 of the market. This was Mexican cochineal, a material obtained from the parasites 43 of a particular species of cactus that was produced in New Spain by native peasants 44

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1 under the control of Spanish colonial landowners, and then massively exported 2 across the Atlantic to Europe with the annual Royal Fleet. Cochineal had the same 3 chemical composition of traditional kermes but had a much higher colouring power 4 and fastness, all qualities that made this dye immediately popular among silk cloth 5 producers.14 The Asian silks dyed with American pigments, and treated with Turkish 6 or Italian alum as mordent, were then enriched for the weaving of brocades with 7 metal thread made with strips of beaten gold, which by the middle of the sixteenth 8 century was still reaching Venice from the mines of sub-Saharan Africa thanks to 9 the intermediation of Muslim and Portuguese merchants.15 Finally, all these global 0 materials were processed and then woven by Venetian artisans into a brocade with 11 a typical Renaissance design (in its turn mutuated and modified through the 12 centuries from original Oriental and Middle Eastern flower patterns), using Italian 13 know-how in combination with techniques that had originated in different parts of 14 the world – velvet making, for instance, arrived in Italy in the early fourteenth 15 century from China via Persia,16 while the application of cochineal to silk was first 16 discovered by a Spanish immigrant to Mexico in 1537.17 The global trading con- 17 nections that had acted as a centripetal force for the concentration in Venice of all 18 these goods were afterwards converted into a centrifugal motion that disseminated 19 Venetian silk fabrics for the consumption of elite customers across the globe. 20 The complex unfolding of this process of visual, material and technological 21 globalization can be explored in greater detail by looking at three types of non- 22 European commodities that participated in different ways to the creation within 23 Europe of a shared object-scape: carpets, metalwork and ceramics. What happened 24 to the look and meaning of these objects as they moved across cultures? 25 Carpets provide a useful starting point in assessing the impact of global objects 26 on Renaissance Europe. Generally purchased on the markets of Syria, Egypt or the 27 Ottoman Empire, from the early fifteenth century carpets became a popular fur- 28 nishing within wealthy Italian domestic interiors, where they were used to cover all 29 kinds of surfaces, from tables to chests, from writing desks to day-beds (lettucci).18 30 However, in spite of their pervasiveness, they provide an intriguing example of 31 resistance to naturalization, in terms of both manufacture and consumption. It is 32 clear that although the European demand increased considerably during the course 33 of the Renaissance, generally speaking carpets did not change significantly in design, 34 shape, technique or other aspects of manufacture to fit Western requirements better. 35 There is a sense, for example, that the range of different designs available was quite 36 limited, prompting some Italian customers to specify exactly what type of carpets 37 they did not want to purchase.19 Other methods of customization dear to the Italian 38 market, such as the application of armorial devices, provide another indication of 39 how reluctantly the carpets industry engaged with European demands. A letter 40 from the Florentine consul in Constantinople, Carlo Baroncelli, to Lorenzo the 41 Magnificent in Florence in 1473 apologizes for the fact that the Turkish carpet that 42 he is sending lacks the Medici arms because the manufacturing process of an armorial 43 carpet is punishingly slow.20 A marked resistance to customization is also visible in 44 the shapes available, which only rarely were intended specifically for Western

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furniture, as with table carpets made in Turkey or Egypt, with the cruciform design 1 conceived especially to fit the high-legged tables of Western Europe (see Figure 1.1). 2 The location and uses of carpets within European households seemingly confirm 3 this picture of physical and semantic displacement. Not only did the carpets’ original 4 placement on the floor not find much currency in Europe, where their status and 5 value would demand a more prestigious location, but their meaning as objects 6 closely associated with prayer was largely lost within secular Western environments. 7 Even in the very rare instances in which Italian inventories retain an allusion to 8 religious ritual, such as in the Squarciafico household in Genoa in 1567, where ‘nine 9 praying carpets’ could be found, it is also clear from the carpets’ material surround- 0 ings that this was merely a reference to their design, and not a suggestion that the 11 carpets would participate within devotional practices.21 On the whole, although 12 carpets enjoyed a remarkable popularity during the Renaissance, the geographical 13 and cultural disconnection between production and consumption meant that as a 14 commodity they remained an object of unilateral exchange situated at the periphery 15 of European Renaissance material culture, generating neither indigenous imitations 16 nor other material responses. 17 The process of interconnection becomes more dynamic with another type of 18 global commodity enjoying a remarkable popularity among European consumers in 19 the fifteenth century: Islamic damascened metalwork. Produced in Syria or Egypt 20 in significant quantities by Islamic craftsmen, it included a wide variety of fine 21 household objects ranging from inkstands to boxes, from fruits bowls to candlesticks. 22 The network of production responsible for the manufacture of these objects is 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 FIGURE 1.1 Table carpet, Cairo, Egypt, mid-16th century 43 Source: ©V&A Images/Victoria and Albert Museum, London 44

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1 remarkably cross-cultural. The itinerary that we know was performed by the Molino 2 ewer (see Figure 1.2) – an object owing its name to the Venetian family whose arms 3 are inscribed on the lid – suggests an extraordinarily multilayered biography.22 If we 4 look at the first stages of manufacture, the ewer would qualify as a Northern 5 European object. Made in Germany or Flanders between 1450 and 1500, it was 6 originally a serially produced plain brass ewer bearing a characteristically late-gothic 7 elongated shape and zoomorphic handle. If we look at its decoration it would qualify 8 as Islamic, as this object would have been shipped from Northern Europe over to 9 Syria or Egypt to be inlaid in silver by local Muslim craftsmen with elaborate 0 geometric and vegetal Mamluk ornament. After this transformative decoration was 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 FIGURE 1.2 Ewer, brass engraved and damascened with 38 silver with filling of black 39 lacquer, left side view with 40 The Arms of Molino of Venice, Flemish with the 41 decoration Italian (Venetian 42 Saracenic), late 15th century 43 Source: © V&A Images/Victoria 44 and Albert Museum, London

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applied, the piece was then sent to Italy, where it would have been customized 1 through the application of the family’s coat of arms. Therefore, when we take into 2 account its customization and consumption, an Italian claim can be added to the 3 chorus. We are thus looking at an object whose production and consumption is the 4 direct result of an interconnected network of manufacture, trade and supply 5 operating on a truly international scale. Its palimpsest-like identity is reflected in the 6 naming of objects such as this within Renaissance written records. In his Venetia città 7 nobilissima of 1581, Francesco Sansovino refers to them as ‘bronzi lavorati all’azimina’, 8 which we can translate as ‘bronzes wrought in an Arabic fashion’;23 within domestic 9 inventories they are often listed as objects ‘alla damaschina’, hinting at their supposed 0 provenance from Damascus. In the inventories of the Venetian community in 11 Damascus studied by Deborah Howard, however, these objects acquire a more 12 ethnic meaning, as they are often labelled as ‘alla morescha’, thus alluding to their 13 Moorish origins.24 14 It is with ceramics, however, that the evidence for global matrixes at work in the 15 early modern period is striking. Focussing on sixteenth-century Italian tin-glazed 16 earthenware, generally known as maiolica, is enlightening. Maiolica is rightly 17 perceived by scholarship as the quintessential Renaissance medium – in the con- 18 ventional, ‘humanistic’ sense of the word – combining as it does a low intrinsic, 19 monetary value with a high added value provided by its extraordinary variety and 20 multiplicity of shapes, decorations and iconographic themes – what Richard 21 Goldthwaite has termed ‘the value of culture’.25 Widely appreciated by the elites 22 across Europe – from scholars to princes – because of its high intellectual cache, 23 Italian maiolica embodied the Renaissance idea of the culturally charged artefact and 24 was enthusiastically collected. Because of its unparalleled creative receptivity, 25 maiolica can also be seen as an excellent indicator and agent of design transmission 26 across the globe. 27 If we look at the European production, one of the first examples of global 28 ceramics is sixteenth-century maiolica made in the Ligurian city of Genoa, then a 29 newly established centre of ceramic production. Most contemporary Italian maiolica 30 was largely inspired by classical motifs, complying with a Western notion of disegno 31 and sometimes aspiring to naturalism. Genoese maiolica was distinctive for its 32 rejection of all of these visual conventions. Instead, relying almost exclusively on 33 white-and-blue decoration, it imitated its contemporary Asian counterparts, either 34 Turkish Iznikware or Ming porcelain.26 Indeed, in a seminal article on the culture 35 of porcelain in world history, Robert Finlay charts the emergence in the sixteenth 36 century of ‘global patterns of trade which fostered the recycling of cultural fantasies, 37 the creation of hybrid wares, and the emergence of a common visual language’.27 38 Finlay’s analysis generates, as he admits, ‘a certain vertigo’ as he traces the global 39 connections at the root of the success of ceramics worldwide. 40 Being much cheaper than its Chinese counterpart, in the course of the sixteenth 41 century Genoese maiolica flooded the markets worldwide. Distributed via Antwerp 42 to Northern Europe, by 1550 it had also become prominent among glazed earthen- 43 ware exported via Spain to the American market. Its appearance and popularity were 44

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18 Marta Ajmar-Wollheim and Luca Molà

1 coincident with the peaking of Genoese influence in Spain, a time when the bankers 2 of Genoa repeatedly rescued the financially troubled Spanish monarchy and when 3 Ligurians infiltrated all social levels of the Iberian peninsula. Archaeological exca- 4 vations in Mexico have confirmed the popularity of Genoese pottery in the New 5 World, where potsherds have been found in considerable quantities, and which are 6 most often associated with late sixteenth-century Ming porcelains, coming into 7 Mexico on annual galleons from Manila. It is therefore possible that ‘the connection 8 between Chinese and European ceramics, usually believed to have been established 9 through the Mediterranean world from the East, did in fact occur, via the Western 0 hemisphere, in America’.28 Known locally as ‘porcelletta’ or ‘little porcelain’, 11 Genoese maiolica obviously claimed a connection with its superior Chinese proto- 12 type. However, it was also rooted in the local production and often consumed in 13 situ. The term ‘porcelletta’ is striking, because it is close to the more common 14 ‘porcellana’, porcelain, but it is a diminutive expression, almost a term of endear- 15 ment, evoking familiarity. It did not just refer to its design, but could also be used 16 to refer to the white-and-blue colour scheme of these objects, as the expression 17 ‘pinti color porceleta’ (‘painted of the colour of porcelain’), found in Ligurian 18 potters’ workshops’ records, suggests.29 It is frequently found in Genoese interiors.30 19 This pottery, made ‘global’ by virtue of its design inspired by Turkish or Chinese 20 models, was also ‘local’: sourced from a Ligurian workshop, perhaps even made by 21 order, assimilated as a familiar object for use, and renamed accordingly. 22 There is no pretence, obviously, that our investigation into the material aspects 23 of this ‘Global Renaissance’ will substitute the current notions of that period held 24 by cultural and art historians. But unlike other scholars, who consider the produc- 25 tion, exchange and consumption of the objects we have been talking about as 26 inhabiting ‘the margins of the Renaissance’ (coherently with a view of the phenom- 27 enon as a restricted and elitist ‘movement’ animated by a small group of humanists 28 interested mainly in the Greek and Roman classics),31 we believe that a full 29 understanding of the European Renaissance cannot be achieved without taking into 30 consideration the complex processes of exchange, cross-fertilization and hybridiza- 31 tion with other civilizations across the world. It is, therefore, the beginning of a 32 progressively more globally integrated material culture that we want to explore, in 33 the conviction that this process began much earlier than is generally thought, and 34 that it was crucial in informing, and in many ways defining, what we today 35 understand as ‘the Renaissance’. 36 Since our research is just at the beginning, much still remains to be done. We 37 would need to assess, for instance, the role of different cross-cultural agents – such 38 as trading minorities or diplomats – in disseminating design patterns and suggesting 39 new consumption habits; the ways in which technologies of production were 40 acquired, adapted and transformed, and what were the implications and impacts for 41 different material cultures locally; the shifting meanings and uses of objects according 42 to the changing cultural and social milieux in which they moved; and also the 43 conflicts and resistance that such movements created. These are no small tasks, such 44 that only a globally-disseminated team of scholars with a multicultural range of

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specializations can dream of accomplishing them. But this is the challenge of modern 1 scholarship: global questions require global enterprises. 2 3 4 Notes 5 1 S. da Castiglione (1561) Ricordi ovvero ammaestramenti, 1561, f. 118v: ‘Alcun’altri apparano 6 et adornano le lor stanze di panno di razza et di celoni venuti di Fiandra, fatti à figure et 7 à fogliami, et chi à verdure, et chi con tapeti et moschetti turcheschi et soriani . . . chi con corami ingegnosamente lavorati venuti di Spagna, et alcun’altri con cose nuove, 8 fantastiche, et bizarre, ma ingegnose, venute di Levante ò d’Alemagna . . .; e tutti questi 9 ornamenti ancora commendo et laudo, perche arguiscono ingegno, politezza, civiltà, et 0 cortegiania . . .’ 11 2 On the current debate on the concept of the Renaissance see Luca Molà (2008) ‘Rinascimento’, in Marcello Fantoni and Amedeo Quondam (eds) (2008) Le parole che 12 noi usiamo. Categorie storiografiche e interpretative dell’Europa moderna, Rome: Bulzoni, 13 pp. 11–31. 14 3 For a reassessment of this view see Kenneth Pomeranz (2001) The Great Divergence: Europe, 15 China and the Making of the Modern World Economy, Princeton: Princeton University Press; and Kenneth Pomeranz and Steven Topik (1999) The World that Trade Created: Culture, 16 Society, and the World Economy, 1400–The Present, Armonk, NY and London: 17 M.E. Sharpe. 18 4 For the concept of ‘efflorences’ see Jack Goldstone (2002) ‘Efflorences and Economic 19 Growth in World History: Rethinking the “Rise of the West” and the Industrial 20 Revolution’, Journal of World History, 13, pp. 323–89. For the Renaissance seen in a global context see Jack Goody (2010) Renaissances: The One or the Many?, Cambridge: 21 Cambridge University Press. 22 5 See Peter Burke (2007) ‘Decentring the Renaissance: The Challenge of Postmodernism’, 23 in Stephen J. Milner (ed.) At the Margins. Minority Groups in Premodern Italy, Minneapolis 24 and London: University of Minnesota Press, pp. 36–49. 6 Richard A. Goldthwaite (1987) ‘The Empire of Things: Consumer Demand in 25 Renaissance Italy’, in F.W. Kent and Patricia Simons (eds) Patronage, Art, and Society in 26 Renaissance Italy, Oxford: Clarendon Press, pp. 153–75; Idem (1993) Wealth and the 27 Demand for Art in Italy 1300–1600, Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University 28 Press; Evelyn Welch (2002) ‘Public Magnificence and Private Display: Pontano’s De splendore and the Domestic Arts’, Journal of Design History, 15, pp. 211–27. 29 7 Robert Finlay (1998) ‘The Pilgrim Art: The Culture of Porcelain in World History’, 30 Journal of World History, 9, pp. 141–87; Rosamond E. Mack (2000) Bazaar to Piazza. 31 Islamic Trade and Italian Art, 1300–1600, Berkeley, Los Angeles and London: University 32 of California Press. 33 8 On the import of Venetian glass in China see E. Byrne Curtis (2009) Glass Exchange Between Europe and China, 1550–1800. Diplomatic, Mercantile and Technological Interactions, 34 Aldershot: Ashgate. 35 9 G. Dalla Santa (1916–17) ‘Commerci, vita privata e notizie politiche dei giorni della lega 36 di Cambrai (da lettere del mercante veneziano Martino Merlini)’, Atti del Reale Istituto 37 Veneto di Scienze, Lettere ed Arti, 76, pp. 1566–68. 10 Deborah Howard (2000) Venice & The East. The Impact of the Islamic World on Venetian 38 Architecture 1100–1500, New Haven and London: Yale University Press. 39 11 P. Zecchin (2005) ‘La nascita delle conterie veneziane’, Journal of Glass Studies, 47, 40 pp. 77–92. 41 12 G. Corti (1973) ‘L’industria del vetro di Murano alla fine del secolo XVI in una relazione al Granduca di Toscana’, Studi Veneziani, 13, pp. 649–54. 42 13 Luigi Zecchin (1987) ‘“Conterie” e “contarie”’, in Luigi Zecchin, Vetro e vetrai di Murano: 43 studi sulla storia del vetro, vol. 1, Venice: Arsenale, pp. 85–91. 44

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1 14 Luca Molà (2000) The Silk Industry of Renaissance Venice, Baltimore and London: Johns 2 Hopkins University Press, pp. 55–137. 15 Ugo Tucci (1981) ‘Le emissioni monetarie di Venezia e i movimenti internazionali 3 dell’oro’, in Idem, Mercanti, navi, monete nel Cinquecento veneziano, Bologna: Il Mulino, 4 pp. 275–316; P.D. Curtin (1983) ‘Africa and the Wider Monetary World’, in John F. 5 Richards (ed.) Precious Metals in the Later Medieval and Early Modern Worlds, Durham, NC: 6 Carolina Academic Press, pp. 231–68. 16 S. Desrosiers (2000) ‘Sur l’origine d’un tissu qui a participé à la fortune de Venise: le 7 velours de soie’, in Luca Mola_, Reinhold C. Mueller, and Claudio Zanier (eds), La seta 8 in Italia dal Medioevo al Seicento. Dal baco al drappo, Venice: Marsilio, pp. 35–61. 9 17 Woodrow Borah (1943) Silk Raising in Colonial Mexico, Berkeley and Los Angeles: 0 University of California Press, p. 10. 18 Donald King and David Sylvester (eds) (1983) The Eastern Carpet in the Western World, 11 London: Arts Council of Great Britain; Serare Yetkin (1981) Historical Turkish Carpets, 12 Istanbul: Tu_rkiye Is Bankasi Cultural Publications; Jennifer Mary Wearden (2003) 13 Oriental Carpets and their Structure: Highlights from the V&A Collection, London: V&A 14 Publications; J. Mills (1983) ‘The Coming of the Carpet to the West’, in King and Sylvester (eds) Eastern Carpet, pp.10–23; Giovanni Curatola (1983) Oriental Carpets, 15 London: Souvenir; Marco Spallanzani (2007) Oriental Rugs in Renaissance Florence, 16 Florence: SPES. 17 19 Ibid., pp. 104–5, doc. 78. 18 20 Ibid., p. 105, doc. 80. 21 ASG, Fondo Notai Antichi, 2501, 12 October 1567. 19 22 Anna Contadini (1999) ‘Artistic Contacts and Future Tasks’, in Charles Burnett and Anna 20 Contadini (eds) Islam and the Italian Reinassance, Colloquia 5, The Warburg Institute, London: 21 The Warburg Institute, University of London, pp. 1–65; Idem (2006) ‘Middle-Eastern 22 Objects’, in Marta Ajmar-Wollheim and Flora Dennis (eds) At Home in Renaissance Italy, London: V&A Publications, pp. 308–21. 23 23 Francesco Sansovino (1581) Venetia città nobilissima, Venice, p. 142: ‘Le credentiere 24 d’argento, et gli altri fornimenti di porcellane, di peltri, et di rami, ò bronzi lavorati 25 all’azimina, sono senza fine’. 26 24 Francesco Bianchi and Deborah Howard (2003) ‘Life and Death in Damascus: The Material Culture of Venetians in the Syrian Capital in the Mid-Fifteenth Century’, Studi 27 Veneziani, 46, pp. 233–300. 28 25 Richard Goldthwaite (1989) ‘The Economic and Social World of Italian Renaissance 29 Maiolica’, Renaissance Quarterly, 42, pp. 1–32. 30 26 Federico Marzinot (1979) Ceramica e ceramisti di Liguria, Genova: Sagep; Idem (ed.) (1989) La ceramica, Genova; Carlo Varaldo (1994) ‘Maiolica ligure: contributo della ricerca 31 archeologica. Alla conoscenza delle tipologie decorative del vasellame’, Albisola, 27, 32 pp. 171–93. 33 27 Finlay, ‘The Pilgrim Art’, p. 146; John Carswell (1985) Blue and White: Chinese Porcelain 34 and its Impact on the Western World, Exhibition Catalogue, Chicago: David and Alfred Smart Gallery and University of Chicago. 35 28 F.C. Lister and R.H. Lister (2003) ‘Ligurian Maiolica in Spanish America’, Atti XXVI 36 Convegno Internazionale della Ceramica, Centro Ligure per la Storia della Ceramica, Albisola, 37 pp. 311–20. 38 29 A.M. Rossetti (1995) ‘Ceramica a Savona ed Albisola nella seconda metà del Cinquecento: produzione e commercio’, in Atti XXV Convegno Internazionale della 39 Ceramica, Centro Ligure per la Storia della Ceramica, Albisola, p. 161. 40 30 See for example Archivio di Stato di Genova, Fondo Notai Antichi, 2502, 14 May 1568. 41 31 Peter Burke (2005) ‘Renaissance Europe and the World’, in Jonathan Woolfson (ed.) 42 Palgrave Advances in Renaissance Historiography, Houndmills and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 52–70. 43 44

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1 RESPONSE 2 3 Dana Leibsohn 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 Desire quickens trade, objects travel, and people reinvent meanings for things they 18 own. From Florence to Lima, foreign artworks and exotic commodities were 19 commissioned, bought, and sold. Yet how influential were these processes in early 20 modernity, how much weight should these practices hold in our exhibitions and 21 scholarship? 22 “The Global Renaissance” argues that cross-cultural trade has not yet been given 23 its due, at least not for the early modern period. Working from this premise, the 24 research project directed by Marta Ajmar-Wollheim and Luca Molà seeks to revise 25 traditional concepts of the Renaissance in light of recent work on the history of 26 consumption and world trade. Their work may be in its early days but their essay 27 in this volume already suggests what is at stake in examining the mechanics, the 28 aspirations, and the covetousness that drew Genoese majolica and Tlaxcalan 29 cochineal across the world. By casting the display of foreign goods as an “activity at 30 the core of early modern self-fashioning strategies” Ajmar-Wollenheim and Molà 31 set forth an ambitious challenge, asking how long-distance trade shaped the con- 32 stituent elements of early modernity.1 33 Across the last decade, the global turn in art and humanities scholarship has 34 produced fine work on visual culture and the history of globalization.2 This research 35 has successfully complicated older understandings of cultural entanglement, espe- 36 cially models of core-periphery and colony-metropole. Yet there exists no consensus 37 on what “the global” signifies in the context of the fifteenth to seventeenth 38 centuries. The issue, of course, is not simply one of geography. As Craig Clunas 39 recently remarked, “globalisation, at whatever period in history, has to be seen as 40 something other than a new name for ‘the West and the Rest.’”3 He is no doubt 41 correct. Yet is it possible to imagine a project on the early modern period wholly 42 unfettered by this dichotomy? Even global perspectives that rely upon contrapuntal 43 juxtaposition—in which Western Europe is no less and no more “a center” than, 44

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1 say, Japan or Brazil—tend to privilege sites in “the East” along with those in “the 2 West.” 3 As outlined in this volume, “The Global Renaissance” engages these issues 4 implicitly. Cities in Italy serve as a center of sorts, functioning as sites of both 5 centripetal pull and centrifugal dispersion. Given the ambition to think anew the 6 range and meaning of “the Renaissance,” this seems apt. At the same time, this 7 vantage onto the global is unsettling, for it leaves essentially unresolved the historical 8 role of objects created far from Italy and the people who traded in the economies 9 and pleasures of such things. The easy response would be a turn toward inclusiveness 0 (i.e., bringing more regions of the world into the story). To my eye, however, the 11 problem is more intractable and it turns on how complex a vision of the global we 12 are willing to sustain. 13 Let me take one example. In 1609, Antonio de Morga, a colonial official serving 14 the Spanish Crown in the Philippines, published an account of merchandise flowing 15 into Manila from Southeast Asia and China.4 For many collectors and consumers in 16 the early modern period, Manila would have been a distant and peripheral place. 17 Yet the commodities de Morga described would not have been completely alien. 18 Among the exotica that caught his eye were bundles of exquisite silks and cotton 19 blankets, jewels and fruits, beasts of burden and finely crafted furniture. He also 20 documented more modest things: nails, Chinese singing birds, and “gewgaws and 21 ornaments of little value” that, in spite of (or perhaps because of) their cheapness, 22 Spaniards found particularly delightful. 23 In modern scholarship, de Morga’s account is usually read as an iconography of 24 foreign goods. And it does indeed chart the sea of commodities that flowed into the 25 Spanish Americas in the early seventeenth century (few of which survive). To stop 26 there, however—that is, to read de Morga primarily as an inventory—is to miss the 27 nuanced force of his work. For instance, when de Morga claims he will never have 28 enough paper and ink to catalogue all the goods coming into Manila, his prose 29 resonates with the topos of ineffability well honed in early modern travel writing 30 and narratives of conquest, including those of Columbus and Cortés. De Morga’s 31 writing also describes, and poignantly so, how the foreignness of Asia became 32 constituent of, yet never fully assimilated into the culture and topography of, Spanish 33 colonization. This anxiety, fueled by desires to make sense of (and profit from) the 34 exotic developed in response to local conditions in Manila, but it would have 35 resonated with residents and merchants in Amsterdam, Venice, Batavia and 36 Damascus. 37 It has become fashionable to regard the early modern world as one of connected 38 histories.5 So what are we to make of de Morga? Admittedly, his work transpires far 39 from any orthodox notion of “the Renaissance,” in both time and setting. Yet is 40 his experience, sewn through as it is with tropes of wonder and excess, merely 41 “another example” of early modern cosmopolitan taste? Is it anything more than 42 ethnographic enrichment of a story already well known? 43 The objects discussed by Ajmar-Wollheim and Molà highlight ideas and tech- 44 nologies that moved across cultural boundaries. By focusing upon historical origins

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Response 23

and patterns of reinterpretation, “the Global Renaissance” shows how material 1 objects result from and bear witness to complex practices of travel and exchange. 2 And yet we know that the purchase of porcelain and silver, silk and glass would 3 not, indeed could not, “mean the same thing” in Milan and Manila. Even at their 4 origin points, in Jingdezhen (porcelain) and Zacatecas (silver), stable fields of 5 economic and semiotic value did not exist. And so one issue that hovers at the 6 margins of “the Global Renaissance” is how to account for distinct expressions of 7 cosmopolitanism. 8 Beyond this, conflict shaped the networks of early modern exchange. And this 9 produced sites where no meeting of early modern minds or bodies could transpire. 0 It may be tempting to leave such things aside. Yet I would argue that these regions 11 and objects—these points of fissure and incommensurability—also have a productive 12 role to play in “the Global Renaissance.” To pursue this would require a sense of 13 “the global” that is more porous than unitary; it would also require a map of the 14 world that gave pride of place, at least on occasion, to things that could never be 15 shared. 16 Why complicate things in this way? In part, it would allow “the Global 17 Renaissance” to more fairly engage the range of lived experiences that took root in, 18 and often defined, the early modern period. It would also enable Ajmar-Wollheim 19 and Molà to address why connotations based on site of origin, so crucial to the allure 20 of the foreign, were seemingly enduring for some materials, fluid for others.6 It is, 21 of course, difficult to acknowledge that certain boundaries remained impassable. Yet 22 the promise of Ajmar-Wollheim’s and Molà’s project stems from its very ambition 23 to establish a more sophisticated understanding of “the global” within the context 24 of early modern practice. “The Global Renaissance” will, of course, open our 25 understandings of Western European traditions; it will be even more compelling, 26 however, if it can also offer new perspectives onto how the foreign engaged the 27 familiar, and why, for people of the early modern past, some forms of Otherness 28 seemed easy to assimilate but, in fact, were not. 29 30 31 Notes 32 33 1 The intellectual and conceptual underpinnings of Renaissance thought and practice at work in “the Global Renaissance” is not a theme I highlight here, but see, for instance 34 James Elkins and Robert Williams (eds.) (2008) Renaissance Theory, London: Routledge, 35 for others who have begun this conversation. 36 2 Work in this vein includes Timothy Brook (2008) Vermeer’s Hat: the Seventeenth Century 37 and the Dawn of the Global World, New York: Bloomsbury Press; Kumkum Chatterjee and Clement Hawes (eds.) (2008) Europe Observed: Multiple Gazes in Early Modern 38 Encounters, Lewisburg: Bucknell University Press; Thomas DaCosta Kaufmann and 39 Elizabeth Pilliod (eds.) (2005) Time and Place: the Geohistory of Art, Aldershot: Ashgate; 40 Anna Jackson and Amin Jaffer (eds.) (2004) Encounters: The Meeting of Asia and Europe, 41 1500–1800, London: V&A Publications; Lisa Jardine and Jerry Brotton (2000) Global Interests: Renaissance Art between East and West, Ithaca: Cornell University Press; and Jay 42 Levenson (ed.) (2007) Encompassing the Globe: Portugal and the World in the 16th and 17th 43 centuries, Washington, DC: Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, Smithsonian Institution. 44

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1 3 Craig Clunas, “All the Goods of the Eastern and Western Oceans . . . Contact, Exchange 2 and Luxury in Ming China,” Paper delivered at the Folger Library, ‘Contact and Exchange: China and the West,’ Washington, DC, September 2009. 3 4 Sucesos de las Islas Philipinas, Mexico City, 1609. 4 5 For an articulate argument on webs of interaction that bound the early modern world 5 together, see, for instance, Luke Clossey (2006) “Merchants, Migrants, Missionaries and 6 Globalization in the Early-Modern Pacific,” Journal of Global History 1, pp. 41–58, and for persuasive, yet more skeptical positions, see Frederick Cooper (2005) Colonialism in 7 Question: Theory, Knowledge, History, Berkeley and Los Angeles: California University 8 Press; Ann Laura Stoler (2009) Along the Archival Grain: Epistemic Anxieties and Colonial 9 Common Sense, Princeton: Princeton University Press; and Anna Tsing (2005) Friction: 0 An Ethnography of Global Connection, Princeton: Princeton University Press. 6 Given that no connotative field was fully coherent or unchanging, the “Chinese-ness” 11 of porcelain nevertheless adhered to ceramics with more tenacity than did the “American- 12 ness” of silver. For interesting discussions of objects and their signifying power related to 13 site of origin, see Robert Finlay (1998) “The Pilgrim Art: The Culture of Porcelain in 14 World History,” Journal of World History 9, pp. 141–87; Rosamond Mack (2000) Bazaar to Piazza. Islamic Trade and Italian Art, 1300–1600, Berkeley: University of California 15 Press; and Byron Hamann (2010), “The Mirrors of Las Meninas: Cochineal, Silver and 16 Clay,” Art Bulletin 92, pp. 6–35. 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44

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1 2 2 3 4 GLOBAL DESIGN IN JINGDEZHEN 5 6 7 Local production and global 8 connections 9 0 11 Anne Gerritsen 12 13 14 15 16 17 In 1685, a Jesuit missionary by the name of Louis Daniel le Comte (1655–1728) was 18 sent to China.1 Le Comte originated from a noble Bordeaux family, and from the 19 age of fifteen had devoted himself to the study of mathematics, physics and logic. 20 His aim, as it was for so many others who joined the Society of Jesus, was to use 21 his learning to support his missionary work. Le Comte and the five other Jesuit 22 mathematicians selected for this venture brought with them superior knowledge 23 across the sciences, including astronomy, physics and cartography. It was their 24 impression that the Chinese were unlikely to ‘take a salutary spiritual potion unless 25 it be seasoned with an intellectual flavoring’.2 After an horrendous journey, he 26 arrived at the court in Beijing in 1688 and was sent by the Kangxi emperor 27 (r. 1662–1722) to the remote northern province of Shaanxi. He spent four years 28 there, toiling in the wilderness and attempting to make converts and recording astro- 29 nomical observations. The letters he wrote to members of the French court upon 30 his return were published in two volumes in 1696 and 1697, and reached a wide 31 audience throughout Europe.3 Le Comte’s understanding of China as a sino- 32 centric, complex civilization, with large urban centres, an hierarchical structure of 33 governance, and a meritocratic educational system continued to feed into European 34 visions of the Chinese Empire throughout the eighteenth century.4 35 Le Comte wrote extensively on Chinese crafts: porcelain, but also lacquer, silk, 36 paper, ink, and the casting of bells.5 Le Comte knew what interests were current 37 amongst European consumers: ever since the first Dutch auction of Chinese 38 porcelains obtained from the cargo of a captured Portuguese ship in the autumn of 39 1602, the demand for Chinese ceramics throughout Europe had been on the increase. 40 Le Comte’s writings tapped into a wide European interest in the objects themselves 41 and in the ways in which they were manufactured and designed in China. One of 42 the things he noted was their ubiquity: ‘As for Porcelain’, he wrote, ‘it is such 43 an ordinary moveable, that it is the Ornament of every House; the Tables, the 44

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26 Anne Gerritsen

1 Side-boards, and every Kitchin is cumber’d with it, for they eat and drink out of it, 2 it is their ordinary Vessel.’6 This is in sharp contrast, of course, with late seventeenth- 3 century European consumers of porcelain, for whom porcelain was no longer merely 4 in the domain of royalty but still a ‘status-enhancing luxury and exotic object’.7 5 Le Comte goes on to describe three different kinds of porcelain: a yellow variety 6 for imperial use; a grey variety with stripes; and finally blue-and-white, of which he 7 writes: ‘Porcelain is white, with divers Figures of Flowers, Trees and Birds, which 8 they paint in blue, just such as come hither into Europe: This is the commonest of 9 all, and everybody uses it.’8 Blue-and-white was once despised by the Chinese 0 connoisseurs. As Cao Zhao , whose fourteenth-century manual about the 11 appreciation of arts and antiques entitled Essential Criteria of Antiques (Gegu yaolun 12 ) remained extremely influential for centuries, wrote: ‘There are also wares that 13 have been decorated with a blue pattern under the glaze and some in five colors. 14 Those with patterns are of the utmost vulgarity.’9 But popular taste had long moved 15 on, and mass-produced blue-and-white wares from Jingdezhen had become 16 commonplace throughout China and beyond. 17 In Le Comte’s view, the ubiquity of blue-and-white porcelains implied a lesser 18 value and a comparison with the earthenwares in ordinary usage in Europe: ‘But in 19 respect of Glasses and Crystals’, he wrote, ‘as all Work is not equally beautiful, so 20 amongst Porcelains some of them are but indifferent, and are not worth much more 21 than our Earthen Ware.’ But he recognized that the evaluation of porcelains was a 22 matter of aesthetic judgment: ‘Those that have Skill do not always agree in their 23 Judgment they pass upon them; and I perceive that in China, as well as in Europe, 24 Phancy bears a main stroke in the matter; yet it is granted by all hands, that four or 25 five different things are to concur to make them compleat and perfect; the fineness 26 of the Matter, the whiteness, the politeness, the painting, the designing of the 27 Figures, and fashion of the Work.’10 Le Comte elaborates on this with a more 28 detailed description of the different qualities the wares must have to be considered 29 exquisite, but the emphasis is on the similarity he detects: the element of ‘phancy’ 30 in judging matters of aesthetics, and the agreement he notes across the cultural divide 31 on what makes fine porcelain. 32 Le Comte then links the production of fine ceramics to the consumer, and the 33 ways in which the consumers’ demand for quality and design are communicated to 34 the manufacturer: 35 36 There are still very fine ones made at this day; and I have seen at some 37 Mandarins Houses whole Services that were superfine. But the European 38 Merchants do no longer Trade with the good Workmen, and having no Skill 39 in them themselves, they accept whatsoever the Chineses expose to Sale; for 40 they vend them in the Indies. Besides, nobody takes care to furnish them with 41 examples of Draughts, or to bespeak particular Pieces of Work before hand.11 42 43 We get an insight here into the ways in which this used to work: the merchants 44 would come with order lists from their overlords back home, and with examples

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and draughts to show the potters what was required. If that process ever worked 1 well it was only for a short time in the first half of the seventeenth century, because 2 by the time Le Comte wrote this down in 1697 that practice had been discontinued, 3 and less discerning purchases were being made, no doubt a consequence of the huge 4 demand for the wares back in Europe. 5 In the next sentence, Le Comte shifts his attention to the two separate systems 6 of porcelain manufacture in Jingdezhen: 7 8 There is yet another Reason that makes the curious Porcelain so rare; The 9 Emperor has constituted in the Province where the Manufacture chiefly is, a 0 particular Mandarin, whose care it is to make choice of the fairest Vases for 11 the Court; he buys them at a very reasonable rate, so that the Workmen being 12 but ill paid, do not do their best, and are not willing to take any pains for that 13 which will not enrich them. But should a private Man employ them, who 14 would not spare for Cost and Charges, we should have at this day as curious 15 Pieces of Workmanship, as those of the ancient Chineses.12 16 17 Throughout the Ming, porcelain manufacture in Jingdezhen had received imperial 18 support and supervision, but private kilns, referred to as ‘popular kilns’ (min [jian] 19 yao ) had begun to produce wares in far greater numbers. Skilled craftsmen 20 from this private ‘industry’ were co-opted to work in the official kilns in an attempt 21 to fill the requisition quotas that were demanded by the imperial court.13 When 22 imperial demand dropped, especially in the lead-up to the fall of the Ming in 1644, 23 private enterprise flourished, especially when this coincided with a sharp increase in 24 demand from overseas consumers. The differences between official kilns and private 25 enterprises are well documented in the Chinese materials, but as these materials on 26 the whole were produced by servants of the state, they sought to create the 27 impression that the representatives of the imperial court were able to safeguard the 28 highest quality throughout the manufacturing process. The documents describe how 29 Jingdezhen-based representatives of the court selected the best firewood as it was 30 delivered from the surrounding hills, controlled access to cobalt, fired smaller and 31 more spacious loads, and demanded first choice from the finished wares. Le Comte 32 looked at it differently. For him, it clearly was a matter of economic incentive to 33 individual potters that guaranteed quality. 34 I have indulged in this rather lengthy discussion of this short passage by Le Comte 35 because it highlights a number of interesting issues. It fits rather neatly in a trend 36 that David Porter discusses in his 2001 book Ideographia. Porter chronicles a trend 37 in European writings about China that begins with seventeenth-century accounts 38 by missionaries and travellers that reveal a sense of cultural superiority they assign to 39 China, but gradually becomes subverted by an eighteenth-century cultural produc- 40 tion that highlights the frivolity and licentiousness of Chinese design. Chinoiserie, 41 in Porter’s understanding, is a ‘flattening out’ of European representations of China: 42 the awesomeness of Confucian philosophy and the strict hierarchies of its system of 43 governance of missionary accounts reduced to a pagoda on a teacup.14 44

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28 Anne Gerritsen

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 FIGURE 2.1 Underglaze porcelain dish made in Jingdezhen c.1770. The landscape on 29 this dish represents the traditional Chinese landscape theme, but recreated in Europe and transmitted to China to be reproduced on Chinese porcelain for export to 30 Europe. The design became a staple of European chinoiserie and ‘rococo’ styles 31 Source: © V&A Images/Victoria and Albert Museum, London 32 33 34 That subversion was yet to come in Le Comte’s time, and addressed a far wider 35 audience of consumers than the rather more serious readers of Le Comte’s Memoirs 36 and Observations. Le Comte’s readers had very specific interests; they longed to 37 understand the process of Chinese manufacture, the qualities of the different wares, 38 their designs, as well as the economic aspects of the trade with Europeans. 39 If we expect similarly broad-ranging interests in Chinese writings, we are, 40 unfortunately, in for a disappointment. Chinese writings on ceramics, as I have 41 discussed in more detail elsewhere, form a striking contrast with these European 42 texts.15 Shaped by conventions of genre, Chinese texts represent ceramic production 43 in very different, and highly fragmented, ways. One can find references to ceramics 44 in the poetry of scholar-officials, in administrative manuals and route books for

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merchants, in compendia of local knowledge (known as local gazetteers or difangzhi) 1 and in the detailed descriptions of the sites of manufacture contained within those 2 compendia. But these texts only reveal fragments; only by combining these frag- 3 ments do we see the landscape of Chinese ceramics as a whole, and the global view, 4 insofar as I can tell at this stage, remains largely elusive. 5 Le Comte’s discussion of the ubiquity of blue-and-white wares in China only 6 obliquely refers to the global appeal of blue-and-white. What had initially emerged 7 in Yuan-dynasty Jingdezhen as vulgar decorations in blue on the thick, matt white- 8 ness of the shufu wares, almost instantly took off as what Craig Clunas has referred 9 to as the first ‘global brand’.16 The magnificent collections of Yuan and Ming wares 0 from Jingdezhen held in the Ardabil shrine (in today’s Iran) and in the Topkapi Seray 11 in Istanbul testify to the quantity and quality of the export of blue-and-whites for 12 the Middle Eastern markets (see Figure 2.2).17 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 FIGURE 2.2 Early 15th-century large porcelain serving dish made in Jingdezhen for consumers in the Middle East. The rim is scalloped, and the central area is decorated 41 with floral motifs, while the cavetto features large individual blossoms surrounded by 42 smaller ones 43 Source: © V&A Images/Victoria and Albert Museum, London 44

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30 Anne Gerritsen

1 That Jingdezhen blue-and-white also made its way to India we know from the 2 arrival of the first porcelain in Europe: Vasco Da Gama (1460/9–1524) acquired a 3 piece on his first visit to India in 1499 and delivered it to the King of Portugal upon 4 his return. By 1520, the Portuguese were sending their demands of specific porcelain 5 designs directly to the manufacturers in Jingdezhen.18 In India, the Mughal emperor 6 Shah Jahan (1592–1666) was known for his collection of Chinese ceramics, and 7 Indian Muslim traders were amongst the most active distributors of Chinese ceramics 8 throughout the Indian Ocean, even if Hindu prohibitions prevented porcelain from 9 becoming widespread in India itself.19 From the early seventeenth century onwards, 0 private kilns in Jingdezhen manufactured large quantities of porcelain specifically for 11 the Dutch market.20 Maura Rinaldi’s study details the features and designs of this 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 FIGURE 2.3 Blue-and-white porcelain dish made in Jingdezhen between 1595 and 1625. 41 These wares, commonly known as kraak porcelain, were mass produced, and thus 42 within reach of a wide spectrum of European consumers. The Dutch referred to this 43 type of bowl as a kraaikop (‘crow cup’), after the bird painted in the well of the cup 44 Source: © V&A Images/Victoria and Albert Museum, London

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so-called kraak porcelain that now graces not only Dutch collections of porcelain 1 but also the dinner tables and interiors depicted in the paintings of the period.21 2 During the Tianqi (1621–27) and Chongzhen (1628–44) reign periods, wares 3 produced in Jingdezhen were particularly sought after in the Japanese art market. 4 They were not ‘imperial wares’, as effective control over local manufacture had 5 radically diminished by the end of the Wanli reign (1573–1620). They were rather 6 simple, spontaneous designs created at private kilns, quite possibly specifically for 7 the Japanese consumers, who valued their unpretentiousness and assigned them 8 central place in the newly-emerging forms of the tea-ceremony.22 And finally, as 9 early as 1662, settlers in the American colonies ordered porcelain from China.23 0 The idea of Chinese potters in Jingdezhen producing ceramics in designs that 11 could appeal to consumers in so many different cultural contexts is in itself extra- 12 ordinary, but also raises the question about the transmission of design ideas across 13 the globe. How exactly did manufacturers in Jingdezhen learn how to cater to such 14 different tastes? Le Comte gives us a glimpse of this. As he said in 1697, ‘Nobody 15 takes care to furnish them with examples of Draughts, or to bespeak particular Pieces 16 of Work before hand.’24 The records of the VOC (Dutch East India Compagnie, 17 or Vereenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie, VOC for short) contain lists of specific 18 demands for designs, colours and shapes, accompanied by haughty instructions not 19 to bring back items that were not on the list. One year they sent a set of ‘complete 20 welgebacken en geschilderde monsters van elke sort porcelijn als best gewilt sijn en 21 daermede tot dies besorging, negotatie en andersint doet handelen’ (high-fired, 22 painted models of each kind of porcelain most in demand [in Europe] to bring about 23 their delivery, trade and the like).25 Unfortunately, not only did the potters in Delft 24 struggle to complete the demand for models to the standards required, but the 25 Chinese potters took far too long over the delivery, causing insurmountable 26 problems for the VOC ships, and soon the Dutch merchants abandoned their lists 27 of demands altogether. As Le Comte says, that decision had consequences for the 28 quality of the merchandise, although by then quantity seems to have overtaken 29 quality as the main concern for both manufacturers and merchants. The key to 30 understanding the popularity of the blue-and-white wares probably lies in the ease 31 of their adaptability. Changes in the design to accommodate tastes and fashions in 32 diverse markets across the globe required no technological adjustment, and could 33 be made by one individual responsible for applying the blue decorations, while the 34 chain of people involved in the manufacturing process otherwise performed the 35 same task. Whether the designs contained Dutch tulips, inscriptions in Arabic, or 36 Chinese symbols of long life, the overall ‘brand’ of blue-and-white still remained 37 clearly visible. Manufactured locally, blue-and-whites were and remain a design with 38 global appeal. 39 40 41 Notes 42 1 Linda S. Frey and Marsha L. Frey, ‘The Search for Souls in China: Le Comte’s Nouveaux 43 Memoires’, in Glenn Ames and Ronald Love, eds, Distant Lands and Diverse Cultures: The 44

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32 Anne Gerritsen

1 French Experience in Asia, 1600–1700 (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 2003): 2 231–47. 2 Frey and Frey, ‘The Search for Souls’: 232. 3 3 See, for example, the English translation of his text: Louis le Comte, Memoirs and 4 Observations Typographical, Physical, Mathematical, Mechanical, Natural, Civil, and 5 Ecclesiastical, Made in a Late Journey through the Empire of China, and Published in Several 6 Letters Particularly Upon the Chinese Pottery and Varnishing, the Silk and Other Manufactures, 7 the Pearl Fishing, the History of Plants and Animals, Description of Their Cities and Publick Works, Number of People, Their Language, Manners and Commerce, Their Habits, Oeconomy, 8 and Government, the Philosophy of Confucius, the State of Christianity: With Many Other 9 Curious and Useful Remarks (London: Benj. Tooke and Sam. Buckley, 1697). 0 4 Voltaire, for example, drew heavily on Le Comte’s writings. See Frey and Frey, ‘The 11 Search for Souls’: 238. 5 Frey and Frey, ‘The Search for Souls’: 237. 12 6 Le Comte, Memoirs and Observations: 154. 13 7 C.J.A. Jörg, Porcelain and the Dutch China Trade (Den Haag: Martinus Nijhoff, 1982): 16. 14 8 Le Comte, Memoirs and Observations: 154–5. 15 9 Cao Zhao, Ge gu yao lun, juan xia, 3b–4a. 10 Le Comte, Memoirs and Observations: 154–5. 16 11 Le Comte, Memoirs and Observations: 157. 17 12 Le Comte, Memoirs and Observations: 158. 18 13 Wang Zongmu, comp., Jiangxisheng dazhi (Gazetteer of Jiangxi Province), Taibei, 1989, 19 photolithographic reprint of 1597 edition, 7.17a. 20 14 David Porter, Ideographia: The Chinese Cipher in Early Modern Europe (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2001). 21 15 Anne Gerritsen, ‘Fragments of a Global Past: Ceramics Manufacture in Song-Yuan-Ming 22 Jingdezhen’, Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 52 (2009): 117–52. 23 16 Craig Clunas, Empire of Great Brightness: Visual and Material Cultures of Ming China, 24 1368–1644 (Reaktion Books, 2007). 17 The Ardabil collection holds Song and Yuan Longquan wares, white wares and ‘shufu’ 25 wares, as well as 37 Yuan dynasty blue-and-white wares from Jingdezhen. The most in- 26 depth study of the Ardabil collection is John Alexander Pope, Chinese Porcelains from the 27 Ardebil Shrine (Washington: Smithsonian Institution, Freer Gallery of Art, 1956). The 28 Topkapi collection includes 40 Yuan dynasty blue-and-white wares. See John Alexander Pope, Fourteenth-century Blue-and Whites: A Group of Chinese Porcelains in the Topkapu Sarayi 29 Mu_zesi, Istanbul (Washington: Freer Gallery of Art, Occasional Papers, vol, 2, no. 1). 30 18 Robert Finlay, ‘The Pilgrim Art: The Culture of Porcelain in World History’, Journal of 31 World History 9 (1998): 142. 32 19 Hindu regulations specify the use of non-porous materials for the preparation and 33 consumption of food. Despite the non-porous nature of porcelain, it was categorized with earthenware and stoneware as porous, and hence not adopted for culinary use. See Finlay, 34 ‘The Pilgrim Art’: 158. 35 20 Jörg, Porcelain and the Dutch China Trade: 15–21. Lothar Ledderose discusses the significant 36 impact the Dutch merchants had in the early seventeenth century, precisely during the 37 time when imperial orders for Jingdezhen porcelains dropped off. Lothar Ledderose, Ten Thousand Things: Module and Mass Production in Chinese Art (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton 38 University Press, 2000): 88–97. 39 21 Christiaan Jörg, ‘Chinese Porcelain for the Dutch in the Seventeenth Century: Trading 40 Networks and Private Enterprise’, in Rosemary E. Scott, ed., The Porcelains of Jingdezhen 41 (London: Percival David Foundation of Chinese Art, 1993): 183–205. 22 For more in-depth discussion of the circumstances that led to this appreciation in Japan, 42 and the types of wares dating from this period found in Japan but nowhere else, see Colin 43 Sheaf, ‘Chinese Ceramics and Japanese Tea Taste in the Late Ming Period’, in Scott, ed., 44 The Porcelains of Jingdezhen: 165–82. Christiaan Jörg agrees that the wares of the 1620s

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and 1630s were specifically created for use in the Japanese tea ceremonies: Jörg, ‘Chinese 1 Porcelain’: 188–90. 2 23 David Howard, New York and the China Trade (New York: New York Historical Society, 3 1984): 61, quoted in William Sargent, ‘“China, a great variety”: Documenting Porcelains for the American Market’, in Scott, The Porcelains of Jingdezhen: 207. See also Jean Gordon 4 Lee, Philadelphians and the China Trade, 1784–1844 (Philadelphia: Philadelphia Museum 5 of Art, 1984). 6 24 Le Comte, Memoirs and Observations: 154 7 25 C.J.A. Jörg, ‘Porselein als Handelswaar: De porseleinhandel als onderdeel van de Chinahandel van de V.O.C., 1729–1794’, Ph.D. dissertation, Leiden University, 1978, 8 p. 102. 9 0 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44

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1 2 RESPONSE 3 4 Beverly Lemire 5 6 7 8 9 0 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 Anne Gerritsen introduces us to the processes and preoccupations of generations of 19 observers of porcelain production, a hybrid population at the site of one of the most 20 important global commodity flows in the early modern era. The community that 21 sustained the production end of this phenomenon was positioned in one of the most 22 dynamic manufacturing and trading regions in the world. Leonard Blussé termed 23 Canton, the port that served Jingdezhen, a ‘visible’ city, it being one of the best-known 24 and most iconic regional trading communities, supplying almost all parts of the 25 world with its best-known product. The great pulse emanating from southern China 26 washed over many regions. This extraordinary manufacturing and trading community 27 augmented porcelain passions from coastal East Africa, through a wide swath of the 28 Islamic worlds of the Middle East, Persia and Central Asia, as well as Southeast Asia. 29 Europeans were latecomers to this porcelain passion, but by the seventeenth century 30 were also enmeshed in this great exchange. Robert Finlay has observed: ‘[the surviving 31 artefacts] yields the first and most extensive physical evidence for sustained cultural 32 encounter on a global scale, perhaps even for indications of genuinely global culture’.1 33 As with Gerritsen, I find the materiality of this commodity flow particularly 34 intriguing. K. N. Chaudhuri has drawn attention to what he calls the ‘transmission 35 of culture’ through trade.2 This is, of course, a reciprocal evolving process that affects 36 the community that sources the international commodities, like porcelain, as well 37 as transforming the material vernacular of receiving populations. 38 I have mentioned elsewhere my interest in the lexicons of design that were 39 carried by these media as part of global commodity flows, both in textiles like Indian 40 cotton and Chinese porcelain. Robert Finlay has written about the transformations 41 in patterns that took place in Chinese porcelain as Islamic motifs were absorbed and 42 reinterpreted. Indeed, Finlay claims that porcelain played a central role in cultural 43 exchange in Eurasia: it was a prime material vehicle for the assimilation and trans- 44 mission of artistic symbols, themes, and designs across vast distances.3

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Response 35

The commonalities between Asian textiles and ceramics are numerous in terms 1 of their global impact. But the feature I will mention most particularly is their 2 capacity to transmit imagery. The production and circulation of designs are com- 3 municative acts. I would encourage an engagement with the meta-narratives of the 4 history of design. And I think a closer attention to the comparative differences found 5 in porcelain and cottons, for example, may lead to a better understanding of this 6 history. 7 Gerritsen opens up new questions about the chronology and mediating factors 8 in the spread of blue-and-white porcelain, with the prospect in her future project 9 of a more detailed understanding of the design flows and the relationships between 0 the point of production and consumers across the globe. The ‘visibility’ of the city 11 of Canton is largely a product of this extraordinary maritime trade. The surviving 12 relics of this trade, in private collections and public museums, mirror the social 13 impact of these commodities on the cultural and social practices of many societies. 14 There is an interesting paradox in the inflexible brittle structure of porcelain and the 15 malleable uses to which these goods were put, from tea ceremonies to wall décor, 16 vessels for food and objects of collection or veneration. If ceramics had agency, as 17 Alfred Gell has suggested for other objects,4 it was perhaps in the inspiration offered 18 to individuals and communities willing or eager to amend their habits and integrate 19 these objects into daily rituals. The translucence of the finest porcelain and the shapes 20 themselves inspired such integration and so, too, did the infinitely variable design 21 that came to define China’s wares. 22 I am struck by the commonalities and differences in comparing porcelain to 23 textiles. For unlike the textiles that flowed from Asia, also significant agents in the 24 circulation of design, porcelain could not be physically altered in the hands of its 25 new owners. Asian textiles were cut, stitched and remade in a multiplicity of local 26 forms for dress or furnishings, all the while with the aim of showcasing the look of 27 these fabrics in whatever locally appropriate shape was imposed. The malleability of 28 porcelain for consumers came not in its structure but through the creative forms of 29 social rituals it generated in receiving communities. These, in turn, through the 30 network of merchant correspondents, led to evolutions of design. 31 Would it be possible to tease out more precisely the shifting chronology of 32 meanings that developed over time? Recognizing that literacy takes a range of forms 33 aside from being lettered, should we consider more carefully the impact of these 34 designs among a wide range of users, populations that may have been ‘illiterate’ in 35 the formal sense, but steeped in symbolic meanings and the reading of signs of 36 various sorts: botanic, craft, ceremonial, for example. It is interesting to note that 37 listed among the personal effects of sailors who died in the first English East India 38 Company voyage were ‘cheyney dishes’.5 The attraction of these objects was not 39 limited to the elite and values assigned to these objects were mutable. 40 It cannot be coincidence that among the most important early modern global 41 commodities, Indian cottons and Chinese porcelain both had the capacity to appeal 42 to broad and heterogeneous markets, and both products boasted unique techniques 43 of surface decoration. The malleability of the surface designs, as much as the physical 44

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36 Beverley Lemire

1 characteristics of these porcelain and cottons, animated a visual exchange across 2 cultures and languages that remains of exceptional importance. 3 4 Notes 5 6 1 R. Finlay, ‘The Pilgrim Art: The Culture of Porcelain in World History’, Journal of World 7 History, 9 (1998), p. 143. 2 K. N. Chaudhuri, ‘Trade as a Cultural Phenomenon’, in J. C. Johansen, E. L. Petersen 8 and H. Stevnborg (eds), Clashes of Cultures: Essays in Honour of Niels Steensgaard, Odense, 9 Odense University Press, 1992, p. 210. 0 3 R. Finlay, The Pilgrim Art: Cultures of Porcelain in World History, Berkeley, University of 11 California Press, 2010, pp. 5–6. 4 A. Gell, Art and Agency: An Anthropological Theory, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1998. 12 5 C. Fury, Tides in the Affairs of Men: The Social History of Elizabethan Seamen, 1580–1603, 13 Westport CN, Greenwood Publishing, 2001, p. 96. 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44

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1 2 3 3 4 INDIAN COTTONS AND 5 6 EUROPEAN FASHION, 7 1400–1800 8 9 0 John Styles 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 Introduction 18 19 For a global design history that seeks to understand transcontinental similarities and 20 differences, networks and flows, attention to fashion is indispensible. Since the 21 seventeenth century, Europeans have repeatedly identified an absence of fashion in 22 Asia as one of the fundamental distinctions between East and West. ‘The Cloaths 23 of the Eastern People are no wise subject to Mode; they are always made after the 24 same Fashion’, observed the French Huguenot traveller Sir John Chardin, who 25 1 visited Persia in the late seventeenth century. Modern historians of material life in 26 Europe before the nineteenth century have agreed. From Ferdinand Braudel to Neil 27 McKendrick, they present fashion as a European peculiarity, an element in a broader 28 pattern of European exceptionalism that accounts for the rise of the West.2 29 Recently, this view has been challenged. Fashion can, it is suggested, be observed 30 not only in Europe, but in early-modern China, Japan and India, in some of its 31 aspects at least.3 Clothing practices in early modern Asia were not necessarily inert 32 and unchanging. At the same time, it has been argued that Asian goods made a 33 decisive contribution to the origin and development of fashion in the West before 34 1800, overturning the conventional assumption that fashion’s origins were indige- 35 nous to Europe. It is this second revisionist argument that is the subject of this essay. 36 The key external role in transforming early modern European fashion is accorded 37 to Indian decorated cotton textiles. For Beverly Lemire, Indian cottons were ‘critical 38 for new forms and formulations of fashion’.4 She argues that although the arrival of 39 Indian decorated cotton textiles did not single-handedly initiate Western fashion, it 40 reorientated fashion at a crucial early stage in its development from a phenomenon 41 confined to a narrow elite into a self-perpetuating, dynamic force across society. 42 They did this principally, it is argued, by transforming textile design. While ‘prior 43 to the appearance of Indian printed cottons decorative patterning in textiles was the 44

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38 John Styles

1 preserve of Europe’s wealthiest alone’,5 Indian cottons ‘were affordable, uniquely 2 attractive, and made in the widest range of prices, unmatched by European manu- 3 factures’.6 4 This is a bold, ambitious argument, but it is a controversial one. It has, of course, 5 long been acknowledged that cotton manufacture in the West was built on Indian 6 foundations.7 Equally, it has been recognized that Lancashire’s industrial revolution 7 of the later eighteenth century was inconceivable without the existence of a broad- 8 based domestic market for cotton textiles, especially a fashion-sensitive market for 9 decorated cottons. Nevertheless, previous studies have tended to suggest that 0 imported Indian cottons followed rather than initiated Western fashion. Audrey 11 Douglas, for example, in a much-quoted article, emphasizes the way the English 12 East India Company exploited pre-existing developments in fashion in England. 13 To date, the English experience has been central to this controversy. This is partly 14 because it was England that hosted the late eighteenth century Industrial Revolution 15 in which cotton textiles figured so prominently. It is also because the archives of the 16 English East India Company and the pamphlet debates its activities provoked have 17 provided such accessible and fruitful sources for historical research. 18 To evaluate the different arguments, we therefore need to take some measure of 19 the world of early modern English textiles in which Indian cottons intervened. To 20 take that measure, this essay assesses the early modern English market for textiles, 21 from 1500 to 1750, from two perspectives. First, it considers the contribution to 22 fashion and innovation made by different kinds of textiles. Second, it considers 23 fashion and innovation specifically in terms of applied decoration, whether realized 24 by means of weaving, embroidery, painting, or printing. 25 26 Textiles in early modern England: imports, fashion and 27 innovation 28 29 Between the fourteenth and the nineteenth centuries England underwent a long 30 drawn-out transformation that saw a peripheral and relatively unsophisticated 31 European economy transformed into the manufacturing workshop for the world. 32 A country that in the later Middle Ages exported mainly raw materials, especially 33 wool, and subsequently semi-finished goods, especially unfinished woollen cloth, 34 was transformed into one whose exports consisted principally of high-quality, 35 finished manufactures. As the number and variety of English manufactured products 36 grew, imports came to consist less and less of finished manufactured goods and more 37 and more of the raw materials from which English products were made. 38 This transformation extended over several centuries. Much of it involved the 39 more or less direct replacement of manufactures that had previously been imported 40 by goods produced in England. Often, however, import substitution was associated 41 with the development of new processes and new products appropriate to the native 42 resource endowment and the native market. Thus, in the course of the seventeenth 43 and early eighteenth centuries, a whole swathe of new metallurgical, glass and 44 ceramic processes saw charcoal replaced with coal and coke as their principal heat

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Indian cottons and European fashion, 1400-1800 39

source.8 As far as products are concerned, sober English lead glass was substituted 1 for light, decorated Venetian glass; new kinds of Staffordshire stoneware for German 2 salt glaze; London-made silver teapots for Chinese teapots in porcelain or red Yixing 3 stoneware. 4 Two aspects of this process of import substitution need particular emphasis. 5 First, the imports concerned came predominantly from continental Europe, not 6 Asia. Second, the trend was already well-established before the onset of direct trade 7 between England and south and east Asia at the start of the seventeenth century. 8 English consumers’ receptivity to novelty in material things long predated the 9 first arrival of Indian cottons. Historians of the later Middle Ages have taught us that 0 the material culture of the bulk of the English population before the sixteenth 11 century was far from immutable.9 The later Middle Ages witnessed important 12 changes in the character of, for example, clothing and ceramics that extended well 13 beyond the social elite. In the sixteenth century, innovation in consumer goods was 14 sometimes intense.10 Novelty had intrinsic attractions for many consumers, even 15 though they had to be balanced against other imperatives – in particular consumers’ 16 attachment to established tastes and their rulers’ investment in notions of hierarchy, 17 order and stability, which extended to the material world. 18 The successes and failures of the East India Company’s marketing of Indian 19 cottons in England in the seventeenth century need to be understood against this 20 background of widespread and broad-based innovation, often involving imports or 21 import substitution, which engaged consumers far beyond the royal court, the 22 nobility and the gentry. In textiles, what is most striking about the period from the 23 start of the sixteenth century to the end of the seventeenth century is not the radical 24 discontinuity represented by the introduction of Indian decorated cottons, but the 25 extent to which that innovation was consistent with broader developments in the 26 English textile market. The period witnessed a tide of novelty in decorated fabrics 27 made from a range of materials, including wool, linen and silk, and employing a 28 range of techniques, including weaving, embroidery and painting. This was under- 29 way well before the establishment of the East India Company in 1600. 30 In particular, a rapid expansion in the market for lighter, more colourful and 31 more highly patterned cloths, both for clothing and for furnishing, can be observed 32 in fabrics made from combed wool, from silk and from combinations of the two. 33 As with Indian decorated cottons, these fabrics were often cheaper than those that 34 preceded them and were subject to rapid fashion change, in a way that con- 35 temporaries perceived as novel. Like Indian cottons, many of these textiles, especially 36 the silks, were imported. Others, like the light Norwich worsted stuffs made 37 principally from combed wool, owed much to the arrival of immigrant craftspeople. 38 Much of this search for novelty in textile design was driven by fashion in clothing. 39 Dress fashions in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries did not turn 40 exclusively on the characteristics of the fabrics worn – tailoring and accessorizing 41 were also crucial – but fabrics were important. The frequent references to ‘stuffs’ 42 and ‘satins’ are significant. It was around these fabrics that fashion in wealthy 43 women’s clothing revolved in the early seventeenth century, not Indian cottons. 44

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40 John Styles

1 Moreover, these changing dress fashions were not confined to the rich; the patterned 2 worsted stuffs produced at Norwich and elsewhere were worn by wider sections of 3 the population. Decorative patterning in textiles was not the preserve of a tiny, 4 exclusive elite. 5 The early modern fashion cycle in textiles like the stuffs and satins did not, of 6 course, originate in England. Insofar as we can trace its genealogy, it leads back to 7 the fine silks that began to be made in Italy in the later Middle Ages under the 8 influence of imports from the Byzantine Empire and the Muslim Mediterranean. 9 Italian-made silks came to be characterized by a cycle of ever-changing innovation 0 in pattern and design. Lisa Monnas has usefully summarized these changes, observing 11 how these changing fashions were driven by bitter rivalry over export markets 12 between the different silk-manufacturing city-states – Lucca, Florence, Genoa, 13 Venice. Each city-state sustained distinct specialities, yet each endlessly pirated the 14 others’ designs and each endeavoured to secure a competitive advantage by generat- 15 ing fashionable novelty in design.11 By the mid-fifteenth century, concludes Luca 16 Molà, competitive import substitution was encouraged by city governments in order 17 to free the state from dependence on foreign goods and provide export oppor- 18 tunities.12 19 Novelty was crucial. The Venetian ambassador to the French court explained in 20 1546 that the lighter silks made by the Tuscans and the Genoese were more 21 successful in France than the heavy, costlier Venetian product, ‘because it bored 22 them to wear the same clothing for too long’.13 Here we have in prototype the kind 23 of inter-state competition in fashion that would become a distinctive element of the 24 Western European state system as a whole in the seventeenth and eighteenth 25 centuries.14 Its most dramatic refinement in the course of the seventeenth century 26 arose not as a result of Asian imports, but from the French move to annual and 27 seasonal shifts in the design of the woven silks made at Lyons for fashionable 28 women’s outer garments, probably at the instigation of Louis XIV’s ministers in the 29 1670s.15 The Directors of the English East India Company were quick to appreciate 30 the significance of this innovation, but they neither initiated it nor applied it to their 31 trade in decorated cottons. In 1681, they wrote to their Bengal factors requiring 32 ‘that in all flowred Silkes, you Change y fashion and flower as much as you can 33 every yeare, for English Ladies and they say ye french and other Europeans will give 34 twice as much for a new thing not seen in Europe before though worse, than they 35 will give for a better Silk of ye same fashion worn ye former yeare’.16 These 36 instructions arose from their attempt to develop a new trade in woven silks from 37 Bengal to compete directly with European silks. Late seventeenth-century orders to 38 Surat and Madras for painted and printed cottons did not ask for annual changes in 39 design in this way. 40 Nevertheless, it is often argued that by the last three decades of the seventeenth 41 century, painted Indian cottons were playing a crucial role in the system of inter- 42 state competition in textiles and fashion, with the East India companies acting as 43 proxies on behalf of the various competing European states. Indeed this belief is 44 central to the whole idea of a late seventeenth-century European ‘calico craze’, to

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which states felt obliged to respond with a variety of incentives, regulations and 1 prohibitions. There is no doubt that in England, at least, huge quantities of Indian 2 cotton textiles of many different kinds came to be imported by the East India 3 Companies during the last three decades of the seventeenth century, although their 4 significance needs to be qualified in two ways. First, we should remember that, 5 throughout the seventeenth century, cloth with sophisticated painted or printed 6 decoration comprised only a small minority element in a trade in cotton piece goods 7 that included vast quantities of plain fabrics, dyed and undyed. Second, we should 8 bear in mind that by no means all the Company’s imports of textiles were destined 9 for English consumers. Vast quantities of cloth were re-exported to continental 0 Europe, to Africa and increasingly to the Americas.17 11 It was asserted repeatedly by those paid to write in opposition to these imports 12 on behalf of domestic woollen and silk manufacturers that Indian cottons were 13 enthusiastically taken up as dress materials by rich and poor alike, threatening the 14 livelihoods of those who made a living from the manufacture of other textiles in 15 England.18 However, a very different picture of the English market for Indian 16 cottons emerges from the evidence of trials for theft at the Old Bailey, the principal 17 criminal court for London. It challenges the notion that Indian cottons enjoyed a 18 sudden, overwhelming popularity as fashionable dress fabrics in the late seventeenth 19 century, elbowing aside other textiles. 20 In England, the gown was a key garment for women’s fashion at every social 21 level, the largest and most expensive decorated item in most women’s wardrobes. 22 Yet evidence for widespread ownership of gowns made from Indian painted and 23 printed fabrics before 1700 is lacking. Out of 285 cases in the Old Bailey Proceedings 24 from 1674 to 1699 involving stolen gowns, only two mentioned gowns made from 25 cotton fabrics. By contrast, at least 62 cases involved gowns made from silk and 40 26 cases involved gowns made from various kinds of worsted stuff.19 If the number of 27 stolen gowns in Indian fabrics in the Old Bailey Proceedings was tiny, it was not 28 because Indian cottons were absent. In the same decades there were 76 mentions of 29 muslins, mainly plain white and used for various head-cloths and neck-cloths, 30 although they always comprised only a minority of such items. Calicoes, a few 31 painted or printed, also appeared, though less frequently. They were mentioned in 32 47 cases, used for a variety of items of clothing, including aprons, hoods, handker- 33 chiefs, petticoats, shirts, and children’s frocks, but especially for furnishings, in 34 particular curtains, quilts and pillow cases. Evidently Indian cottons made some 35 inroads during the later decades of the seventeenth century in the English markets 36 for furnishings (especially calicoes) and for small clothing accessories (especially 37 muslins). Yet the trial records before 1700 show little evidence of English or 38 European-made light textiles being eclipsed by Indian-made decorated cottons in 39 these or other markets. 40 It would not be until the middle of the eighteenth century that fabrics patterned 41 employing Indian-derived techniques would begin to outpace silks and worsteds in 42 the market for women’s gowns. In the long run, the flexibility and cheapness of 43 printing with these techniques won out, democratizing the naturalistic, botanical 44

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1 designs so fashionable in vastly more expensive woven silks. But by then it was linens 2 and linen-cotton mixes woven and printed in England that did the outpacing, not 3 cottons painted or printed in India.20 Significantly, the Old Bailey trials indicate that, 4 even in the era of the calico craze, calicoes enjoyed their greatest success in the 5 market for furnishings, which were not at the cutting edge of annual and seasonal 6 fashions. 7 Where Indian fabrics undoubtedly did make a dramatic impact was in igniting 8 an explosion of economic pamphleteering, lavishly funded by rival mercantile 9 interests. The calico craze emerges less as a transformation in consumers’ choices, 0 engineered by a flood of cheap, colourful Asian imports, than as a political phenom- 11 enon generated by the mutual suspicion of a number of wealthy trading and manu- 12 facturing interests, each accustomed to support from the state and each struggling 13 to secure it for its own advantage in a context of virulent competition between the 14 major European states. 15 16 Indian decorated cottons and English textile design 17 18 The evidence of the Old Bailey does not, therefore, support the argument that 19 the arrival of large quantities of Indian decorated cottons in England suddenly, 20 towards the end of the seventeenth century, unleashed an entirely new kind of 21 popular fashion. Nevertheless, the possibility remains that Indian cottons funda- 22 mentally changed Western fashion by transforming its design idioms. To address this 23 issue, two questions need to be answered. What did Indian decorated cottons look 24 like? When did they become sufficiently familiar to influence textile design in the 25 West? 26 New products do not automatically find a market. The first task for those who 27 introduce a new product is to configure it for the consumer in a way that makes it 28 comprehensible and attractive. From the 1610s, however, the Company’s London 29 Directors began to develop a market in England for fine Indian decorated cottons 30 for use as table and bed linens, wall hangings and other household furnishings, but 31 the volume of such imports appears to have remained small before 1660. One of 32 the key limitations here was design. Before the middle of the seventeenth century, 33 the Company bought ready-made cottons which had been painted, printed, or 34 embroidered according to the requirements of Indian and other Asian consumers. 35 These designs had only a limited appeal in England, beyond their value as novel 36 curiosities. The crucial change came in 1643, when the Directors began to require 37 the factors in India to change the designs on the cloth to accord with English taste. 38 ‘Those [quilts] which hereafter you shall send we desire may be with more white 39 ground, and the flowers and branch to be in colours in the middle of the quilt as 40 the painter pleases, whereas now most part of your quilts come with sad red grounds 41 which are not so well accepted here.’21 In 1662 the Directors went one step beyond 42 verbal design instructions and began to send sample patterns for chintz, probably on 43 paper, from London to India for the Indian workers to copy or adapt. In 1669 the 44 procedure was extended to quilts and hangings.

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This should not surprise us. The Portuguese, the first Europeans to sail directly 1 to India and the dominant European presence in the subcontinent before 1600, were 2 already commissioning Indian cotton textiles decorated according to European tastes 3 in the sixteenth century.22 From the 1660s, therefore, it became a normal East India 4 Company practice to send patterns from London to determine the design of the 5 quilts that had been the main form of Indian decorated textiles sold in England in 6 the first half of the seventeenth century and the chintzes that enjoyed success in the 7 second half of the century. This was a system of manufacture in which London 8 remained the principal arbiter and source of design. 9 It is curious, then, that the design of English decorative textiles is said to have 0 been transformed in the seventeenth century by the impact of Indian design ideas, 11 transmitted through the medium of the Indian textiles decorated with botanical 12 designs imported by the English East India Company.23 The seventeenth century 13 certainly saw a proliferation of English-made textiles, embroidered, woven, painted 14 and eventually printed, that paralleled in their patterns the look of Indian decorated 15 cottons. But the English attachment to applied botanical decoration on textiles was 16 very long standing, dating back to the high Middle Ages. It was reflected in the wide 17 range of textile designs an earlier generation of scholars referred to when they talked 18 of the ‘English love of flowers’.24 It was evident in the popularity in the sixteenth 19 and seventeenth centuries of textiles patterned with a wide range of botanical forms, 20 from formal large pattern repeats to sinuous arabesques and isolated motifs. 21 It was with good reason, then, that in the course of the seventeenth century the 22 East India Company brought to England Indian decorative textiles with elaborate 23 botanical patterns. But if, as we have seen, those patterns were sent out from 24 London, in what sense, if any, were they Indian? As John Irwin pointed out half a 25 century ago, in furnishing fabrics at least, the two-dimensional forms and motifs 26 employed on textiles imported from India that came to be perceived in England as 27 Indian came, in fact, to India from England. Moreover, they derived principally not 28 from Indian visual ideas, but rather from a combination of European and Chinese 29 forms and motifs.25 Indeed, Irwin argued that the tree of life design so often 30 associated with Indian textiles is not obviously Indian in origin, owing more to the 31 tree of life in the biblical Garden of Eden. Its use in English embroidery pre-dated 32 the arrival of large numbers of Indian textiles.26 33 This should not surprise us. These visual ideas were already in circulation in 34 England before Indian decorative textiles arrived in any quantities, not just as finished 35 textiles but also in the form of Chinoiserie botanical motifs that circulated as design 36 drawings on paper. The number of Indian textiles actually present in England before 37 1600 was so tiny that it is difficult to imagine they had much direct influence on 38 textile design. As Beverly Lemire has shown, calicoes, almost certainly Indian, were 39 present in Southampton on the south coast of England in the mid-sixteenth century.27 40 However, their numbers were tiny. Moreover, calicoes do not appear to have spread 41 much. In Mark Overton’s systematic compilation of goods from 17,000 probate 42 inventories from Hertfordshire, Lincolnshire and Worcestershire covering the years 43 1550 to 1750, there are no sixteenth-century references whatsoever to calico. The 44

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44 John Styles

1 Indian fabric first appears in 1624, when a Worcestershire gentleman’s inventory 2 included a blue calico tablecloth.28 3 John Irwin concluded that ‘Europe was attracted to Indian decorative textiles on 4 account of their cheapness and technical excellence (especially their fast and brilliant 5 dye-colours), not their qualities of design.’29 The success of Indian decorative textiles 6 in the English market illustrates a process of successful product innovation, but one 7 that depended on a significant redefinition of the design of the product. Late 8 seventeenth-century Indian chintzes with their elaborate botanical motifs in vivid 9 colours may have retained the allure of the exotic for their English owners, but the 0 range of patterns and motifs they employed often had more to do with European 11 constructions of the exotic than with Indian visual culture. 12 13 Conclusion 14 15 It is not the purpose of this paper to minimize the long-term impact, economic and 16 cultural, of Indian cotton textiles in the West. It simply asks us to acknowledge that 17 the successes enjoyed by the Company’s trade in decorated textiles resulted from its 18 capacity to cater to trends towards a wider range of lighter and more colourful fabrics 19 already well established in the growing English market for decorated textiles. Indian 20 cottons did not create these trends, however much they re-enforced and benefited 21 from them. 22 If we accept this to be the case, then the East India Company’s trade in cotton 23 textiles can hardly be said to have had the key role in transforming fashion in the 24 period before 1750. Insofar as we need to assign that role, it should probably be 25 accorded to the political economy of the Western European state system. The 26 reluctance of many early modern European states to see competitors gain a decisive 27 advantage in manufacturing has often been noted, especially in historians’ debates 28 over the concept of mercantilism, but the importance of this stance for design and 29 fashion has received less attention.30 It can be observed in action initially in the 30 limited context of the late Medieval Italian city-states, but subsequently across early 31 modern Western Europe as a whole. 32 To emphasize the importance of inter-state competition for the rise of fashion 33 in early modern Europe is not to deny recent findings that the populations of some 34 parts of early modern India, China, or Japan enjoyed roughly equivalent standards 35 of living to those prevailing in the West. Nor is it to dispute the view that fashion 36 (in some senses, at least) existed in the world beyond Europe. Nevertheless, the 37 implication of this paper for debates on early modern globalization in design and 38 fashion is that Western Europe was different in crucially important respects. In that 39 sense, its findings have more in common with Philip T. Hoffman’s recent argument 40 for the distinctiveness of the early modern European state system than with the case 41 for broad equivalencies across parts of Eurasia made by Kenneth Pomeranz and John 42 Darwin.31 43 44

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Notes 1 1 J. Chardin, Sir John Chardin’s Travels in Persia, London, 1720, vol. 2, p. 177. 2 2 F. Braudel, Civilization and Capitalism 15th–18th Century: the Structures of Everyday Life, 3 Berkeley, University of California Press, 1992, pp. 312–13; N. McKendrick, J. Brewer 4 and J.H. Plumb, The Birth of a Consumer Society: The Commercialization of Eighteenth- 5 Century England, London, Europa, 1982, pp. 36–42. 3 For a recent overview, with numerous references, see C.M. Belfanti, ‘Was fashion a 6 European invention?’ Journal of Global History, 3 (2008), pp. 419–43. 7 4 B. Lemire, ‘Revising the historical narrative: India, Europe and the cotton trade, 8 c. 1300–1800’, in G. Riello and P. Parthasarathi (eds), The Spinning World: A Global 9 History of Cotton Textiles, 1200–1850, Oxford, Oxford University Press and Pasold Research Fund, 2009, p. 222. 0 5 B. Lemire and G. Riello, ‘East and West: Textiles and fashion in early modern Europe’, 11 Journal of Social History, 41 (2008), pp. 887 and 906. 12 6 Lemire, ‘Revising the historical narrative’, p. 222. 13 7 A.P. Wadsworth and J. de L. Mann, The Cotton Trade and Industrial Lancashire, Manchester, Manchester University Press, 1931, ch. 6. 14 8 J. Harris, Essays in Industry and Technology in the Eighteenth Century: England and France, 15 Aldershot, Ashgate, 1992. 16 9 See, for example, the essays in D. Gaimster and P. Stamper (eds), The Age of Transition: 17 The Archaeology of English Culture 1400–1600, Oxford, Oxbow, 1997. 10 J. Thirsk, Economic Policy and Projects. The Development of a Consumer Society in Early Modern 18 England, Oxford, Clarendon, 1978. 19 11 L. Monnas, Merchants, Princes and Painters. Silk Fabrics in Italian and Northern Paintings, 20 1300–1550, New Haven and London, Yale University Press, 2008, pp. 19–20, 17. 21 12 L. Molà, ‘States and crafts: relocating technical skills in Renaissance Italy’, in M. O’Malley and E. Welch (eds), The Material Renaissance, Manchester, Manchester University Press, 22 2008, pp. 133–53. 23 13 Quoted in Monnas, Merchants, Princes and Painters, p. 6. 24 14 C. Poni, ‘Fashion as flexible production: the strategies of the Lyon silk merchants in the 25 eighteenth century’, in C. Sabel and J. Zeitlin (eds), World of Possibilities: Flexibility and Mass Production in Western Industrialization, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1997, 26 pp. 37–74; M. Sonenscher, ‘Fashion’s empire: trade and power in early 18th century 27 France’, in R. Fox and A. Turner (eds), Luxury Trades and Consumerism in Ancien Regime 28 Paris: Studies in the History of the Skilled Workforce, Aldershot, Ashgate, 1998, pp. 231–54. 29 15 P. Thornton, Baroque and Rococo Silks, London, Faber and Faber, 1965, pp. 20–1; Poni, ‘Fashion as flexible production’, pp. 69–70. 30 16 H. H. Dodwell (ed.), Records of Fort St George: Despatches from England, 1680–1682, 31 Madras, Government Press, 1914, p. 51 (London to Hughly, 20 May 1681). 32 17 K.N. Chaudhuri, The English East India Company: A Study of an Early Joint Stock Company, 33 1600–1640, London, Cape, 1965, p. 199; J. Styles, ‘Product innovation in early modern London,’ Past and Present, 168 (2000), p. 133. 34 18 See, for examples, John Pollexfen, A Discourse of Trade and Coyn, London, 1700, p. 99. 35 19 Old Bailey Proceedings online: www.oldbaileyonline.org. 36 20 John Styles, The Dress of the People. Everyday Fashion in Eighteenth-Century England, 37 London, Yale University Press, 2007, ch. 7. 21 Quoted J. Irwin, ‘Origins of the “Oriental Style” in English decorative art’, Burlington 38 Magazine, 97 (1955), p. 109. 39 22 R. Crill (1999) Indian Embroidery, London, V&A Publications, p. 8. 40 23 B. Lemire, ‘Domesticating the exotic: floral culture and the East India calico trade with 41 England, c. 1600–1900’, Textile: The Journal of Cloth and Culture, 1 (2003), pp. 65–85. 24 For examples from both sides of the Atlantic see G.F. Wingfield Digby, Elizabethan 42 Embroidery, London, Faber, 1963, p. 36; C. Bateman Faraday, European and American 43 Carpets and Rugs, Grand Rapids, Mich., The Dean-Hicks Company, 1929, p. 141. 44

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1 25 Irwin, ‘Origins of the “Oriental Style”’, p. 109. 2 26 A. Morrall and M. Watt (eds), English Embroidery From the Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1580–1700: ‘Twixt Art and Nature, New Haven and London, Yale University Press, 2009, 3 p. 272. 4 27 Lemire, ‘Domesticating the exotic’, pp. 67–8. 5 28 My thanks to Mark Overton, University of Exeter, for providing access to his data. 6 29 J. Irwin, ‘Indian textile trade in the seventeenth century: iv. foreign influences’, Journal of Indian Textile History, 4 (1959), p. 57. 7 30 Michael Sonenscher’s ‘Fashion’s empire’ and Carlo Poni’s ‘Fashion as flexible production’ 8 are important exceptions. 9 31 P. T. Hoffman, ‘Prices, the military revolution, and Western Europe’s comparative 0 advantage in violence’, Economic History Review, forthcoming, 2011; K. Pomeranz, The Great Divergence: China, Europe, and the Making of the Modern World Economy, Princeton, 11 Princeton University Press, 2000; J. Darwin, After Tamerlane: The Global History of Empire 12 since 1405, Oxford, Allen Lane, 2007. 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44

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1 RESPONSE 2 3 Prasannan Parthasarathi 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 John Styles has written a deeply learned and deeply considered paper on Indian 18 cottons and English textiles in the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. 19 He does not shy away from challenging conventional wisdoms and he elegantly 20 places the introduction of Indian cottons into England into a longer sweep of time 21 than is usually the case, which yields a number of new insights and thoughtful 22 suggestions for further research. 23 Styles makes two major arguments in his paper. First, he argues that the adoption 24 of cottons was part of longer-term shifts in textile tastes in England and that the 25 taking up of the new fibre was a far slower process than many historians have argued. 26 The calico craze of the late seventeenth century, in other words, did not represent 27 a sudden break and a sharp taking up of cotton goods. As he puts it: ‘The evidence 28 of trials for theft at the Old Bailey . . . challenges that notion that Indian cottons 29 enjoyed a sudden, overwhelming popularity . . . in the late seventeenth century.’ 30 Second, he argues that Indian designs did not transform English design because 31 much of the Indian painted and embroidered cloth sold in England from the mid- 32 seventeenth century was based on English patterns: ‘The range of patterns and motifs 33 Indians employed often had more to do with European constructions of the exotic 34 than with Indian visual culture.’ 35 In the conclusion to his paper, Styles develops some of the implications of the 36 above two points. If the trade in Indian cotton textiles did not play a key role in 37 initiating fashion-driven consumerism or consumer revolution then what did? He 38 suggests that that role should be ‘accorded to the political economy of the Western 39 European state system’, which was a highly competitive one and although not much 40 recognized, design and fashion were arenas for political competition. In these respects 41 Western Europe was unique and differed from prosperous parts of Asia, for instance. 42 While this final conclusion is a provocative one, Styles does not really fill it out 43 so I will limit my comments to the two major points made in the body of the paper. 44

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48 Prasannan Parthasarathi

1 First, placing the history of cottons in England in a longer-term framework is 2 extremely enlightening. While others, including Beverly Lemire, have argued that 3 the appeal of Indian cottons was part of shifts in textile tastes that began before the 4 seventeenth century, Styles quite rightly notes that it took many decades for cotton 5 to displace its competitors. 6 I have no interest in rescuing the concept of the ‘calico craze’, but I would like 7 to point to two decisive developments in the late seventeenth century that shaped 8 the fortunes of cotton for several decades. First, the much greater increase of cotton 9 imports to Europe in that period revealed the great potential that the fibre possessed 0 and its protean nature. From the late seventeenth century, that is, from the decades 11 of the calico craze, European manufacturers began to experiment on a larger scale 12 than ever before with cotton manufacture, beginning with printing the cloth, but 13 then turning to spinning and weaving. Despite the slow expansion of cotton 14 consumption, interest in cotton manufacturing was sparked. 15 When seen from the perspective of manufacturing, to understand cotton’s appeal 16 we also require a technical analysis of the potentials of that material as opposed to 17 wool, silk, linen, and other potential substitutes, especially when it came to absorb- 18 ing dyes, and creating appealing and complex plays of colour and shading. Another 19 set of difficult questions arises from the fact that Indian cottons were not really 20 cheaper than all other European textiles, despite long repetition of this claim, which 21 raises important questions about what cotton was competing against in England as 22 well as elsewhere in Europe. 23 Second, the late seventeenth century, and the clamour over Indian goods, put 24 into place restrictions on imports of Indian cottons across Europe that were to 25 remain in force until the nineteenth century. While these restrictions probably 26 contributed to the slow adoption of cotton goods by English consumers, they also 27 made it possible for cotton to be manufactured in England itself. Therefore, even if 28 the calico craze was the product of the pamphleteer imagination, it had real and 29 profound political and economic consequences. 30 Turning to the English roots of Indian textile designs, I am in agreement with 31 Styles’ central points. Instead, I would like to consider the language that is used in 32 talking about the provenance of designs and the one-sidedness of the discussion 33 stemming from the fact that too little is known about design in the subcontinent 34 itself and the ways in which Indian cottons were used and infused with meaning in 35 that ancient home of cotton cloth. 36 On language, I propose that we no longer speak of English or Indian textile 37 design. Instead, let us speak of textile design in England and in India (actually, not 38 India either, but regions of the subcontinent). Styles suggests that the designs that 39 appealed to English consumers were complex hybrid products. They were based on 40 patterns that the East India Company sent to Gujarat and the Coromandel coast, but 41 there was a great deal of room for local merchants and cloth painters and printers to 42 interpret and impart these patterns on to cloth. In this process, pre-existing design 43 elements (flowers, trees, and others that may be seen in pre-seventeenth century 44 Gujarati and South Indian textiles) as well as designs that were demanded in West

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Response 49

and Southeast Asia and East Africa influenced the construction of the final product 1 for England. 2 Such hybridity of design no doubt shaped the cloth that was consumed within 3 the Indian subcontinent itself. John Irwin in his article ‘Origins of the “Oriental 4 Style”’ reports that ‘India, quite independent of Europe, had its own period of 5 chinoiserie, or indulgence in the “Chinese taste.”’1 In a similar fashion, the encounter 6 with European ideas, designs and art forms undoubtedly created for Indian con- 7 sumption all sorts of hybrid products. 8 While the research in textile designs for Indian markets in the period from 1500 9 to 1800 is still in its early stages, such hybridity may be identified in the realm of 0 music. One example is Muthuswami Dikshitar, who is considered to be one of the 11 three great composers in classical South Indian music. Dikshitar was born near 12 Thanjavur in 1775 and as a young man resided for several years near the British city 13 of Madras, where he absorbed European musical forms, ranging from Irish folk songs 14 to marching band music. As a consequence of this encounter, he composed some 15 thirty devotional songs that drew upon European tunes for the music with Sanskrit 16 lyrics that he wrote. One such example drew upon God Save the King, which no 17 doubt was played routinely at Fort St. George. The piece, Santatam Pahimam, set to 18 the music of God Save The King, may be heard at: http://www.kanniks.com/ 19 vismaya_tracks.htm. 20 Much as Dikshitar combined the South Indian and the English for local listeners, 21 it is not far-fetched to imagine that textile artisans did the same as they drew upon 22 a repertoire of forms, some local, some regional, some European, to create textiles 23 for local consumers. These were not South Indian designs, but designs for South 24 Indians that amalgamated diverse influences (along these lines, painted cloths 25 modelled on the European tree of life were exported from the Coromandel coast 26 to Southeast Asia in the eighteenth century). 27 Of course, this is all quite speculative at this point, but it suggests the tremendous 28 potential for a global design history. To embark upon such a project for cotton 29 textiles, however, requires research on the Indian cottons that were consumed in 30 the subcontinent. Until then, the empirical base for rethinking design is entirely 31 one-sided. 32 33 34 Note 35 1 J. Irwin, ‘Origins of the “Oriental Style” in English Decorative Art’, Burlington Magazine, 36 97 (1955), p. 111. 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44

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1 2 3 4 4 5 IMPORT SUBSTITUTION, 6 7 INNOVATION AND THE TEA 8 CEREMONY IN FIFTEENTH 9 0 AND SIXTEENTH-CENTURY JAPAN 11 12 Christine M. E. Guth 13 14 15 16 17 18 Chanoyu, commonly known in the Anglophone world as the “tea ceremony,” was 19 characterized by its most famous sixteenth-century practitioner Sen no Rikyû 20 (1522–91) as nothing more than “boiling water for tea.” Yet like much writing on 21 tea, such statements hide the true nature of a cultural practice that since the fifteenth 22 century has been a driving force behind the production and consumption of both 23 imported and domestic luxury goods in Japan. While stoneware and porcelain vessels 24 from China and Korea predominate, ceramics from the Ryûkyû Islands, Vietnam, 25 Thailand, and even Holland have also been used in preparing ritual tea. Chanoyu has 26 been written about extensively from the perspectives of art history, anthropology, 27 religion, and politics but less attention has been given to its socio-economic 28 implications within the framework of a global approach to design. 29 This paper examines the culture of tea from the perspective of import substitution 30 and innovation. Import substitution, as Maxine Berg has defined it, refers to the 31 replacement of like with like, a luxury article that becomes too scarce or too costly 32 being replaced by a domestic product that simulates its appearance, but not its mode 33 of manufacture.1 The development of japanning in eighteenth-century Britain in 34 response to the demand for Japanese lacquer typifies this model. But here I want to 35 complicate the notion of import substitution, first, by suggesting how it might 36 involve the replacement of like with unlike, and, second, by considering the 37 processes through which these innovative goods are validated, in turn generating 38 new imports and domestic substitutes that may come to assume the same luxury 39 status as the articles they replaced. 40 Tea, as many scholars now refer to chanoyu, is basically a form of ritual hospitality 41 whose paraphernalia assumes high symbolic and economic value beyond its practical 42 functions as utensils for preparing and serving.2 The implements essential to any 43 gathering include an iron kettle to heat water, a bamboo ladle to transfer it to the 44 ceramic bowl from which the guest drinks, a small ceramic or lacquer caddy for

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holding the powdered tea, a slender bamboo scoop for transferring the powder from 1 container to bowl, a whisk for whipping the emulsion of water and tea, and fresh 2 and waste water containers. In the period under discussion, ownership of a large tea 3 leaf storage jar was also deemed indispensable to tea practice. 4 Social tea drinking first arose among the ruling warrior and aristocratic elite in 5 the late fifteenth century, later expanding to merchants, for whom it became a 6 culturally legitimizing practice. It was codified and popularized among men and 7 women of all social classes over the course of the Tokugawa period (1615–1868) by 8 three schools of tea, Urasenke, Omote senke, and Mushanokôji senke, and their 9 offshoots, all founded by the great-grandsons of the teamaster Sen no Rikyû. As a 0 franchise system with branches throughout Japan and abroad, these three tea schools 11 continue today to provide instruction in the proper practice of chanoyu around the 12 world. They also oversee and certify the production of branded ceramic, lacquer, 13 and bamboo tea utensils in prescribed forms and styles by ten hereditary families of 14 craftsmen that trace their origins to the late sixteenth century. 15 At the outset, tea was limited principally to members of the socio-political circles 16 of the Ashikaga military rulers, and gatherings were the occasions for lavish, 17 competitive displays of their collections of Chinese art treasures. These included 18 Southern Song (1127–1279) and Yuan dynasty (1279–1368) ink paintings, callig- 19 raphy by Zen monks, as well as stoneware, porcelain and lacquer utensils for 20 preparing and serving tea. Finely potted celadons and stonewares with deep brown 21 glazes known as temmoku in Japan (Jian ware in Chinese) were especially sought after 22 since there were no domestically-produced works of comparable refinement.3 23 Porcelain manufacture did not begin in Japan until the early seventeenth century, 24 and in the fifteenth century only a few kilns in the Seto and Mino regions (modern 25 day Aichi and Gifu Prefectures) had the technology to produce glazed wares. Vessels 26 emulating the shapes and surface effects of sought-after Chinese imports were first 27 made in the Seto region during the thirteenth century for aristocrats, temples and 28 shrines. These kilns later shifted production to cater to demand for tea caddies with 29 temmoku-like glazes closely modeled on Chinese imports. The tradition that Katô 30 Shirozaemon, a potter who had traveled to China in 1223 with the Zen monk 31 Dôgen, founded the Seto kilns, suggests that this development involved some form 32 of technology transfer.4 33 Import substitution was tied to the growth of tea consumption both as ritual and 34 as part of everyday life among all levels of society. (The green tea that gained 35 popularity in Japan was picked, heated, then dried in sealed containers; unlike 36 Chinese or European teas it was not allowed to ferment.) When tea drinking was 37 confined to the elite, the dried leaves were stored in lugged jars imported from 38 China or Southeast Asia that the military rulers sent to tea plantations in the spring 39 to be filled and sealed for delivery in the autumn. These are commonly known 40 as Luzon jars since they were trans-shipped to Japan via the Philippines (see 41 Figure 4.1).5 The large tea jar, with its brocade cap and decorative cords, was dis- 42 played in the decorative alcove of the tearoom as part of the ritual held upon its 43 arrival. Both the cost of such imported vessels and the aesthetic discourses that 44

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1 developed around them testify to their material and symbolic value. The luxury 2 status of the container guaranteed the quality of its contents. 3 Sixteenth-century sources testify to the extraordinary value of Chinese tea caddies 4 and tea leaf jars. Alessandro Valignano (1539–1606), who was in Japan twice between 5 1579 and 1592, wrote of “a small earthenware caddy for which, in all truth, we would 6 have no other use than to put it in a bird’s cage as a drinking trough; nevertheless he 7 [the king of Bungo] had paid 9,000 silver taels (or about 14,00 ducats) for it.”6 Sen 8 no Rikyû, in a letter written about the same time, mentions a price of fifty pieces of 9 gold for one antique Chinese tea leaf jar. Since one gold piece bought about 10,620 0 liters of rice, the cost of this vessel was equivalent to some 540,000 liters of rice.7 11 The expansion of the market, combined with the disruption of international trade 12 owing to the Onin and Bunmei Wars (1467–87) put pressure on the supply of such 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 FIGURE 4.1 Luzon tea leaf storage jar, 16th century 43 Source: © Freer Gallery of Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC. Gift of Charles Lang 44 Freer F1900.22

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imported containers, precipitating the adoption of utilitarian domestic jars that 1 farmers used for storing seeds and grain and to hold water. Unlike the refined 2 imports from China, these vessels from rural kilns in Shigaraki and Bizen near 3 modern-day Kyoto and Okayama were coarsely potted with awkward, often sagging 4 forms made with clay pitted with sand and pebbles (see Figure 4.2). Their surfaces 5 were further marked by the accidental effects of burnt straw or vitrified wood-ash 6 from the firing process. Tea distributors and merchants especially favored those from 7 Shigaraki kilns because these were conveniently located near Uji, a region whose 8 tea plantations saw a surge in production in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth 9 centuries.8 0 The use of such local wares was not entirely new, but previously had been limited 11 to the storage and distribution of low grade tea. To reposition them as containers 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 FIGURE 4.2 Shigaraki tea leaf storage jar, 1400–1500. Museum no: FE 201984 43 Source: © V&A Images/Victoria and Albert Museum, London 44

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1 for ceremonial tea, merchants, who were becoming increasingly active in chanoyu, 2 re-presented these rustic vessels in terms that linked them to a repudiation of the 3 excessive luxury of their imported counterparts. This rationalization of domestic 4 vessels of inferior materials and craftsmanship gave merchants the moral high ground 5 vis-à-vis the military elite. At the same time, their lower cost in relation to imports 6 made it possible for an increasing number of aspiring commoners to take up the 7 practice of tea. 8 The names of Murata Jukô (1422/3–1502), Takenoo Jôô (1502–55) and Sen no 9 Rikyû, monk-tea masters who were themselves of merchant background, are 0 touchstones in the formulation of the rhetoric of rustic poverty and imperfection 11 known as wabi that validated domestic wares in moral and aesthetic terms.9 To 12 understand this process, however, requires looking beneath the kind of anecdote 13 and myth prevalent in orthodox texts about tea, a mode of writing history that 14 conceals its own method. It also requires careful interpretation of writings by, or 15 authorized by, the heirs to the lineages of tea instruction and practice founded by 16 Sen no Rikyû’s three grandsons. 17 The Zen monk Murata Jukô is said to have “discovered” rustic wares from 18 Shigaraki and Bizen, and encouraged their adoption as part of a critique of shogunal 19 excess; yet he is known to have formed a large personal collection of Chinese 20 ceramics himself. He also is said to have served as teamaster to the Ashikaga Shogun 21 Yoshimasa, a tradition more likely to have been promoted after his death to lend 22 legitimacy to what was still a contested taste in tea wares. To Jukô is also attributed 23 the invention of a new-style tearoom of reduced size and simple décor, known as 24 sôan, or “thatched hut.” While this too is likely apochryphal, there is no doubt that 25 the advent of the sôan dates to his lifetime.10 This space dramatically restricted both 26 the number of guests and articles that could be displayed. 27 The Letter of the Heart [ Kokoro no fumi], that Jukô wrote to a disciple, is the most 28 reliable source of information about his position in the transformation in taste and 29 practice occurring in the late fifteenth century. In it, he advocates the judicious use 30 of domestic wares to complement imports, elsewhere analogizing this to “tying a 31 fine steed to a thatched hut.” In other words, just as we may better appreciate the 32 quality of a fine horse when we see it next to a rough dwelling, so too the rough 33 dwelling becomes more visually interesting by the contrast. This recognition of the 34 mutually constitutive relationship between luxury imports and their rustic substitutes 35 is reinforced by his declaration that it was essential to “dissolve the boundaries 36 between imported and domestic wares.”11 37 Examination of patterns of usage during the sixteenth century, well documented 38 in the diaries kept by merchant teamen, suggests that the boundaries between 39 imported and domestic wares were in fact dissolving. Although unglazed Shigaraki 40 and Bizen stonewares may be contrasted with so-called Luzon jars, they have much 41 in common with unglazed low-fire wares that were also being imported from 42 South-East Asia. As the ceramics scholar Louise Cort has observed, these prestigious 43 imports likely contributed to the validation of local unglazed wares.12 Of particular 44 note in this respect is a type of bulbous, low-fire, unglazed jar with a repeated cord

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pattern around its circumference that became fashionable in tea circles in the mid- 1 sixteenth century. This type of vessel came to be known in Japan as imogashira, or 2 potato head.13 Shigaraki potters were so successful in imitating these “potato head” 3 jars that nineteenth-century collectors were warned: “Among pieces called Shigaraki 4 are mixed many pieces made in Luzon [the Philippines]. All those that make the 5 sound ‘kin-kin’ when tapped are not from our country but from China or the South 6 Pacific.”14 7 Recent observations by the ceramics scholar Hiroko Nishida throw further light 8 on the complex dynamics of the domestic and international trade in tea ceramics. 9 She has remarked that in the absence of excavated examples on the Korean 0 peninsula, Ido wares are likely to have been made as tea bowls expressly for the 11 market in Japan, where large numbers have survived.15 Traditional scholarship, 12 however, holds that Ido ware bowls were originally produced in Korea as common 13 rice bowls, and subsequently “discovered” and repurposed by Japanese tea 14 practitioners. Such narratives strategically elevate the discriminating eye of the 15 collector while effacing the contributions of the maker. By the same token they 16 symbolically appropriate and redefine Korean bowls in the same manner as the 17 Shigaraki and Bizen jars purportedly “discovered” by Murata Jukô. If Nishida is 18 correct, rustic Japanese wares that were first adopted as low-cost substitutes for 19 luxury imports from China were the catalyst for the production of new imports from 20 the Korean peninsula that similarly embodied the ideals of poverty and imperfection. 21 In this way, as Marina Bianchi has argued in her study “Taste for Novelty and Novel 22 Tastes”: “a novel characteristic may carry novelty much farther and start a chain of 23 change that involves all the other interacting goods . . . And the new good is never 24 completely new.”16 25 Growing demand for tea ceramics also fueled new domestic production. Mortars 26 (suribachi) are among the daily wares that tea masters are said to have “discovered” 27 and repurposed for use as water containers in tea. Later, Bizen and Shigaraki potters 28 began to make vessels that self-consciously simulated them. The late sixteenth- 29 century fresh water container from Bizen illustrated in Figure 4.3 is a case in point. 30 It reproduces the shape of a mortar with broad base and inverted conical walls and 31 interior combing for grinding soybeans, sesame seeds, and making sauces. However, 32 it has been deliberately distorted to make its appearance more interesting.17 This 33 spectacularization, often in defiance of functionality, that distinguishes new designs 34 from their recycled counterparts went hand in hand with the development of a new 35 aesthetic vocabulary that legitimated and in turn helped to popularize this new style. 36 Today this water container is presented as a unique masterpiece, but excavations in 37 Kyoto have revealed that vessels of this type were not uncommon. The discovery 38 of hordes of imported and domestic wabi type ceramics in Kyoto’s sixteenth-century 39 shopping district testifies to the surge in domestic and imported production and 40 consumption following Nobunaga and Hideyoshi’s policies to promote commerce 41 and crafts in this city.18 42 How did these radical innovations in ceramics gain acceptance? Discovery, as 43 Marina Bianchi has argued “is not reducible to chance or search. Discovery is wholly 44

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1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 FIGURE 4.3 Bizen fresh water jar, c.1590–1605, stoneware with natural ash glaze 20 21 Source: © Freer Gallery of Art and Sackler Museum, F1998.17 22 23 due to the explorer’s ability to take advantage of existing opportunities in ways that 24 are not yet explored, to his or her abilities to detect new and gainful options.”19 Low 25 cost and availability were no doubt huge incentives for the initial adoption of domes- 26 tic ceramics for tea, but there were also other equally significant aspects to this process. 27 The widespread repurposing of Shigaraki and Bizen wares and production of new 28 rustic style wares in Japan and Korea would not have succeeded without the 29 development of the ideology of wabi. Its historical emergence in the sixteenth 30 century to valorize austerity and imperfection as aesthetic ideals is inextricably 31 entwined with the growth of a consumer society and the attendant competition for 32 cultural authority between increasingly prosperous merchants and warriors. The new 33 moral economy of tea promoted under the banner of wabi austerity was nothing less 34 than a radical ideology of consumption. Although informed by poetic theory and 35 Zen Buddhism, wabi should also be recognized as an example of the symbolic 36 inversion of values that in the language of Bourdieu could be called “ostentatious 37 poverty.” Luxury is central to its meaning but is disguised by being presented in the 38 form of its denial. The “distinction” accrued from wabi is predicated on knowing 39 its coded meaning. 40 A critique of Sen no Rikyû by one of his contemporaries throws light on this 41 symbolic inversion: 42 43 In [tea] objects he liked, [Rikyû] declared good points bad and bought them 44 for mean prices. In vessels he disdained, [Rikyû] declared bad points good and

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bought them at high price. He called new old and old new. No he made yes, 1 false he made genuine.20 2 3 What is at stake here is not good or bad taste but economics. Skillful manipulation 4 of the aesthetic discourse of wabi gave merchant teamen control over the market 5 they created by their “discoveries.” 6 The taste for rustic austerity didn’t arise spontaneously or catch on immediately 7 among all tea practitioners. It appealed to commoners on the political margins, 8 because it was a contested, even subversive, discourse that symbolically undermined 9 the cultural authority of the elite. To be a true wabi teaman, declared Sen no Rikyû’s 0 contemporary, Yamanoue Sôji, one need not own even one luxury article from 11 China, but simply “incorporate the qualities of resolution, creativity and skill.” Yet 12 in the same passage, the author also acknowledges that one who owns a Chinese 13 import and “who can judge the value of things” is also a “master.”21 As this makes 14 clear, the novelty of wabi taste was dependent on the esteem in which familiar luxury 15 imports were held. Like the modern subculture styles analyzed by Dick Hebdige, 16 wabi might be characterized as “a compromise solution between contradictory needs: 17 the need to create and express autonomy and difference from parents . . . and the 18 need to maintain the parental identifications.”22 19 The rise of wabi taste in tea utensils came about in response to particular historical 20 circumstances. The fifteenth and sixteenth centuries were not only marked by 21 political instability but also by an erosion of traditional markers of social distinction. 22 As the practice of tea became a mark of civility, the mastery of its etiquette and the 23 ability to manipulate the cultural codes attendant on the selection and display of tea 24 utensils became associated with sociocultural and political power.23 The dis- 25 criminating eye and creativity required to build a fine collection of tea utensils 26 afforded opportunities for merchants to develop individual social identities. This 27 underlies the many “discovery” narratives in tea modeled by Jukô, Jôô and Rikyû. 28 In addition, the practice of chanoyu enabled men of different social backgrounds to 29 safely meet and establish networks that brought access to knowledge and business 30 opportunities well beyond the confines of the tearoom. 31 Wabi did not, as is commonly assumed, imply a complete renunciation of 32 imported luxuries, merely moderation—a reduced number of articles used and dis- 33 played being dictated by the small room where tea gatherings were held. Combining 34 Japanese rusticity with Chinese refinement, however, created a relational aesthetics 35 in which moderation was offset by the expanded opportunities of diversification. As 36 a result, by fostering new materials, forms and styles of utensils, wabi paradoxically 37 increased consumption. Tea adepts were encouraged to invent their own personal 38 ensembles for each tea gathering by mixing and matching colorful Chinese porce- 39 lains with more sober domestic ceramics. In the sixteenth century, the visual dis- 40 cernment and inventiveness required to mix and match, a process known as toriawase, 41 became the defining characteristic of the most admired men of tea.24 The inno- 42 vations associated with import substitution in the context of chanoyu are situated at 43 the intersection of a variety of discourses. These involve individual and local 44

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1 economic, ideological, and institutional factors, but they must also take into account 2 the larger geographies of which ceramics production and consumption in Japan were 3 an inextricable part. 4 5 Notes 6 7 1 Maxine Berg, “In Pursuit of Luxury: Global Origins of British Consumer Goods,” Past 8 and Present 182 (2004): 85–112. 2 Basic studies include Tea in Japan, edited by Paul Varley and Kumakura Isao. Honolulu: 9 University of Hawaii Press, 1989; Japanese Tea Culture: Art, History, and Practice, edited 0 by Morgan Pitelka. London: RoutledgeCurzon 2003; and Morgan Pitelka, Handmade 11 Culture: Raku Potters, Patrons, and Tea Practitioners in Japan. Honolulu: University of 12 Hawaii Press, 2005. For a good discussion of the period under consideration informed by Bourdieu see Dale Slusser, “The Transformation of Tea Practice in Sixteenth-Century 13 Japan,” in Japanese Tea Culture: Art, History, and Practice, pp. 39–60. 14 3 On Jian wares see Robert D. Mowry, Hare’s Fur, Tortoiseshell, and Partridge Feathers: 15 Chinese Brown and Black-glazed Ceramics, 400–1400. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard 16 University Art Museums, 1996. 4 Louise Allison Cort, Seto and Mino Ceramics: Japanese Collections in the Freer Gallery of Art. 17 Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution, Freer Gallery of Art, 1992, pp. 56–60. 18 5 On tea jars, see Tokugawa Yoshinobu, “Chatsubo,” in Chadô shûkin, vol.10. Chadôgu: 19 hanaire, chaire, chatsubo. Tokyo: Shogakkan, 1986, pp. 161–72. 20 6 They Came to Japan: An Anthology of European Reports on Japan, 1543–1640, compiled and annotated by Michael Cooper. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1965, p. 261. 21 7 Louise Allison Cort, “Shopping for Pots in Momoyama Japan,” in Japanese Tea Culture: 22 Art History and Practice, p. 65. 23 8 Louise Allison Cort, Shigaraki: Potters’ Valley. Bangkok: Orchid Press, 2001, pp. 105–10. 24 9 On wabi see Koshira Haga, “The Wabi Aesthetic through the Ages,” translated and 25 adapted by Martin Collcutt, in Tea in Japan, pp. 195–229. 10 The earliest surviving example of a reduced size tearoom is in the Tôgudô sub-temple of 26 Yoshimasa’s Silver Pavilion, thought to date to circa 1480. See Fumio Hashimoto, 27 Architecture in the Shoin Style: Japanese Feudal Residences, translated and adapted by H. Mack 28 Horton. Tokyo & New York: Kodansha International, 1981, pp. 55–8. 29 11 The myths surrounding Jukô, his place in tea history, and aesthetic philosophy are well discussed in Wind in the Pines: Classic Writings of the Way of Tea as a Buddhist Path, 30 compiled and edited by Dennis Hirota. Fremont, CA.: Asian Humanities Press, 1995, 31 pp. 63–80. For cited passages from his writings on tethering a horse and on dissolution 32 of boundaries, see pp. 70, and 67. 33 12 Cort,”Shopping for Pots in Momoyama Japan,” in Japanese Tea Culture, 75. 13 This designation is now assumed to be strictly humorous, but potatoes were a valuable 34 crop newly introduced to Japan through Portuguese traders, so it may have had different 35 connotations at that time. 36 14 Cited in Cort, Shigaraki: Potter’s Valley, p. 133. 37 15 Takeshi Watanabe, “From Korea to Japan and Back again: One Hundred Years of Japanese Tea Culture through Five Bowls, 1550–1650,” in Yale University Art Gallery 38 Bulletin 2007: Japanese Art at Yale. New Haven: Yale University Art Gallery 2007, 84 39 citing Hiroko Nishida, Kanzô chawan hyakusen. Tokyo: Nezu Bijutsukan, 1994, p. vi. 40 16 Marina Bianchi, “Taste for Novelty and Novel Tastes: The Role of Human Agency in 41 Consumption,” in The Active Consumer: Novelty and Surprise in Consumer Choice. Marina Bianchi (ed.) Routledge 1998, p. 67. 42 17 For a detailed discussion of this work, see Beyond the Legacy: Anniversary Acquisitions for 43 the Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, edited by Thomas Lawton and 44 Thomas W. Lentz. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution, 1998, pp. 289–92.

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18 These discoveries are the basis for Cort’s “Shopping for Pots in Momoyama Japan.” 1 19 Bianchi, “Taste for Novelty and Novel Tastes: The Role of Human Agency in 2 Consumption,” pp. 3–4. 20 Mary Elizabeth Berry, The Culture of Civil War in Kyoto. Berkeley: University of California 3 Press, 1994, p. 242. 4 21 Cited in Paul Varley and George Elison, “The Culture of Tea; from its Origins to Sen 5 no Rikyu,” in Warlords Artists and Commoners: Japan in the Sixteenth Century, edited by 6 George Elison and Bardwell L. Smith. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1981, 7 pp. 204–5. 22 Dick Hebdige, Subculture: the Meaning of Style. Routledge, 2007, p. 77. 8 23 On this subject see Eiko Ikegami, Bonds of Civility: Aesthetic Networks and the Political 9 Origins of Japanese Culture. Cambridge University Press, 2005. 0 24 Christine M. E. Guth, Art, Tea, and Industry: Masuda Takashi and the Mitsui Circle. 11 Princeton University Press, 1993, pp. 64–8. 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44

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1 2 RESPONSE 3 4 Maxine Berg 5 6 7 8 9 0 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 Christine Guth’s fine essay on Japanese tea culture introduces three key points 19 connecting her subject to the social-economic history of global trade and cultural 20 interaction. These are import substitution, concepts of luxury and consumption, 21 and the role of merchants and mercantile cultures. Guth argues that the import 22 substitution model developed for Europe was about the substitution of like by like, 23 a simulation of appearance but not of mode of production. She wishes to complicate 24 the concept of import substitution by including the substitution of like by unlike, 25 and the validation of new goods as luxuries. Her discussion of these import 26 substitutes in the case of Japanese tea culture provides a fascinating case study of this 27 import substitution, but is Japan’s story so very different from Europe’s? As David 28 Hume put it, ‘Our own steel and iron are like the gold and silver of the Indies’.1 29 Europeans substituted not just production processes, but materials, and in the process 30 created product innovation. Gold might be imitated by ormolu or even bronze, the 31 sparkle of diamonds provided by cut steel, silver plate might match the appearance 32 of luxury silver. But common domestic materials were also developed into new 33 products which acquired fashion and taste, and became world products in their own 34 turn: refined earthenware a modern advance on porcelain; lead glass crystal the base 35 of a whole range of new products never envisaged by Venetian glass craftsmen; silver 36 plate more malleable and flexible could produce more refined and variable products. 37 Enamels and japanned metal goods were not imitation domestic substitutes, but new 38 products which also had important markets in China and India. The key to the 39 success of these products was design, taste and fashion, and above all the novelty and 40 modernity of their use of materials and production processes. 41 Is the case of Japanese tea wares distinctive? What we see in this case is not a new 42 production process, or innovative technologies to use domestic materials, but instead 43 a new use and validation of once common domestic utensils. In turn, the new luxury 44 status acquired by these objects came to affect the type of products imported. The

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intermediary for this process was a distinctive domestic tea culture in Japan, created 1 and sustained by merchants. That tea culture, as Guth sets out, developed wabi, an 2 aesthetic of simplicity over ostentation, of appreciation of rustic imperfection 3 alongside the refined quality of imported goods. 4 Guth demonstrates the development of the tea culture over the course of the 5 later fifteenth to seventeenth centuries encompassing periods of substitution for 6 imported Chinese ceramics through to one of mixing the rough and the smooth, 7 the refined and the unsophisticated, the personal narrative of imperfection with the 8 refined perfection of the ceremony. She turns Jukô’s emphasis on ‘dissolving the 9 boundaries between imported and domestic ware’ into analysis of a new phase of 0 import substitution with unglazed low-fired wares imitating Japanese unglazed wares 11 exported to Japan from South east Asia and Korea. 12 Guth identifies the early role played by merchant tea men. They cultivated wabi 13 and used it to control their markets. Mastery of the tea ceremony as a mark of civility 14 signified social and political power, and merchants turned the aesthetics of choice 15 of tea implements into individual social identities. Pushing her argument further, 16 we might also see the potential impact of this mercantile culture on the global 17 market in ceramics especially from the seventeenth century. In Tokugawa Japan 18 trade expanded and wealth grew in the newly settled conditions. New wealthy 19 groups within a rapidly urbanizing Japanese society developed different inter- 20 pretations and styles of the tea ceremony. This more widespread practice of the tea 21 ceremony entailed a commercial culture of collecting the utensils and vessels used 22 in the tea ceremony and kaiseki or simple meal which preceded it. At the heart of 23 the tea ceremony was a showing of the valued tea articles (the sacra) and rehearsing 24 their history. As Guth shows, these articles combined imported Chinese porcelains 25 with domestic and even imported rough wares, ones which were highly individual, 26 invested with personal associations and hugely valued. Leading tea masters had large 27 personal collections from which they selected pieces for each ceremony. Japanese 28 tea masters prized quality wares exhibiting unsophisticated and individual char- 29 acteristics. Some of the imported porcelain objects were Korean and some Chinese; 30 there was also a substantial amount of Jingdezhen export ware that was used in 31 serving the meal that preceded the tea.2 Tea and ceramics’ merchants engaged in a 32 significant ceramics trade with Chinese merchants developing a whole range of 33 private kilns in Jingdezhen over the first two-thirds of the seventeenth century. The 34 Chinese exported 23 per cent of their porcelain output to Japan over the period 35 1602–44, and 14 per cent in 1645–61.3 36 What the Chinese private kilns did over a crucial period of four decades was to 37 provide export-quality wares, many in small quantities, and specifically designed 38 from patterns and correspondence provided by merchants servicing the differ- 39 ent schools of tea ceremony. What this required was a response to an aesthetic of 40 diversity, with some schools preferring more showy wares, others appreciating an 41 understated taste. A diversity of shapes and utensils was required to meet the different 42 protocols of the socially-diverse but large sectors of new wealth in Edo and other 43 Japanese cities. The development of such export ware for the Japanese market also 44

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1 drew on the innovative response of private kilns to new domestic markets created 2 by the later Ming literati seeking high quality goods to confirm status, but goods 3 which also conveyed contemporary fashion and politics.4 4 We can ask what impact this Chinese–Japanese trade in ceramics, deeply influ- 5 enced by the developing protocols of the tea ceremony, had on the newly develop- 6 ing Chinese–European ceramics trade. Did the experience Chinese merchants and 7 private producers drew on to meet the highly specific demands of the Japanese 8 market contribute to their facility in adapting to the distinctive designs and shapes 9 of a newly developing Dutch and European market?5 Can the Japanese tea ceremony 0 be lifted out of its isolated history of distinctive connoisseurship to be connected to 11 wider global processes of ceramics production and exchange? 12 13 Notes 14 15 1 David Hume, ‘Of Commerce’, [1752] in David Hume, Essays Moral, Political, and Literary, 16 ed. Eugene F. Miller (Indianapolis, Liberty Classics, 1985). p. 264. 2 Colin D. Sheaf, ‘Chinese Ceramics and Japanese Tea Taste in the Late Ming Period’, in 17 Rosemary E. Scott, The Porcelains of Jingdezhen, Colloquies on Art & Archaeology in Asia 18 No. 16 (London, Percival David Foundation of Chinese Art, 1992) pp. 165–83, esp. 19 176–9. 20 3 C. Ho, ‘The Ceramic Trade in Asia 1602–82’, in A.J.H. Latham, H. Kawakatsu, eds, Japanese Industrialization and the Asian Economy (London, 1994), pp. 37–8. 21 4 See Craig Clunas, Superfluous Things. Material Culture and Social Status in Early Modern 22 China (Cambridge, Polity Press, 1991); Clunas, Art in China (Oxford, Oxford University 23 Press, 1997), pp. 133–48; Robert Batchelor, ‘On the Movement of Porcelains’, in John 24 Brewer and Frank Trentmann, eds, Consuming Cultures. Global Perspectives: Historical Trajectories, Transnational Exchanges (Oxford, Berg, 2006), pp. 95–121, esp. p.104. 25 5 Christiaan J. A. Jörg, ‘Porcelain for the Dutch in the Seventeenth Century: Trading 26 Networks and Private Enterprise’, in Rosemary E. Scott, The Porcelains of Jingdezhen, 27 Colloquies on Art & Archaeology in Asia No. 16 (London, Percival David Foundation 28 of Chinese Art, 1992) p. 189; Margaret Medley, The Chinese Potter, third edition (Oxford, Phaidon Press, 1989), pp. 229–32. 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44

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1 2 5 3 4 THE GLOBALIZATION OF 5 6 THE FASHION CITY 7 8 Christopher Breward 9 0 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 The history of Western fashion is closely related to the history of urban life.1 As 18 cultural geographer David Gilbert has claimed, this complex relationship underpins 19 contemporary understandings of global fashion as a system orchestrated around a 20 shifting network of world cities, particularly Paris, New York, London, Milan and 21 Tokyo, but also incorporating (at various times) Moscow, Vienna, Berlin, Sao Paulo, 22 Kuwait City, Cape Town, Barcelona, Antwerp, Sydney, Shanghai, Hong Kong, 23 Mumbai, Stockholm and many others. The hierarchy of these locations, Gilbert 24 suggests, has to be understood through a history which places fashion at the 25 intersection of key cultural and economic processes that shaped the urban order. 26 These included the consumer revolution of the eighteenth century, the economic 27 and symbolic workings of European imperialism, the growing American engage- 28 ment with European fashion (specifically via the medium of Hollywood film) and 29 the emergence of a distinctively fashion-focused promotional industry (advertising 30 and magazines, fashion weeks and runway presentations) centred on a few key urban 31 centres.2 This chapter looks to one crucial moment in this development (the latter 32 half of the nineteenth century) that witnessed the consolidation of the idea of the 33 city as a pivotal location in the global organisation of both colonial and sartorial 34 relationships with long-term consequences for the directions taken by a globalised 35 fashion industry in subsequent eras. 36 37 38 The pre-history of fashion cities 39 The first modern centres of fashion production, distribution and display prospered 40 because of the concurrent existence of clusters of highly-skilled clothing producers; 41 local and international markets for the trading and dissemination of raw materials, 42 finished goods and printed representations of them; and the proximity of magnificent 43 court cultures where the promotion of luxury was a social and moral necessity. 44

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1 These three factors were often interdependent, echoing fashion’s generic character 2 as an amalgamation of the forces of production, distribution and consumption. But 3 the emphasis and effect differed from city to city, leading to local distinctions and 4 wider competition. Thus the rising dominance of Burgundian, Venetian and Spanish 5 sartorial styles in formations of early modern European taste reflected those moments 6 during which their respective courts (and their host cities) enjoyed unchallenged 7 political, economic and military influence. In fourteenth-, fifteenth- and sixteenth- 8 century Venice, Florence, Madrid, Paris, Bruges and London, fine textiles and 9 clothes were as significant an indicator of civic power as the streets, squares, guild- 0 halls and palaces that signified heightened metropolitan status in architectural terms. 11 Furthermore, such sites offered spaces where crowds might congregate, classes of 12 people intermingle, and individuals compete for attention through the modishness 13 of their attire. To be fashionable was to be urban and vice versa. 14 By the late seventeenth century the dual systems of mercantile trade and courtly 15 display had produced a convergence. Paris emerged as the prime centre of urban 16 fashionability and the first of fashion’s world cities. The nearby court of the ‘Sun 17 King’ Louis XIV utilised the power of fashion for dynastic and nationalistic 18 propaganda. As Jean-Baptiste Colbert, Louis’ most powerful statesman, remarked, 19 ‘fashion is to France what the gold mines of Peru are to Spain’. Royal sponsorship 20 of French textile, ceramic, metal and furniture manufactures as substitutes for 21 Spanish and Italian luxury imports, and the spectacular consolidation of the King’s 22 household at Versailles as a carefully managed symbol of absolutism, strengthened 23 the idea of French fashion as a vehicle for control and promotion. Ambitious 24 courtiers and subjects were kept in check by a complex system of sartorial regu- 25 lations, and foreign competitors were awed into submission by the staging of 26 ostentatious fashionable consumption, both personal and ceremonial.3 27 The labour which lay behind this emphasis on the creation of fashionable 28 personae, lifestyles and happenings was located in Paris and underpinned the 29 transformation of France’s economy and international profile. Unsurprisingly, the 30 thousands of weavers, embroiderers, tailors, dressmakers and milliners employed in 31 the service of the court at Versailles were also able to establish themselves as an 32 alternative source of fashion knowledge, materials and techniques to local clientele. 33 The demi-monde of wealthy courtesans and actresses at home in the city, the rising 34 Parisian bourgeoisie and increasing numbers of overseas and provincial visitors 35 formed a new audience for their goods, and a new conduit for trends that operated 36 independently of those trickling down from the monarchy. By the middle of the 37 eighteenth century Parisian tastes, freed from the restrictions of official practice, were 38 also attracting the attention of a younger aristocratic generation. After 1715, Louis 39 XV’s circle chose to embrace the chic urbanity of metropolitan modes over fossilised 40 court ceremony. It was in this context that the Paris-based purveyor of fashion 41 gained a new role and prominence in the system of Paris fashion.4 42 The complicated guild regulations which governed the production of Paris fashion 43 in the eighteenth century (preceding the equally severe edicts of the Chambre 44 Syndicale de la Haute Couture in the twentieth century) threw up discrete categories

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of producer, most notably the maitresses couturieres (responsible for the cutting-out 1 and construction of the basic garment) and the marchandes de modes (who supplied 2 trimmings and had more influence over fashion directions). One of the latter, Rose 3 Bertin of the rue Saint-Honore, was dressmaker to Marie Antoinette; her reputation 4 as a domineering dictator of ancien régime style arguably formed the prototype from 5 which later constructions of the Parisian fashion designer developed. Like several of 6 her successors, from Charles Worth in the 1870s to Coco Chanel in the 1930s and 7 Yves Saint Laurent in the 1970s, her expertise lay in a masterful juxtaposing of 8 existing elements sourced from the city’s rich supply of exquisitely crafted products, 9 the ability to flatter and anticipate the tastes of her elite clients, and a driving self- 0 promotional force. 11 12 13 Paris: capital of the nineteenth century? 14 The characterisation of Bertin and her successors as part artist, part impresario 15 underlines the continuing importance of the personality of the couturier to enduring 16 ideas of Paris as premier fashion city. But the gradual development of the physical 17 city further contributed to the creation of a powerful myth of Parisian prestige, 18 endorsed in countless tourist guidebooks and subsequent representations of what 19 Walter Benjamin would come to call the ‘capital of the nineteenth-century’. From 20 the 1860s to 1914 Paris itself was transformed into the ‘City of Light’: a global object 21 of desire and a cipher for high-end consumption.5 Bertin’s world had been located 22 in a rarefied domain of small gilded showrooms and prestigious made-to-measure 23 workrooms which over the decades expanded to incorporate the rue Richelieu and 24 the rue de la Paix. By the 1850s the neighbouring Palais Royal housed a less-refined, 25 but no less opulent, collection of ready-made fashion goods for visiting tourists and 26 wealthy locals hungry for the latest ‘look’. In contrast, the rue Saint-Denis, with its 27 new and luxurious department stores, was associated with the respectable but stylish 28 purchases of the middle classes; its pavements were equally crowded. Despite their 29 different atmospheres, these districts held in common a blind belief in the global 30 supremacy of Parisian fashion, and a scattering of tenants whose trading names had 31 become synonymous with that same phenomenon.6 Alongside Worth, couturiers 32 including Doucet and Paquin produced products and ideas that signified elegance 33 and modernity throughout Europe, its colonies and the Americas. 34 Yet, by the late nineteenth century the seemingly undisputed domination of Paris 35 as first city of fashion was coming under threat from other versions in Europe and 36 beyond. London, by this time enjoying economic and political world prominence, 37 could also boast an established reputation as the ‘home’ of gentleman’s tailoring: the 38 ‘man’s city’ whose Savile Row-inspired elegance stood in opposition to the French 39 capital’s association with glamorous femininity.7 In Berlin, Barcelona, Brussels and 40 Vienna, café society and the promotion of artistic bohemianism offered alternative 41 interpretations of fashionable urbanity, premised on aesthetic avant-gardism and 42 social experimentation.8 And in the United States the fashion retail and manu- 43 facturing innovations of Chicago and New York showed the potential for a more 44

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1 democratic understanding of fashion as a commercial endeavour, synonymous with 2 America’s youthful metropolitan centres and their expanding populations.9 3 4 Fashion cities in the Age of Empire 5 6 To some extent, all of these established and emergent cities of fashion were linked 7 through the ties of international diplomacy, trade, and labour and reflected a broader 8 colonial context. Their rise coincided with the circulation of widely-recognised 9 symbolic codes for the luxurious, the ‘primitive’, and the ‘exotic’ which reflected 0 fashion capitals’ function as nodal points of an imperialist geography of consumerist 11 supply and demand, where the fashionable goods in production, on show, or in use, 12 conformed to respected hierarchies of taste. Such values could be seen at play in the 13 imaginative uses made of ‘orientalist’ displays in European and American department 14 stores, or the manner in which the perfect craft and visual flair of elite metropolitan 15 fashions were celebrated as ‘art’ in the new magazines. These distinctions were 16 naturalised as part of the fabric of Western ‘civilisation’, demonstrating the merits 17 of the ‘sophisticated’ beauty of urban fashion in the developed world in vivid 18 contrast to the ‘savage’ simplicity of clothing in subordinated non-urban societies. 19 Immigrant communities, whose presence was also an important contribution to the 20 establishment of modern fashion cities, together with those who resided in the 21 colonies of European empires, provided the labour necessary for the production and 22 distribution of city-specific fashions, and often provided the sources of inspiration 23 for the latest lucrative trends (this can be seen, for example, in the translation of the 24 South Asian ‘boteh’ motif into the Paisley shawl craze that hit Europe from the 25 1840s).10 Local and seasonal patterns of migration and exchange between cities and 26 their rural hinterlands also ensured that fashion capitals in the Industrial Age 27 maintained their reputation as magnetic centres, attracting manpower and wealth, 28 and generating creativity. 29 By the fin de siècle, fashion had thus established itself as one of the currencies by 30 which cities distinguished themselves and competed against each other. The pro- 31 duction and consumption of particular genres and styles of fashionable goods sat 32 alongside the promotion of state architecture, the cult of the international exhibi- 33 tion, the imposition of grand street plans and the rise of international tourism as a 34 mechanism for engendering a higher profile in the Western consumer’s imagination. 35 A more immediate motivation for those involved in such promotion was greater 36 prosperity in the clothing and advertising trades. By the 1920s and 1930s the 37 influence of an American engagement with European fashion (and vice versa) via 38 the instruments of a new mass culture had also become a defining factor in the 39 forging of a popular concept of the fashion city, though often through recourse to 40 nostalgic tropes of metropolitan life created in the previous century. Hollywood 41 film directors and Fifth Avenue magazine editors branded an enduring image of Paris 42 as the eternally elegant city of fashionably-dressed eroticism on global consumer 43 consciousness, while New York attained a screen identity as the dynamic and 44 futuristic domain of slick and snappy acquisitiveness that it has subsequently found

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hard to shed.11 In this dream-like vision of fashion’s complementary centres, London 1 featured either as a bastion of tradition and conservatism, or as a gothic nightmare 2 of fog-shrouded alleyways and hansom cabs. What is fascinating is the manner in 3 which such stereotyping still endures in the language and imagery of late twentieth- 4 and twenty-first-century fashion industry rhetoric: the extravagance of a Dior 5 couture collection still evokes the sensual overload of a Proustian courtesan’s 6 boudoir; successful television and film franchises such as Sex and the City, with their 7 obvious reliance on commodity-fetishism and materialist values, have been taken as 8 an unproblematic representation of Manhattan mores; and the provocative sexuality 9 of a Vivienne Westwood or Alexander McQueen show draw non-ironic com- 0 parisons with Victorian melodrama and the world of ‘Jack the Ripper’.12 11 12 13 Nineteenth-century fashion cities and late modernity 14 Where the nineteenth-century conceptualisation of the world fashion city was 15 focused on improving infrastructural foundations and establishing representational 16 ideas as part of the broader promotion of cosmopolitan ideals, more recently the 17 identity of the fashion city has been increasingly bound up with the evolution of 18 modern fashion as a universal and aspirational cipher whose meanings extend far 19 beyond the production of luxury clothing.13 From the 1950s, a more finely graded 20 ranking of fashion’s key centres has echoed the relative fortunes of national and 21 increasingly international fashion-based industries, and caused the mantle ‘fashion 22 city’ to be deployed more self-consciously as a form of protectionism, as a pro- 23 motional tool, or a mechanism for re-branding and regeneration.14 24 Looking forward, the nature of the fashion city looks set to change again as the 25 system of ‘fast fashion,’ with its reliance on far-flung sites of production, disrupts the 26 traditional relationship between time, place and fashion creativity. Similarly the rise 27 of Internet fashion portals such as the Worth Global Style Network has made the 28 seasonal display of collections in a few key ‘fashion weeks’ less relevant when 29 journalists and retailers can identify emerging trends instantaneously online. The 30 specific atmosphere and accrued traditions of established fashion centres appear to 31 dissolve in the virtual world of the Web. Such developments have also opened up 32 spaces in which other cities, notably Shanghai, Mumbai and Sao Paulo, have been 33 able to challenge the hegemony of Paris, London, New York, Milan and Tokyo, 34 cities whose claims for international fashion prominence were consolidated in the 35 nineteenth and twentieth centuries. In a post-colonial twenty-first century it is 36 precisely those places that formerly supplied aesthetic inspiration or manpower to 37 the centres of an older fashion empire that are emerging as competitive sites for the 38 production of new products and ideas. For contemporary Chinese, Indian or 39 Brazilian designers, entrepreneurs and consumers, the idea of Paris, London or Milan 40 as the sole generators and guardians of fashion innovation carries far less power than 41 it might have done to previous generations. 42 What seems less likely though is the demise of the nineteenth-century idea of 43 the fashion city as a crucial component of the concept and structural organisation 44

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68 Christopher Breward

1 of fashion more generally. Contemporary sartorial commodities by necessity operate 2 in a globally-understood ‘realm of values’. The design and media creatives in the 3 most successful and long-standing fashion cities have always understood this, seeking 4 to project their particular sense of life and culture onto the rest of the world’s markets 5 in a responsive and fluid manner. The differentiated and often stereotypical fashion 6 imagery of Paris, London and New York is now not entirely fixed in its geographical 7 specificity, even though its validity and meaning partly lie in a real industrial history, 8 architectural landscape and cultural heritage inherited from at least a hundred years 9 before. It is precisely the flexible nature of fashion city values rooted in a longer 0 historical trajectory that endows the modern fashion order with the continuing 11 capacity to create and challenge social, material and aesthetic realities across the 12 globe. 13 14 Notes 15 16 1 See C. Breward & D. Gilbert (eds), Fashion’s World Cities, Oxford: Berg, 2006. 17 2 D. Gilbert, ‘Urban Outfitting: The City and the Spaces of Fashion Culture’, in S. Bruzzi & P. Church-Gibson (eds), Fashion Cultures: Theories, Explorations and Analysis, London: 18 Routledge, 2000, p. 15. 19 3 See V. Steele, Paris Fashion: A Cultural History, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988. 20 4 See D. Roche, The Culture of Clothing: Dress and Fashion in the Ancien Regime, Cambridge: 21 Cambridge University Press, 1994. 5 See D. Harvey, Paris, Capital of Modernity, London: Routledge, 2003. And C. Jones, Paris, 22 Biography of a City, London: Penguin, 2006. 23 6 P. Perrot, Fashioning the Bourgeoisie: A History of Clothing in the Nineteenth Century, 24 Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994. 25 7 See C. Breward, The Hidden Consumer: Masculinities, Fashion and City Life 1860–1914, Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1999. C. Breward, Fashioning London: Clothing 26 and the Modern Metropolis, Oxford: Berg, 2004. C. Breward, E. Ehrman & C. Evans, The 27 London Look, New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004. 28 8 See R. Stern, Against Fashion: Clothing as Art 1850–1930, Cambridge, Massachusetts: The 29 MIT Press, 2004. 9 See N. Green, Ready-to-Wear and Ready-to-Work: A Century of Industry and Immigrants in 30 Paris and New York, Durham: Duke University Press, 1997. And M. Zakim, Ready-Made 31 Democracy: A History of Men’s Dress in the American Republic, 1760–1860, Chicago: 32 University of Chicago Press, 2003. 33 10 See E. Paulicelli & H. Clark (eds), The Fabric of Cultures: Fashion, Identity and Globalisation, London: Routledge, 2009. J. Potvin (ed.), The Places and Spaces of Fashion, London: 34 Routledge, 2009. And R. Ross, Clothing: A Global History, London: Polity, 2008. 35 11 See R. Arnold, The American Look: Fashion, Sportswear and the Image of Women in 1930s 36 and 1940s New York, London: I.B.Tauris, 2009. 37 12 See C. Evans, Fashion at the Edge: Spectacle, Modernity and Deathliness, London: Yale University Press, 2003. 38 13 See I. Loschek, When Clothes Become Fashion: Design and Innovation Systems, Oxford: Berg, 39 2009. 40 14 See D. Gilbert, ‘From Paris to Shanghai: The Changing Geographies of Fashion’s World 41 Cities’, in Breward & Gilbert (eds), Fashion’s World Cities, pp. 3–32. 42 43 44

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1 RESPONSE 2 3 Simona Segre Reinach 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 The genesis of fashion cities is a fascinating story, as Christopher Breward shows. 18 This is not only because from the historical point of view it is interesting to follow 19 the development of the cities which have made their names in this way, identifying 20 geographies and hierarchies, rises and (momentary) falls, power struggles and new 21 aesthetics. This has undoubtedly happened, and still happens. In his introductory 22 essay to Fashion’s World Cities, David Gilbert, for example, underlines that today 23 Asia is the place where aesthetics are most seductive and forms most attractive, 24 with that admixture of kawaii (cuteness) and cynicism which appears so irresistible 25 to us in the West. But it is not only this. What Chris Breward points out to us is 26 the transition, in the current empire of fashion, from a phase in which the culture 27 and power of a city made it one of fashion, to another phase, typical of our present, 28 in which it is fashion itself, with its increasingly specific culture, which makes the 29 cities emerge. This is not an insignificant matter. On the contrary, it may modify 30 the very relationship between fashion and urban life. 31 In the history of fashion cities, Breward writes, increasingly specialised producers 32 may be identified. There were markets – local and international – in which products 33 were traded and splendid courts where the search for luxury took on the urgency 34 of a moral duty. In this period there were many cities, or rather, city courts, vying 35 with each other and carrying out design competition. The travellers moving from 36 one court to another contributed to spreading and making interesting and desirable 37 the various styles characterising the courts of Burgundy, Venice and Spain. In 38 the fourteenth, fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, Venice, Florence, Madrid, Paris, 39 Bruges and London displayed their strength and power in architecture and city 40 planning, but also in the precious fabrics they were able to produce. We all know 41 that from the late seventeenth century and with Louis XIV, Paris took its place as 42 the first true fashion city. The relationship between Paris and fashion was so close 43 that it has lasted till our times. The competition between Paris and London came 44

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70 Simona Segre Reinach

1 later and was enacted on a different front, that of male elegance, that is, in a way 2 almost a negation of fashion, because fashion and women remained for a long time, 3 at least until the years following the Second World War, an inseparable couple, as 4 strong as that of fashion and Paris. 5 With the success of Paris the rise of the urban bourgeoisie also began, with its 6 demi-monde becoming the true addressee of fashion and its most skilful interpreter. 7 In this context flourished the first great theories on fashion which stressed distinction 8 and its practices. Paris became the ville lumière. The lights of the city constituted the 9 stage for fashion and in this sense what was not fashion was considered as dark, 0 habitual, reassuring, and at times even boring. While fashion signified light, fatal 11 attraction, adventure and risk. Nothing illustrates better the relationship between 12 fashion and urban spirit than Murnau’s celebrated film Aurora (1927). The protag- 13 onist, a good, rough, vital peasant married to a fine country lass with blond plaits, 14 becomes involved with and sexually enslaved by a self-possessed city woman, dressed 15 in the latest Paris fashion, a cigarette between her lips, who comes to the village on 16 ‘holiday’. 17 The cities are fashion and signify fashion. The process has been a long one and 18 has settled down over the years: Paris, London, New York, Milan and Tokyo 19 continue to broadcast their styles, although often reduced to stereotypes. But, as 20 Breward underlines, ‘what is fascinating, is the manner in which such stereotyping 21 still endures in the language and imagery of late twentieth- and twenty-first-century 22 fashion industry rhetoric: where the extravagance of a Dior couture collection still 23 evokes the sensual overload of a Proustian courtesan’s boudoir’. The strength of 24 these stereotypes is based on the growth of the cosmopolitan city – with its 25 architecture, its food, streets and urban life – and at the same time of its fashion, 26 made up of art, trade and industry. The materiality of fashion thus fits into the city 27 culture, strengthening and enhancing it. Each city has its own fashion, which is 28 characterised in terms of product and style. 29 The turnabout to which Chris Breward refers happened after the 1950s, when 30 the identity of fashion cities became more closely entwined with that of the 31 development of fashion itself. I would say that it was with the emergence of Milan, 32 the prêt-à-porter city, in the 1980s, that this change underwent a further accelera- 33 tion. The relationship between fashion and city also started to change from then on. 34 Not only have other cities more and more swiftly been added to the ‘historical’ list 35 – Paris, New York, London, Milan, Tokyo, Antwerp, Stockholm, Shanghai etc. – 36 but as Breward writes, the traditional relationship between time, place and creativity 37 has also changed, due to the relocation and globalisation of markets. The demateria- 38 lisation which follows, that is, the separation between industry and creativity, has 39 changed its traditional rhythms. Time and materiality, the historical origins of fashion 40 cities, have been significantly affected by this change. The cities made use of fashion 41 and in turn fashion has used the cities. Not just fast fashion, but also fast cities. Like 42 pop-up stores, pop-up cities have come into the limelight, to then give way or flank, 43 more or less at the same time, more or less virtually, others and others again. 44 Alongside more traditional processes, despite being increasingly less tied to an

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Response 71

industry, they are characterised by many single manufactures, fashion schools and 1 other activities of a tertiary nature, unprecedented forms of affirmation of the new 2 cities of fashion may be identified. They are all still to be studied. By becoming the 3 language of contemporaneousness, fashion is the simplest and most effective 4 communication system, but it is also increasingly more articulate and institutional. 5 And it is fashion today, in its turn determined by subtle but complex globalised 6 trajectories, which identifies the cities to be illuminated, and not vice versa. 7 8 9 0 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44

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1 2 3 6 4 5 PERFORMING WHITE SOUTH 6 7 AFRICAN IDENTITY THROUGH 8 INTERNATIONAL AND 9 0 EMPIRE EXHIBITIONS 11 12 Dipti Bhagat 13 14 15 16 17 18 Preparing for South Africa’s display at the 1924/5 British Empire Exhibition in 19 Wembley, London, the Chairman of the South African British Empire Exhibition 20 Committee exchanged with his organisational secretary extensive correspondence 21 about their intentions for the South African pavilion. Of the myriad discussions 22 concerning the display, one letter considered the merits of a performance of black 23 South Africans. The Chairman wrote to his Secretary: 24 25 In the British Empire Exhibition, the greatest novelty will be the greatest 26 attraction. South Africa should achieve that distinction . . . a party of picked 27 Zulus to give their native war dance . . . say 2 or 3 times a day for a limited 28 period, should take the place by storm.1 29 30 The organisational secretary of the British Empire Exhibition Committee replied: 31 32 33 . . . South Africa is rapidly becoming a country of advanced civilisation and 34 considerable culture. Too long, perhaps, the subcontinent . . . has been 35 pictured as a ‘Dark Continent’ and as a land of Niggers . . . Allowing for the 36 picturesqueness and the unusualness of the spectacle, is it a feature of South 2 37 African life upon which we desire to put an emphasis? 38 39 To the Chairman, a ‘Zulu war dance’ (ingoma) for Wembley had seemed apt. The 40 British Empire Exhibition was to be spectacular – even carnivalseque. Popular impe- 41 rialism would serve as a triumphalist antidote to the recent trauma of the Great War, 42 and internal uncertainties about Britain’s global supremacy that had emerged since 43 the end of the nineteenth century. The British Empire Exhibition of 1924/5 44 attempted to further Britain’s recovery through its Empire.

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Performing white South African identity 73

Keen to compete with the rest of the Empire at Wembley, the South African 1 committee proposed a crowd-pulling spectacle. Ingoma dancers would have appealed 2 to a British audience, not wholly unfamiliar with this kind of performance of black 3 South Africans, who had previously been displayed in nineteenth-century inter- 4 national exhibitions. 5 In this essay, I consider the decision not to stage such a performance in the context 6 of competing imperial and national identities that informed South Africa’s displays 7 at the International and Empire Exhibitions. I argue that the power of these 8 spectacular designed events, and their illumination of national and of imperial 9 identities, can be understood more clearly when they are seen as performative. The 0 concept of performativity has been invoked by Judith Butler3 and feminist theorists 11 to frame gender and sexual politics,4 and by Homi Bhabha5 and other cultural 12 theorists to understand the formulation of ethnic identities and ‘nation-ness’.6 13 Butler’s work seeks to denaturalise sex and gender, and disalign heteronormative 14 sex, gender and desire. She suggests that women and men learn to perform estab- 15 lished forms of gender, and that through routinised performance – that is, re-citing 16 and reiterating gender norms – gender comes to appear natural. Butler draws this 17 concept from linguistic theory: ‘if a word . . . might be said to do a thing, then it 18 appears that the word not only signifies a thing, but that this signification will also 19 be the enactment of the thing. It seems here that the meaning of a performative act 20 is to be found in the apparent coincidence of signifying and enacting’.7 ‘Doing’ 21 discourse ‘consists in a reiteration of norms that precede, constrain and exceed the 22 performer’.8 Discourse may be diverse and contradictory, but it always makes things 23 happen. This is how it is powerful. The concept of performativity helps us to 24 understand discursive phenomena (including design) differently. For example, we 25 might observe that performative reiterations are not merely copies of an unchanging 26 same, but citations of established norms, each of which may have its own particular 27 effect. Conversely, there is the possibility for disruption when repetition fails. 28 Discourses may be contradictory, identity may be done differently.9 Butler’s core 29 argument is that identities are constructed in and through action; they do not exist 30 prior to such actions or performances. It is this idea that provides a critical tool for 31 understanding and unfixing dominant identities. So the sense of nation-ness and 32 identity is not seen as a pre-existing essence based upon geographic location; it is, 33 rather, the effect of narrative reiterations. 34 Deploying the concept of the performative beyond Butler’s investigation of 35 gendered bodies, I argue that Empire Exhibitions in general, and South Africa’s 36 performances at these events in particular, made ‘Empire’ and ‘South Africa’ happen. 37 I also extend the performative to understand the spaces of display, images, objects, 38 and people (as images and objects) as ‘brought into being through performance and 39 as a performative articulation of power’.10 In the rest of this essay, I will outline the 40 contested nature of the Dominion of South Africa under the aegis of the British 41 Empire. I go on to illuminate the Empire Exhibitions as moments for exploring 42 South African identity, difference and power relations. I highlight in particular South 43 Africa’s exhibitionary efforts to articulate distinction and self-determination within 44

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1 Empire through exhibitions in Britain and in South Africa, and the ways in which 2 these performances were underpinned by the racialisation of black subjects and (by 3 reflection) white South African subjectivity. 4 5 Colonial nationalism: negotiating the local and the global 6 7 South Africa was formed as a self-governing Dominion within the British Empire 8 after the South African War of 1899–1902. Nineteenth-century political, economic 9 and ethnic tensions between Boer (later Afrikaner) and British erupted in war at the 0 close of the century. After the conflict, South Africa embarked upon a process of 11 state formation dedicated to ameliorating British/Boer tensions and to articulating 12 and securing a shared idea of white supremacy. Richard Jebb, the British champion 13 of Dominion self-determination in the early twentieth century,11 recommended that 14 Briton and Boer transcend their ‘tribal racialism’ in favour of their shared ‘Teutonic’ 15 origins for the sake of national union. Bi-lingualism (of English and Dutch, and 16 subsequently English and Afrikaans) was formally instituted at Union in 1910. 17 However, the fragility of this bi-partisanship was evident, not least in the 18 acceleration of a separate Afrikaner ethnic identity. Beinart describes South Africa 19 at the end of the 1920s as characterised by ‘an Afrikaner-based, but relatively broad 20 settler nationalism’.12 Nevertheless, the will to a bi-partisan nation would continue 21 until the resounding victory of the Afrikaner National Party in 1948. 22 Jebb also urged South Africans to take up the ‘imperialism of the white man’s 23 burden’, and to address the deeper reality of ‘the native, the only racial question to 24 darken the future of South Africa’.13 In fact, colonial nationalists had already assumed 25 this burden: by the end of the nineteenth century the most productive land was 26 secured exclusively for white settlers. The Union of the Boer and British colonies in 27 1910 also established an absolute political disenfranchisement of South Africa’s 28 indigenous population. An armoury of legislation followed that excluded black South 29 Africans from national belonging.14 With these measures, white South Africa 30 performed the ultimate ‘colonial nationalism’, deploying locally-devised legislation for 31 the occlusion and repression of black subjects. Jebb encouraged such local nationalism, 32 arguing that ‘national self-respect’15 must move beyond its derivation from European 33 development. His thinking embodied what Schreuder and Eddy have described as ‘a 34 transitional phase in the relationship between periphery and metropole, between 35 colonial society and metropolitan state’.16 Jebb’s own term for this phase was colonial 36 nationalism. Colonial nationalism was about a ‘conditional’ expression of distinctive 37 local interests and sentiments; its contingency arose out of ‘the dialectical relationship 38 with the founding of imperial [British] power’.17 In Jebb’s own conception in 1905, 39 the global and the local were not in conflict; they were mutually constitutive. 40 41 Exhibiting white South Africa on the imperial stage 42 43 South Africa’s exhibitionary performances in the latter half of the nineteenth century 44 and in the early twentieth century demonstrate a developing hybridity of ‘from-

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Europe-but-significantly-South-African’.18 Negotiating national and empire-wide 1 circuits of ideas, images, objects and people, these events articulated what Doreen 2 Massey has called a global sense of place.19 They connected both South Africa and 3 Britain with a wider national and imperial belonging, invoking both real and 4 imagined geographies. South Africa, as the Cape colony and Natal, had first been 5 presented at the 1851 and 1862 International Exhibitions. Both events promoted 6 the merits of empire and sought to encourage the idea of empire as nation, not least 7 to ensure Britons would defend their territories.20 The Great Exhibition of 1851 8 had inaugurated nineteenth-century display categories of Raw Materials, Machinery, 9 Manufactures, and Fine Art as a map of ascending linear progress. Objects were 0 rendered meaningful beyond themselves, performing their own hierarchies. 11 Colonial possessions were represented exclusively by displays of raw materials, with 12 Britain and Europe filling the putatively more civilised categories. Within this 13 market-led taxonomy, where self-presentation was the privilege of economic 14 strength and settled European progress, the young Cape colony promoted its 15 viability to Britain as a source of raw materials, which were converted into works 16 of art and show articles. It was also presented as suitable for emigration and further 17 colonial development. Through inclusion at the Great Exhibition, objects that 18 originated from South Africa effected the colony’s imperial belonging. The Cape was 19 also ‘Europeanised’; its indigenous population was minimally displayed, in contrast 20 to West African settlements, whose ethnographic displays emphasised the exoticism 21 of their indigenous populations. 22 Britain’s second showcase in 1862 reiterated the rhetoric of the industry of all 23 nations; settler colonies were once again claimed as replicas of the imperial centre. 24 The Cape, however, failed to raise enough funds locally to support its bid for 25 London. Though the popular press in the Cape reframed its absence as local pride, 26 ‘to stay [rather] than go with a poverty-stricken appearance’, its absence was viewed 27 by Britain as a lapse in imperial loyalty.21 Natal, a separate colony of the future South 28 Africa did manage a small display of a young settlement fêted for being modelled on 29 British lifestyles, while an invitation to the Boer republics to exhibit was rejected. 30 Thus, the process of participation was itself productive of imperial identity. 31 Britain’s commitment to empire was reiterated once again in the 1886 Colonial 32 and Indian Exhibition. The Empire was celebrated in the context of international 33 imperial rivalry and domestic anxieties centred on the ‘moral and social decay in the 34 metropolis’.22 The solution lay in emigration, not from centre to periphery, but as 35 a translocation within the larger space of the nation-empire. The opposition 36 between centre and periphery was dissolved through the imagined union of the 37 two.23 The South Kensington exhibition site was richly fashioned as imperial and 38 global, not least through the traces of preceding international events, which had 39 occurred there. Within this empire-universal, South Africa showed increasing self- 40 determination. Previously the Cape and Natal had occupied only the raw material 41 section of the British display, but now South Africa reiterated the same exhibitionary 42 taxonomies in its own coherent display, showing its raw materials alongside machin- 43 ery, manufactures, and examples of skilled artisanship in diamond cutting and 44

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1 photography. The display emphasised the industriousness of white settlement, again 2 seeking to occlude South Africa’s indigenous people.24 Nevertheless, the inclusion 3 of a number of black South Africans – labourers working the diamond mining model 4 on display – dominated visitor reports and popular press coverage of the South 5 African court. These images drew on established stereotypes that racialised colonial 6 subjects and (tacitly) the European self, primitivising black South Africans as exotic 7 even as they were used as cheap labour.25 8 In South Africa’s final outing in London, at the British Empire Exhibition of 9 1924/5, its ascendant self-determination exerted a centrifugal impetus, even if it was 0 still contained within the bounds of a centripetal empire-universal. From its location 11 to its display, the South African exhibit contested Wembley’s universalising ideal. 12 The Union of South Africa was located at the very edge of the site, outside of a 13 central loop that gathered the Dominions and India together with palaces of imperial 14 industry and engineering. South Africa’s Cape Dutch-style pavilion performed a 15 reiteration of European/South African hybridity, resisting the event’s universalising 16 designs while still expressing an affinity with the colonial heritage of empire. 17 While ‘palaces’ of the Empire’s other white Dominions exemplified a stolid neo- 18 classicsm reminiscent of the architecture of imperial London, South Africa’s pavilion 19 was housed in the ubiquitous gables and restful stoep (veranda) of the Cape Dutch 20 style. 21 While the British press seemed charmed by the building’s unique appearance, 22 South Africa’s Anglophile press was derisive. For the Natal Witness,26 Canada’s 23 magnificent palace and Australia’s stately pavilion far overshadowed South Africa’s 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 FIGURE 6.1 View of the Cape Dutch exterior (1), British Empire Exhibition, 1925 44 Source: South African Railways and Harbours Magazine, December 1925

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‘Elongated Cottage with 3 Gables’. Nevertheless, the ‘cottage’ had good pedigree. 1 Its consulting architect, Herbert Baker, had been the key advocate of the rustic 2 domesticity of the old Cape homesteads as an authentic South African vernacular. 3 His Arts and Crafts sensibilities led him to idealise these functional colonial homes, 4 their whitewashed surfaces gleaming in a sun-drenched landscape.27 Such archi- 5 tecture was derived from European forms, but it was crafted out of and onto the 6 local South African landscape. While the whitewashed gables had once signalled 7 occupation in an alien landscape, by the 1920s the Cape Dutch style reiterated ‘the 8 epitome of lasting settlement’.28 As a vernacular style, Cape Dutch was also rooted 9 in a landscape of political memory: it signified and effected the bi-partisan white 0 belonging of early Dutch and British settlement. 11 The pavilion also reiterated a policy of ‘South Africa first’29 throughout its interior 12 display programme. While Britain’s plans for the Exhibition sought to promote the 13 profits of inter-empire trade, South Africa actively advertised its pavilion to form 14 new trade and investment partnerships with the USA and continental Europe.30 Set 15 against other Dominions’ spectacular displays, South Africa’s lines and piles of 16 specimens, dominated by the Union’s primary industries of gold and diamond 17 mining and agriculture, were not very diverting.31 Yet the message was clear: this 18 was a land of serious-minded and successful white commerce. 19 So no ingoma dancers ‘stormed’ Wembley. Rather, black South Africans were 20 both ideologically and materially represented alongside flora and fauna of the 21 museum’s display within the pavilion.32 Here, a display of ‘ethnographic speci- 22 mens’ received serious attention from popular and anthropological press.33 Such 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 FIGURE 6.2 View of the Cape Dutch exterior (2), British Empire Exhibition, 1925 43 Source: South African Railways and Harbours Magazine, December 1925 44

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1 publications as MAN (1924) paid keen attention to the ethnographically classified 2 ‘photographic studies’ of black South Africans in rural backgrounds wearing full, 3 uncompromised ‘traditional’ dress.34 The Chairman and organising secretary pro- 4 vided a British audience not with a spectacle of blackness, but rather with a detailed 5 ethnological study which enacted South Africa’s own growing anthropological 6 expertise, focused on locally oriented research.35 7 8 Performing white South Africa on a national stage 9 0 South Africa’s exhibitionary citations of empire-national hybridity were most 11 complex when the Empire Exhibition was located in South Africa itself. In 1936 12 Johannesburg hosted the Empire as a celebration of its own fifty-year jubilee. The 13 city’s mine-camp-to-metropolis story framed the rest of South Africa and the 14 Empire on display.36 Exhibition participants – from elsewhere in the Empire, and 15 regions across South Africa – were directed to order their displays to demonstrate 16 progress in the preceding fifty years. An alternative taxonomy for display per- 17 formatively reconstituted the hierarchy of metropole-periphery that had previously 18 relegated South Africa’s displays to the mutually exclusive categories of raw materials 19 and ethnography. Johannesburg now performed as a young, modern, capitalist, 20 white nation that, if risen from the dirt of the mine-camp, was distinctively South 21 African, and not European. The modish Art Deco design of the exhibition visually 22 connected the event beyond the Empire, into a larger circuit of global design that 23 included Paris, New York and Chicago.37 24 Yet the distinctive picture of a young, modern, white South Africa in 1936 was 25 itself disrupted and inscribed by an increasingly anti-Empire, ‘Afrikaner nation’, 26 which sought a new consolidation of white, Afrikaner racial identity. Moments of 27 disruptive performance drew attention to the fissures in bi-partisan white nation- 28 hood. All Afrikaner medium schools refused to sing God save the King during the 29 Exhibition’s joint school choir event, while in another part of the exhibition, the 30 Federation of the Afrikaans Cultural Association exhibited their model for a 31 proposed monument to the Voortrekkers (pioneer settlers) who had once escaped 32 British jurisdiction.38 This project, planned for the environs of Pretoria, promised a 33 different white nation, oriented inwardly and away from Empire. In this context, 34 performances by black South Africans were complex and varied. Established codes 35 of black performance – as labourers, accessories to industrial displays,39 spectacular 36 dances (ingoma and others)40 or as exotic, ‘near extinct races’ (Khoisan people in 37 particular)41 – were all deployed, as were new roles such as theatre performers and 38 jazz musicians.42 But black South Africans were also present at the exhibition as 39 visitors,43 and as journalists: middle class and communist, all metropolitan men.44 As 40 the very nature of South Africa’s mass spectacles presumed universalising stories, 41 such inclusivity produced a multi-layered space effected through particularised, 42 destabilised, and alternative identities. 43 Thinking about this exhibitionary history in relation to performativity enables us 44 to understand white South African identity as invented and imagined, not ‘homo-

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genous, stable, essential and unified’.45 White South Africa was an unfixed, 1 unfinished process. The constellation of imperial exhibitions can be understood as 2 discrete moments when the invention of this white South Africa can be ‘caught red- 3 handed, not inventing the facts [of its identity], per se, but inventing the authority 4 from which they derive their meaning and weight’.46 South Africa’s exhibitionary 5 performances momentarily fixed meaning in extraordinary displays that were visual, 6 material, peopled and spatial all at once. Composed for one event, these per- 7 formances were dismantled, and reiterated or re-displayed to refashion South Africa 8 at another event. To the conception of performativity, we might add the metaphor 9 of choreography47 – a term that conveys well the fact that reiterations are always 0 more than continuous replicas of the same motifs. Like a dance that must be 11 reconstituted for each performance, these exhibitions were a process of constant 12 reinvention: a routinising, undoing and upsetting of the codes and conventions of 13 white South African identity. 14 15 16 Notes 17 1 Letter from William Hoy to A. H. Tatlow, 22 May, 1922, National Archives of South 18 Africa (NASA), SAS, 176, G4/4/29. 19 2 Tatlow’s response to Hoy, 8 July, 1922, NASA, SAS, 176, G4/4/29. 3 J. Butler, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity, Routledge, London, 1990; 20 and Bodies that Matter: On the Discursive Limits of Sex, Routledge, London, 1993; J. Butler, 21 ‘Burning Acts – Injurious Speech’, in A. Parker and E. Kokofsky Sedgewick, eds, 22 Performativity and Performance, Routledge, London, 1995, pp. 197–227. 23 4 A. Parker and E. Kokofsky Sedgewick, eds, Performativity and Performance, Routledge, 24 London, 1995. 5 H. Bhabha, Nation and Narration, Routledge, London, 1990; and The Location of Culture, 25 Routledge, London, 1994. 26 6 E. Diamond, ed., Performance and Cultural Politics, Routledge, London, 1996; J. Blocker, 27 Where is Ana Mendieta? Identity, Performativity and Exile, Duke University Press, Durham, 28 1999; A. M. Fortier, ‘Performativity and Belonging’ in Vicky Bell, ed., Performativity and Belonging, Sage, London, 1999, pp. 41–64. 29 7 J. Butler, ‘Burning Acts – Injurious Speech’ in A. Parker and E. Kokofsky Sedgewick, 30 eds, Performativity and Performance, Routledge, London, 1995, p. 198. 31 8 J. Butler, Bodies that Matter: On the Discursive Limits of Sex, Routledge, London, 1993, 32 p. 234. 9 J. Butler, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity, Routledge, London, 1990, 33 see p. 25. Also N. Gregson and G. Rose, ‘Taking Butler Elsewhere: Performativities, 34 Spatialities and Subjectivities’, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, Vol. 18, 35 2000, pp. 433–452. 36 10 N. Gregson and G. Rose, ‘Taking Butler Elsewhere: Performativities, Spatialities and 37 Subjectivities’, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, Vol. 18, 2000, p. 434. 11 R. Jebb, Studies in Colonial Nationalism, Edward Arnold, London, 1905. 38 12 W. Beinart, Twentieth Century South Africa, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1994, 39 p. 110. 40 13 R. Jebb, Studies in Colonial Nationalism, Edward Arnold, London, 1905, p. 131. 41 14 Including the Land Act of 1913, which marked the first systematic policy of inequitable land distribution, the Urban Areas Act of 1924, Native’s Land and Trust Act of 1936. 42 After the 1948 Afrikaner National Party’s electoral victory, these earlier enforcements 43 fused with the vision of Grand Apartheid. 44

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1 15 J. D. B. Miller, Richad Jebb and the Problem of Empire, Athlone Press, London, 1956, p. 12. 2 16 J. Eddy and D. Schreuder, eds, The Rise of Colonial Nationalism: Australia, New Zealand, Canada and South Africa First Assert their Nationalities, 1880–1914, Allen and Unwin, 3 Sydney, 1988, p. 5. 4 17 J. Eddy and D. Schreuder, eds, The Rise of Colonial Nationalism: Australia, New Zealand, 5 Canada and South Africa First Assert their Nationalities, 1880–1914, Allen and Unwin, 6 Sydney, 1988, p. 5. 18 P. Merrington, ‘Pageantry and Primitivism: Dorothea Fairbridge and the “Aesthetics of 7 Union”’, Journal of Southern African Studies, Vol. 21, No. 4, 1995, pp. 643–656; and 8 D. Bhagat, ‘Art Deco in South Africa’, in T. Benton, C. Benton and G. Wood, eds, Art 9 Deco 1910–1939, V&A Publications, London, 2003, pp. 418–426. 0 19 D. Massey, ‘A Global Sense of Place’, Marxism Today, June 1991, pp. 24–29. 20 P. Greenhalgh, Emphemeral Vistas, Manchester University Press, Manchester, 1988, p. 53. 11 21 Cape Monthly Magazine, Vol. IX, 1862, p. 63. 12 22 F. Driver and D. Gilbert, ‘“Heart of Empire?” Landscape,Space and Performance in 13 Imperial London’, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, Vol. 16, 1998, pp. 25. 14 23 B. Schwarz, ‘The Expansion and Contraction of England,’ in B. Schwarz, ed., The Expansion of England: Race, Ethnicity and Cultural History, Routledge, London, 1996, 15 p. 3. 16 24 Cape Times, 12 October, 1885, p. 7. 17 25 Tropes of display of the black subject at Empire Exhibitions have been explored widely, 18 e.g. P. Greenhalgh, Ephemeral Vistas, Manchester University Press, Manchester, 1988; A. Coombes, Reinventing Africa: Material Culture and Popular Imagination in Late Victorian 19 and Edwardian England, Yale University Press, New Haven, 1994; Yaël Simpson Fletcher, 20 ‘“Capital of the Colonies”: Real and Imagined Boundaries between Metropole and 21 Empire in 1920s Marseilles’, in F. Driver and D. Gilbert, eds, Imperial Cities, Manchester 22 University Press, 2003, pp. 136-154. 26 The Natal Witness, 14 July, 1923. 23 27 H. Baker, ‘The Architectural Needs of South Africa’, The State, May 1909, pp. 519. The 24 State, published in South Africa between 1907 and 1912, regularly featured essays 25 celebrating great Cape Dutch homesteads. 26 28 P. Merrington, ‘Pageantry and Primitivism: Dorothea Fairbridge and the “Aesthetics of Union”’, Journal of Southern African Studies, Vol. 21, No. 4, 1995, pp. 647. 27 29 The South African, 26 April, 1924, p. 5. 28 30 Exhibition pamphlet advertising South Africa’s global (beyond Empire) trade routes, 29 NASA, GG 2094 70/242. 30 31 ‘Report by the British Empire Exhibition Committee’, November 1924, NASA, PM 1/2/133, PM 44/00. 31 32 ‘A variety of scenery and interest’ were represented: species of plant and animal and ‘every 32 type of mankind’, the latter category exclusively reserved for non-European (non-white) 33 people. Draft foreword to the official catalogue for South Africa 1924, NASA, PM 34 1/2/133, PM 44/00. 33 Such as the South African Railways and Harbours Magazine, August, 1924, pp. 776–777. 35 34 H. J. Braunholtz, ‘Ethnographical Exhibition in the South African Pavilion, British 36 Empire Exhibition’, MAN, Vol. 24, September 1924, pp. 129–132. 37 35 S. Dubow, Illicit Union: Scientific Racism in Modern South Africa, Witwatersrand University 38 Press, Johannsburg, 1995, p. 13. 36 As reported in The African World, 2 March, 1935, p. 229. 39 37 See D. Bhagat, ‘Art Deco in South Africa’, in T. Benton, C. Benton and G. Wood, eds, 40 Art Deco 1910–1939, V&A Publications, London, 2003, pp. 418–426. 41 38 The Cape Argus, 3 October, 1936. 42 39 For example, the South African Iron and Steel Corporation display also included Venda ironsmiths working at traditional smithing methods, The Star, 17 September, 1936. 43 40 For example as part of the Exhibition’s Pageant of South Africa, The Star, 12 November, 44 1936.

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41 Khoisan people were displayed in the ‘Bushman Enclosure’, The Star, 15 November, 1 1936. 2 42 The Star, 13 June, 1936; also D. Coplan, In Township Tonight! South Africa’s Black City Music and Theatre, Raven Press, Johannesburg, 1985. 3 43 Memo, ‘Facilities for Natives Visiting the Empire Exhibition at Johannesburg’, reveals 4 limitations of and restrictions imposed on black Exhibition visitors, NASA, NYS 9580 5 338/400. 6 44 The weekly, The Bantu World, included black middle-class journalists; Umsebenzi (The South African Worker) included criticism of Empire by members of the predominantly 7 black South African Communist Party; see C. Coe, ‘Histories of Empire, Nation and 8 City: Four Interpretations of the Empire Exhibition, Johannesburg, 1936’, Folklore Forum, 9 Vol. 32, 1/2, 2001. 0 45 J. Blocker, Where is Ana Mendieta? Identity, Perfromativity and Exile, Duke University Press, Durham, 1999, p. 24. 11 46 Della Pollock, ‘Making History Go’, in D. Pollock, ed., Exceptional Spaces: Essays in 12 History and Performance, University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill, 1998, p. 23. 13 47 Catherine Nash, ‘Performativity in Practice: Some Recent Work in Cultural Geography’, 14 Progress in Human Geography, Vol. 24, No. 4, 2000, pp. 653–644. 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44

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1 2 RESPONSE 3 4 Angus Lockyer 5 6 7 8 9 0 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 Industrial, imperial and international exhibitions are now a well-trafficked medium 19 through which historians and others ply their trade. Robert Rydell’s early work 20 All the World’s A Fair (1984), about American expositions, was soon followed by 21 Timothy Mitchell’s Colonizing Egypt (1988) and Paul Greenhalgh’s Ephemeral Vistas 22 (1990).1 These texts set the course for what will soon be a quarter of a century of 23 papers, articles and monographs elaborating the theme and chronicling its variations. 24 In many respects, however, not much has changed. Exhibitions, beginning in the 25 mid-nineteenth century, are still seen to have rehearsed the dominant tropes of 26 industry, empire, and their successors. They are still understood to have done their 27 work through a modern logic of representation, with its attendant binary codes of 28 tradition/modernity and self/other. And they are still often analyzed in terms of 29 identity. 30 I agree with Dipti Bhagat that it is useful to remind ourselves of Butler’s insistence 31 that identities are not given but made. The story of South Africa at the exhibition 32 underlines the extent to which any attempt to portray the self—or characterize the 33 other—is contingent, fractured and fleeting. Identity conceived in this way is 34 conditional, based upon anxious reiteration, but never guaranteed. How better to 35 invent one’s own authority than to craft an architectural vernacular in London? How 36 predictable, too, was the derision with which this was greeted back home. But I also 37 wonder how far style was identified with nation even on the site itself. Is the familiar 38 vocabulary of identity sufficient to capture either the accident-prone relay of 39 coherent selves or the complexity and confusion of the exhibition as a whole? 40 Part of the problem is familiar and general. How does one translate the four- 41 dimensional broadband of an exhibition site into the one-way channel of academic 42 prose? The demands of the latter tend to encourage a recourse to the clarity of a 43 language which specifies discrete cause and effect—who did what to whom and 44 how—and with whose terms, no less important, we are by now comfortable if not

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quite in agreement: imagined identities, racialized subjects and the rest. But while 1 such bird’s-eye clarity may help to distinguish something that might have happened 2 at exhibitions, it seems to hover at some distance from the event itself. Does this 3 language capture enough of an exhibition? Is it an adequate description of such an 4 event’s operation? And above all, perhaps, how can one ground the claims of such 5 a language given the limits of the archive? 6 The easiest thing to access is of course the exhibition itself, that is, where 7 particular objects (and people) were placed, how they were framed and what they 8 looked like. The regulated spaces of exhibition displays marked a clear distinction 9 between viewer and viewed. Together with the general schemata by which exhibits 0 are governed—classifications, zones, exhibiting guidelines—it therefore becomes 11 possible to suggest the various stories the exhibits might have told. In the metropolis, 12 of course, the narrative possibilities for even white colonies were somewhat 13 confined. More interesting perhaps is what happened back in Johannesburg in 1936, 14 where home-field advantage allows a proliferation of performances, suggesting that 15 South Africa goes at least two ways, out of Europe and into the global. Bhagat 16 emphasizes that it is difficult to subordinate everything at the exhibition to a single 17 narrative. But I am not finally convinced that narrative itself is the way to account 18 for what was exhibited and what happened at the exhibition. 19 This hesitation is linked, first, to an uncertainty about why exhibits take the form 20 that they do. Here, it seems important to move below schemata and story and 21 explore—ant-like?—the local circuits from which particular exhibits emerge. (This 22 is also the place where one can most clearly see design at work in exhibitions and 23 where exhibitions may have the most to contribute to an account of global design.) 24 Such an account probably needs more space than the limits of a volume such as this 25 allow, but the occasional glimpses of these circuits are intriguing, for example as 26 they inform South African participation at Wembley in 1924/5. At the most general 27 level, exhibitions during this period were still as much about commercial possibilities 28 as about national branding. Thus the South African exhibit in 1924/5 was about 29 attracting trade and investment. We can guess that the Cape Dutch style not only 30 signifies “white belonging” but also reassures potential partners about the security 31 of their investments. How is this commercial imperative connected to the proposed 32 display of black South Africans? It would be useful to know if the various exhibits 33 were indeed subordinated to a governing vision, intent on producing a unified 34 narrative, or if they were only loosely coordinated, produced in the first instance by 35 makers following distinct scripts. 36 The supply of exhibits also had to be calibrated to the likely demand. Here, the 37 Chairman’s emphasis on novelty points to an acute awareness of the logic that 38 informs the visual economy of exhibitions. Before you can tell your audience a story, 39 you need to attract their attention. It is not clear, of course, that they will remain 40 attentive long enough for the story to be told, nor that novelty is necessarily the best 41 medium through which to articulate a considered narrative of national achievement. 42 In this case, the secretary’s caution seems to have won out, although it is not clear 43 to what effect. But here, as often, is where the study of exhibitions meets the limits 44

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1 of the archive. The thin gruel of press comment notwithstanding, we know very 2 little about how many people saw particular exhibits, how long they stayed or what 3 they thought. 4 The elusiveness of reception is frustrating, but it also perhaps suggests that we 5 need to move beyond the comfortable consensus of the last twenty-five years. 6 National distinction has long been one of the organizing principles for exhibitions 7 in general, but it only tells us so much about why exhibits take the form that they 8 do, and little about whether or not exhibitions do in fact prompt the kind of 9 identification that such narratives might suggest. We can trace, however hesitantly, 0 the production and presentation of particular exhibits, calibrated to but not entirely 11 restricted by the national. This might provide an opportunity to gauge the way in 12 which, for example, South African spectacle was designed to meet the demand of 13 the likely or desired visitor, both within each exhibition and as the market evolved 14 over time. Here, perhaps, it might be useful to move away from the somewhat static 15 language of identity, however performative or fragmented, to the more dynamic 16 metaphors of production and exchange. Design, after all, is a process. And exhibi- 17 tions, too, change over time. 18 19 Note 20 21 1 Robert Rydell, All the World’s a Fair: Visions of Empire at American International Expositions, 22 1876–1916 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984), Timothy Mitchell, “The World as Exhibition,” Comparative Studies in Society and History, Vol. 31, No. 2 (April, 23 1989), pp. 217–236; and Paul Greenhalgh, Ephemeral Vistas: The Expositions Universelles, 24 Great Exhibitions, and World’s Fairs, 1851–1939 (Manchester: Manchester University 25 Press, 1988). 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44

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1 2 7 3 4 ‘FROM THE FAR CORNERS’ 5 6 7 Telephones, globalization, and the 8 production of locality in the 1920s 9 0 11 Michael J. Golec 12 13 14 15 16 17 There is no document of civilization which is not at the same time a document of 18 barbarism. And just as such a document is not free of barbarism, barbarism taints also 19 the manner in which it was transmitted from one owner to another. 20 (Benjamin 1968: 256) 21 22 23 Document 24 Historians of technology and of designed objects have studied all manner of textual 25 documents in order to mine their resources. Advertisements, journals, magazines, 26 booklets, and brochures have been crucial to this enterprise. Significantly, docu- 27 ments of this kind—what genetic critics call, “solidified ephemera”—can account 28 for behaviors compatible with new technologies. For the historian, all sorts of 29 printed materials provide maps of a sort for how it was that an audience interacted 30 with new technologies.1 While instructional manuals are an obvious choice for the 31 study of an interfacing with technologies, marketing materials can provide greater 32 insight into how new technologies and designed objects were integrated into 33 everyday life beyond their mere function. 34 From the Far Corners of the Earth is one such document (see Figure 7.1). Published 35 by the Bell Telephone and American Telephone and Telegraph (AT&T) subsidiary 36 Western Electric in 1927, the promotional booklet introduced its audience to the 37 manufacture of the telephone within the framework of global industrial expansion. 38 It did so under the guise of introducing its readers to the global flow of raw materials 39 and the geography of labor as both contributed to the manufacture of Western 40 Electric telephones. The introduction, with a pedagogical flourish, explained (p. i):2 41 42 If reading these pages helps you discover anew some of the many interest- 43 ing places in your country or in foreign lands, if it helps you learn more 44

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1 about strange people and their strange customs, you will be well repaid for 2 the time spent looking at the pictures and reading the message that this book 3 brings to you. 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 FIGURE 7.1 From the Far Corners of the Earth. Promotional booklet front cover 43 Source: Published by the Bell Telephone and American Telephone and Telegraph (AT&T) 44 subsidiary Western Electric in 1927

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Of the many telephone discourses that circulated throughout the early twentieth 1 century—the call that connected lovers, the technology that relieved isolation, the 2 tool that was a convenience, and the network that streamlined business—over- 3 coming distance was implicit in every Bell and Western Electric communication. 4 What made From the Far Corners of the Earth unique, however, was that it introduced 5 its readers to the all-pervasive issue of distance in the guise of the Other residing 6 within a framework of global industrial expansion. Thus, much like the telephone 7 with all its concrete qualities, the booklet From the Far Corners of the Earth, as a 8 “document of civilization,” was likewise an active agent in the construction of the 9 global telephone network. 0 Whether or not From the Far Corners of the Earth is a “document of barbarism”— 11 that is, both the dissolution of civilization and acts of cruelty, both of which are not 12 mutually exclusive—remains to be seen. Yet, a study of the mapping of the distri- 13 bution of resources and the manufacture of the telephone can reveal the discursive 14 grounds for civilization-building. “Civilization” is often embodied in major literary 15 and artistic forms of expression. Conversely, the degradation of civilization is revealed 16 in its minor forms, in advertising and marketing for example. No doubt, a minor 17 literature or art contributes to the unmaking of a major literature or art. 18 In the 1920s, the minor literature of global expansion and use of worldwide 19 material and labor resources drew on the hegemonic discourse of the managerial 20 class. From the Far Corners of the Earth is an example of minor literature, a term that 21 I borrow from Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari. It would be far from accurate to 22 claim that From the Far Corners of the Earth had any literary pretensions in the 23 traditional sense of the term. Yet, it is not too far of a stretch to designate advertising 24 and marketing as constituting a minor literature, since many aspiring authors went 25 into copywriting for advertising agencies as a way of making ends meet. Take F. 26 Scott Fitzgerald working for a New York firm in the late teens, for example. Also, 27 the growing dominance of the language of advertising caused Walter Benjamin to 28 wonder in “One Way Street” (1928), “But when shall we write books like cata- 29 logues?” (Benjamin [1928] 1996: 457? For Benjamin, “leaflets, brochures, articles, 30 and placards” were better suited to the habits of his time than the “pretentious, 31 universal gesture of the book” (Benjamin [1928] 1996: 444). In 1927, the language 32 of telephone marketing was a highly specialized language with a circumscribed 33 audience; advertisements through the 1920s focused almost exclusively on 34 businessmen and their offices (Fischer 1988). “[M]inor no longer designates specific 35 literatures but the revolutionary conditions for every literature within the heart of 36 what is called great (or established) literature” (Deleuze and Guattari 1986: 18). At 37 every move, however, the language of telephone advertising and marketing sought 38 to expand its audience through material intensities, always overdetermining expected 39 outcomes in the hopes of affecting new habit formations. Therefore, as an instance 40 of the language of advertising and marketing, From the Far Corners of the Earth met 41 the criteria for a minor literature in that its combined visual and linguistic repre- 42 sentations were always “deterritorialized” because always seeking to conquer new 43 territories. 44

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1 The minor literary character of From the Far Corners of the Earth is not found in 2 its meanings, as if I could draw a straight line from signifier to signified, but, rather, 3 registers as its affects, its intensities. This is what I refer to as localization, which I 4 mean in the sense of relationships over ontologies and situations over essences.3 The 5 title of the booklet itself referred to this very method in its appeal to gathering and 6 ordering resources, to drawing together, to centralization—to location. The booklet 7 intensified the global in its localization of the far away. This is, then, not the story 8 of the manufacture of the telephone connected to a worldwide labor force; it is its 9 instantiation—its immanence—in booklet form. In so doing, From the Far Corners 0 of the Earth built up a local world, a world made apparent in the combined oddities 11 of its textual and visual discourses.4 Interacting with the booklet meant coming face 12 to face with an object that was both the beginning of a set of events in the promotion 13 of global telecommunications and was at the end of a process of global mediators, 14 taking up what Saskia Sassen has identified as the internationalization of production 15 sites through foreign investment (Sassen 1998). 16 17 Enlargement 18 19 The enlargement of American standing and interconnection with the wider world 20 was depicted and discussed in a 1929 advertisement for the Bell System. The ad 21 claimed, “The United States is building a new civilization. The telephone is an 22 indispensable element in it. The Bell System is building ahead of the growth of this 23 civilization.” Advanced technologies of communication were thought to have far- 24 reaching implications for the growth of the nation, both at home and abroad. But 25 what were the vicissitudes of this new civilization? One result was that the general 26 use of the telephone “enables each personality to extend itself without regard to 27 distance,” as the ad pointed out. It was the Bell spin-off AT&T in collaboration with 28 Western Electric that advanced “universal telephone service” for all citizens of the 29 United States through the manufacture and marketing of specialized equipment. As 30 Mara Mills has remarked, “The increasingly automated global telephone network 31 grew over the twentieth century into the most complex machine in existence” (Mills 32 2006: 1). The utility of the telephone, however, was greater than its mere instru- 33 mental availability. 34 The extension of the self—from me right here to you way out there—was a 35 leading idea guiding the discourse on telephony in the early part of the twentieth 36 century. The discourse ranged from bridging great gaps brought on by temporary 37 and long-term travel, permanent cross-country moves, and the ongoing expansion 38 of the geography of family and friends. “Modern conditions,” as an AT&T booklet 39 from 1910 reported, “have brought about the need for what might be called a long 40 distance telephone organization of the family.” The cover illustration underscored 41 the nature of long distance telephonic organization in its representation of a chain 42 of callers who recede into the background. By gathering voices from near and far, 43 communications technology mitigated challenges to social relations between family 44 and friends under modern conditions. As the same booklet advised, “The family

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with the best realization of the telephone’s possibilities enjoys the greatest peace of 1 mind.” In regards to sociability, the telephone has been praised for bridging the 2 distances across the land and across social strata (Kern 1983). The act of bridging 3 introduced a heightened awareness of conversational processes as a two-party 4 exchange, foregrounding the sociality of communication (Hopper 1992). The global 5 implications of social connectivity and “peace of mind” were later represented in 6 an AT&T brochure from the 1930s, which asked, “What price would you put on 7 a hundred words exchanged by separated lovers?” The accompanying illustration 8 mapped a global information pathway of romantic connections made across great 9 stretches of land and water. For consumers of telephone services, the real value of 0 the telephone exceeded its mere technology if measured by feelings of longing for 11 connection made all the more acute by distance. 12 Where ads and brochures gauged the extension of telephone services in terms of 13 human-to-human community building, articles on the subject focused on imme- 14 diacy, efficiency, and control. In an article published in Public Service Management 15 (1926), J. D. Ellsworth took the measure of telephonic expansion when he stated 16 (1926: 6): “The telephone has not only grown faster than the country, but it has 17 helped the country grow. In an era of great business enterprise it has given to 18 businessmen a wider scope of influence and action than has ever before been 19 known.” Just two years later, the president of AT&T, Walter Gifford, claimed in 20 his 1928 address to the Conference of Major Industries (1928: 2): “Today, an 21 individual located practically anywhere in the United States has at his command day 22 and night—Sundays and holidays included—instrumentalities for immediate 23 intercommunication with almost any one anywhere in the civilized world.” Being 24 that his audience was made up of American industrialists, Gifford’s address empha- 25 sized the efficiency and the instrumentality of the telephone. He observed that the 26 telephone positioned the individual within a network of communication nodes, a 27 position that initiated a web of communicative possibilities. The world—19 million 28 telephones in the United States and seven million overseas—was just a phone call 29 away. While connections were not really immediate—cross-country connections 30 took up to five minutes and cross continent connections took quite a bit longer— 31 the reach of the telephone, according to Gifford, was such that it networked the 32 globe.5 33 In between Ellsworth’s article (1926) and Gifford’s speech (1928), transoceanic 34 telephone service was established in 1927 through a joint venture between AT&T 35 and the British Post Office. While AT&T restricted its foreign interests under 36 pressure from the U.S. Justice Department, the International Telephone and 37 Telegraph Company (ITT) bought out and acquired cable, telegraph, and telephone 38 companies from around the world, thereby expanding and maintaining U.S. 39 telecommunications interests across the globe (Headrick 1991: 201–202). Vice 40 President of ITT M. C. Rorty promoted the value of the impact of global tele- 41 communications on international relations when he wrote: “freights are the gasoline 42 of international trade and electrical communications are its spark plugs” (Rorty 43 1930: 50). With an increase in imports of raw materials into the United States after 44

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1 the First World War there was the perception of an increased need for organizing 2 and monitoring international transactions. While radiotelegraph networks had 3 previously linked global trade markets, the telephone was marketed as a service that 4 factored “in the subsequent development of trade and transportation and perhaps 5 more importantly,” as Rorty observed, “in the development of those friendly and 6 wholesome understandings between nations [. . .]” (Rorty 1930: 47). Yet, it was 7 not merely the case that the telephone facilitated agreeable relations between nations. 8 Indeed, the manufacture of the telephone—its technology—required that such 9 relations must persist so as to continue growth. In May 1934, a Bell Telephone ad 0 articulated the extension of and realignment with existing spatial limitations: “Many 11 business men are discovering that their activities need no longer be limited to former 12 boundaries. They are reaching out by telephone into new fields . . . developing new 13 markets . . . finding new and unsuspected ways to make and save money.” 14 15 Intensities 16 17 The above cluster of marketing and planning discourses do not fall into the typical 18 categories of literary work. Their collection is intended to describe, however briefly, 19 a network of terms that circulated in public throughout the first thirty plus years of 20 the twentieth century. Again, the terms were: 21 22 • modern conditions 23 • long-distance organization 24 • extension and deployment 25 • wider scope of influence 26 • command day and night 27 • boundlessness 28 29 Within this constellation of conditions, organizations, extensions, influences, 30 commands, and boundaries lay a document that mapped these terms as new terri- 31 tories in the enlargement of American standing. The spread of Western cultural 32 assets and the growth of Western civilization precipitated global reterritorializa- 33 tions. These shifts were the result of a counter-flow of deterritorializations (in a 34 reconfiguration of boundaries) and the importation of raw materials to manufacture 35 the telephone. 36 The material contingencies of the booklet registered the interior and the exterior 37 deployment of these discourses, how they were embedded in the graphic-material 38 form of From the Far Corners of the Earth and in the conditions of its handling. The 39 booklet situated its reader within a geographical and cultural network where, as the 40 introduction explained (p. i), “you will find yourself going into the hills of 41 Pennsylvania, the treasure laden Rocky Mountains, the Klondike, and far away India 42 and Malaysia.” A fifty-percent screen-tone illustration of laborers descending a steep 43 incline further supported the participatory implications of the text. From the very 44 start, images and words organized in the booklet’s typographic and graphic

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composition triggered the local intensities specific to paging through From the Far 1 Corners of the Earth. 2 Wedges and frames, lines and blocks, frames and borders all established 3 boundaries only to mark a series of transgressions. On the cover, a wedge of bodies 4 bears down on the left-foot heel of a Chinese laborer, it just touching the lower 5 border of the illustration. The march of a global workforce and the upward angled 6 toes of the wedge’s lead figure follow two paths. One maintains a space or frozen 7 moment apart from the space of paging. The other path that flows from the 8 outwardly directed foot breaks into the space beyond the cover. Everything at this 9 point hinges on an almost unnoticeable but empirically verifiable moment. Setting 0 off a local intensity, a path of flight emanates from that toe, breaking the graphic 11 constraints of the border-frame of the illustration. Is this unimpeded movement? 12 Are the laborers free to disperse according to their own needs? The node of 13 intensification suggests otherwise. The illustration of the laborer and his interlocking 14 partners serves only to direct the attention of the reader to the telephone that 15 occupies the middle ground of the illustration. Positioned so as to appear to be at 16 some considerable distance from the foreground, the telephone towers over the 17 crowd, indicating the dominant role of telecommunications in the organization of 18 the flow of global capital. 19 The drawing of the telephone counters the frozen momentum of the wedge, its 20 sudden flatness embodying the circulatory network of telecommunications. Its 21 presence registers the extended scope of its graphic representation across all forms 22 of print media. The image of the oversized telephone was common to a number of 23 AT&T advertisements and marketing materials in the 1920s and 1930s. A world 24 populated by telephones invited and re-enacted scenes already established and 25 circulated throughout the world. Images of businessmen with phone “at hand” 26 extended the worldwide reach of the American managerial class. After all, it is his 27 reach and thus extension of power that matters the most. And the cover acknow- 28 ledges the reach of the man with the telephone in its representation of collective 29 labor that is ready-to-hand. As an instance of local intensity, he takes hold of both 30 phone and labor with one efficient, telemetric movement of his hand. Only from 31 this location—apart from the wedge of bodies—could he trigger a “process of many 32 steps” that resulted in the automatic succession of standardized operations, that were 33 rarely if ever made visible.6 34 Despite the cover illustration’s attempt to picture international labor and sites of 35 production and to promote their connection to the reader of the booklet, the image 36 of a global coalition is disrupted by the idiosyncrasies of the title font and a gaping 37 space between “From” and “the.” The hand-lettered bold face is reminiscent of 38 posters and signs, maintaining the hand-drawn oddities of the tradition. The heavi- 39 ness of the letters, in combination with the quirky wedge bars that lay perpendicular 40 to the stems on “F” and “E” and the circles in place of the loops on “r”s, conflict 41 with the easy flow of intertwined bodies below. And, in order to justify all three 42 lines of text, the layout man opened an “—em” space between the two words, 43 leaving an awkward and far too loose measure to the first line. No doubt, this is an 44

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1 oversight, yet its “sensory appearance” (as de Man would say) marks what is 2 overlooked. As if to mitigate this oddity, the gap aligns vertically with the image of 3 the oversized candlestick model telephone in the middle ground of the illustration. 4 The hieroglyphic calculus of the telephone and the hovering blank presence 5 acknowledges the invisible networks of real human labor triggered by tele- 6 communications. The saturated black material interstice in the typographic 7 composition of the title implied that the locale of the telephone as the source of 8 telecommunications was remote from the resources and activities portrayed within 9 the pages of the booklet. 0 Such invisibilities and breaches were marked not only on the cover, but also in 11 the very text that promised to account for rarely glimpsed instances of production 12 in descriptions of “how these raw materials are brought to seaports or shipping points 13 and transported from place to place.” In The Story of Silk in Your Telephone (see Figure 14 7.2) we see two phases of alienated labor according to the classical Marxist definition: 15 e.g., that modern factory workers do not recognize themselves in things produced 16 by the factory. An abrupt movement of the manager’s hand in the United States 17 triggers a process of many steps including picking leaves, feeding and tending to 18 silkworms, unwinding silk from cocoons, and spinning silk thread. Each step 19 culminates in the production of “silk threads wrapped around the current-carrying 20 wires” installed in telephones manufactured by Western Electric. Distance further 21 exaggerates the dilemma where objects were once animated by their proximity to 22 humans either through direct contact (labor) or through ritual (fetish) but are now 23 animated by other objects and mechanization of mass production. While the 24 American workers on the right-hand page may have been geographically closer to 25 the hand that triggered their actions, both they and the Japanese workers on the 26 facing left-hand page were, however immeasurable, set at equal distance from the 27 products of their labor. The almost imperceptible line that delineates recto and verso, 28 a by-product of saddle stitched binding, creates a border between resources and 29 production, between the far and the not so far, between the strange and the not so 30 strange, and between the pre-industrial and the industrial. It is at the site of a break 31 or a conflict that the transition from the vertical orientation of the page to the 32 vertical movement across pages locates the transpositions in the shipping of resources 33 from across the globe to a centralized location in the United States. Along the 34 centerfold of the booklet, a threshold opens up in the “strife brought into the rift” 35 (Heidegger 2001: 61.)7 Yet the booklet appears as if there was no conflict; it 36 produces a locality where opposites belong to each other. And yet the material rifts 37 in the booklet delineate the opposition of measure and boundary, of extension and 38 limit, and of local and global into a common outline displayed in the layout of From 39 the Far Corners of the Earth. 40 41 Major 42 43 What is major about From the Far Corners of the Earth? The booklet is no mere 44 document, its data translated into historical account while its materiality is ignored

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1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 FIGURE 7.2 The Story of Silk in Your Telephone. Excerpt from a promotional booklet 20 Source: From the Far Corners of the Earth, Chicago, Western Electric, 1927 21 22 23 or discounted. As a text, however, it is a minor literature where text and image 24 combine to open up new territories of experience, however circumscribed the 25 experience might be. The booklet intensified the global in its localization of the far 26 away, in its gathering of material and discursive resources into a modest marketing 27 booklet. In its localizations, From the Far Corners of the Earth complicates attempts at 28 constructing a totalizing image of global cooperation. The prominence of wedges 29 and frames, lines and blocks, frames and borders is challenged by breaks and flights, 30 leaving open the question: What violence, trauma, and dispossession resist repre- 31 sentation in the making of a global industrial perspective? Indeed, as Benjamin 32 (1968b: 256) remarked, “There is no document of civilization which is not at the 33 same time a document of barbarism.” 34 35 Notes 36 37 1 On genetic criticism, see the special issue “Draft” in Yale French Studies 89 (1996). 2 As Mara Mills observes, Bell Telephone’s intercommunications technologies were in no 38 small part derived from the company’s ties to National Geographic magazine. Bell was a 39 co-founder of the National Geographic Society, and he was its president from 1896 to 40 1904. National Geographic sponsored AT&T’s “Voice Voyages” series (1916). And, in 41 making maps available to businesses, the society and the magazine greatly contributed to the extension of American corporate interests. It is not too far-fetched to presume 42 that From the Far Corners of the Earth borrowed its educational tone from National 43 Geographic magazine. More work needs to be done on this topic. Mara Mills’ personal 44

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1 communications with author, spring 2007. My thanks to Mara for her willingness to share 2 materials from the AT&T archives. 3 On this approach to the history of technology, see Sigfried Giedion, who wrote, “The 3 meaning of history arises in the uncovering of relationships. That is why the writing of 4 history has less to do with facts as such than with relations” (Giedion 1948: 2). 5 4 It is worth noting that these irregularities are not apparent in the telephone itself. A study 6 of the materiality of the telephone-object discursively framed, therefore, would hardly reveal any additional knowledge other than constituting it as a materialization of discourse. 7 This study of From the Far Corners of the Earth as an instance of a minor literature, however, 8 foregrounds material oddities of discourse—or of the booklet in what the reader reads and 9 sees. 0 5 The combination of familial and erotic love with bureaucratic organizational concerns made up the official language of telephone marketing in the first thirty plus years of the 11 twentieth century. A “wider scope of influence” either of business or personal life 12 appealed to what psychologists of advertising labeled the public’s “interest incentives.” 13 As Walter Dill Scott put it, “Any object or proposition will secure our attention that is 14 in some way related to our hopes and fears, our ambitions and prejudices, our conduct or attitudes” (Scott 1913: 45). Scott advised advertisers to play up clichés so as to reflect 15 the overriding concerns of the public, to play on both fear and hope. Such was the 16 ubiquitous standing of advertisements that they easily achieved the order of “secular 17 iconography” (Marchand 1985: 272). Thus, the idea and image of extending one’s reach, 18 of forming bonds, and of existing within a network dominated the discourse on the telephone. 19 6 Illustration is a minor art. It is minor in the way that William Ivins describes the print, 20 whose important role is too easily ignored unless we “begin to think of them as exactly 21 repeatable pictorial statements or communications” (Ivins 1953: 3). It is the other side of 22 the class struggle in the discord between major or advanced art and (minor) kitsch, as Clement Greenberg would have said. Illustration is not, however, meant as a substitute 23 for art, rather, it is a deterritorialization of art in its mechanical flight from humanist 24 bondage. If Greenberg saw kitsch as a debasement of advanced art, then kitsch 25 corresponds to a paranoiac transcendental law that prohibits illustration from entering 26 into the canon of great works of Western art (Greenberg 1939). Illustration has worked to transgress this law ever since the rise of mechanical reproducibility and the demise of 27 aura (Benjamin 1968a). On a superb analysis of illustration and mechanical reproduction, 28 see Beegan 2007. 29 7 The spine of a book is a hinge; it is a breaking and a joining, as Derrida remarks on in Of 30 Grammatology. See Derrida 1976: 65. 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44

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1 RESPONSE 2 3 Anne Balsamo 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 I read Michael Golec’s essay as a partial cultural analysis of an emergent technology. 18 The reason I say that it is partial analysis is that a fuller cultural analysis would need 19 to also take into account several issues that Golec does not address (and couldn’t 20 given the limits of time): the object-status of the telephone during the historical 21 period he focuses on; the production practices that govern its manufacture at the 22 time; the consumption habits of those who actually used the device (or bought it 23 for other people to use); and the regulations that formed the conditions for the 24 development of the telephone industry (Hall, 1997). Having said that though, I must 25 assert that what he does focus on in his essay is a critically important aspect of creating 26 an account of the cultural implications of an emergent technology: the role that 27 representations play in the construction of meaning of (what was in the 1920s) a 28 relatively new technological form. What he reads in the From the Far Corners of the 29 Earth promotional brochure is a popular narrativization of the preferred meaning of 30 the telephone as a new information device. Several noted scholars, including Erving 31 Goffman and Judith Williamson, have asserted the important role of advertisements 32 in the cultural work of technological myth-making, thus I appreciate Golec’s 33 attention to the ephemera that circulated along with the device itself as a way to 34 “gain insight into how new technologies and designed objects were integrated into 35 everyday life beyond their mere function” (Golec, p. 00). Where Golec draws on 36 insights from Benjamin and Deleuze and Guattari I might turn to James Carey and 37 even Marshal McLuhan to illuminate the way in which advertising and marketing 38 representations of the telephone (as in the From the Far Corners of the Earth piece) 39 became important elements in the cultural construction not only of the telephone 40 as domestic communication device, but also more broadly of a particular American 41 attitude about the relationship between technology and national identity. 42 As Carolyn Marvin (1988) describes in her book, When Old Technologies Were 43 New, demonstration spectacles and world fairs were popular means at the turn of 44

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1 the twentieth century by which new technological devices were mythologized as 2 objects of cultural significance. By the 1950s, Marshall McLuhan, in his typical 3 polemical style, claimed that advertising was the premier art form of the twentieth 4 Century. His book The Mechanical Bride (1951)—which is subtitled “the folklore of 5 industrial man”—examined more than two dozen popular advertisements for a wide 6 range of technological products. Thus Golec is in good company when he reads in 7 the AT&T promotional brochure elements that express the key dimensions of what 8 was then an emergent cultural sensibility whose central concerns focused on the 9 meaning of the telephone as 1) a symbol of the modern condition, 2) the infra- 0 structure for long-distance organization, 3) the means for the extension and 11 deployment of business services, 4) effecting the erasure of day and night, and 5) the 12 promotion of a sense of boundlessness in the possibilities of business expansion. As 13 Golec points out, the work of this brochure is to put in circulation a set of meanings 14 about the object that have little relation to its built form or its conditions of 15 production. 16 Claims such as those that circulated in the AT&T brochures actually echo those 17 made about the telegraph and the railroad fifty years earlier. These claims rehearsed 18 the arc of an abiding American dream that linked technology, democracy, and 19 national identity. As noted historian of communication James Carey writes: 20 21 The United States was, to flirt with more deterministic language, the prod- 22 uct of literacy, cheap paper, rapid and inexpensive transportation, and the 23 mechanical reproduction of words—the capacity, in short, to transport not 24 only people but a complex culture and civilization from one place to another, 25 indeed between places that were radically dissimilar in geography, social 26 conditions, economy, and very often climate. 27 (Carey, 1989: 2–3) 28 29 For Carey, the telegraph effectively eliminated geography within the American 30 imaginary and by doing so it helped inculcate a sense of American identity. In 31 Carey’s reading, the telegraph was more than a communication device, it served as 32 the infrastructure that delivered democracy to the far-flung reaches of a relatively 33 young nation. Golec picks up this thread of an argument about the cultural work 34 of early communication technologies when he rightly suggests in his reading of the 35 From the Far Corners of the Earth document that “it introduced its readers to the all- 36 pervasive issue of distances in the guise of the Other residing with a framework of 37 global industrial expansion” (p. 00). The telephone was in this sense a technology 38 of (national) identity formation not in that it delivered democracy (as Carey argues 39 was the case for the telegraph), but rather that it delivered the sense of the global 40 “Other” to American telephone users. Golec notes how the brochure described the 41 creation of a sense of Self on the part of the American user who was enjoined to 42 learn more about “strange people and their strange customs.” By projecting 43 strangeness onto the figure of the global Other, this story about the telephone 44 positioned the American reader as a member of a tribe familiar to one another. The

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differences among Americans (and there were many ethnic, racial, and economic 1 distinctions in play in the 1920s) were effectively erased and displaced on the global 2 Other. This, as we know, is one of the founding epistemological conditions for the 3 architecture of colonialism. What is in fact revealed in Golec’s close reading of the 4 AT&T brochure is a moment when the representational work of a technology 5 marketing piece was also doing significant work to shore up an emergent ideology 6 of American industrial expansionism and colonization. In doing so, Golec demon- 7 strates clearly the inextricable relationship between the marketing of technologies 8 and the reproduction of dominant culture. That the marketing of this technology 9 was a highly designed effort, also demonstrates the way in which design functions 0 as a technology of cultural reproduction. 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44

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1 2 3 8 4 5 THE GLOBALIZATION OF THE 6 7 DEUTSCHER WERKBUND 8 9 Design reform, industrial policy, and 0 11 German foreign policy, 1907–1914 12 13 John Maciuika 14 15 16 17 18 What role did the German Imperial government and individual states play in the 19 development of early twentieth-century modern German design culture? 1 A 20 twentieth-century historiographical tradition in architectural history and design 21 history suggests hardly any at all.2 Yet in the opening years of the twentieth century, 22 the Prussian Ministry of Commerce and Trade emerged as an unexpected sponsor 23 of path-breaking modernist design principles through its economic development 24 policies. Operating at the point where economic development, design aesthetics, 25 and educational reform converged, the Prussian Commerce Ministry institu- 26 tionalized a veritable catalogue of modernist design doctrines between 1903 and 27 1907 through the reform of its top three dozen schools for arts, crafts, and trades, 28 or Kunstgewerbe- und Handwerkerschulen. 29 Overseen by the government architect and Prussian civil service veteran 30 Hermann Muthesius, the Commerce Ministry’s reforms transmuted the values of 31 the British Arts and Crafts movement into the techniques of proto-industrial design 32 at state schools from Aachen in the west to Königsberg in the east, and from 33 Flensburg by the North Sea to Breslau in Silesia.3 The reforms fulfilled a mandate 34 issued by Muthesius’s superior in the Prussian government, Commerce Minister 35 Theodor von Möller. Minister Möller explicitly sought to train a new generation 36 of artisans, building trades workers, and other members of Prussia’s traditional “old” 37 Mittelstand for service to a modern consumer economy.4 By conferring upon 38 artisans what it called “the advantages enjoyed by large enterprise,” the Commerce 39 Ministry hoped to revolutionize the design and production of Germany’s applied 40 arts goods and boost the country’s competitive position in international markets. At 41 the same time, the Commerce Ministry sought to overhaul a nineteenth-century 42 German reputation for exporting products that one government official, reporting 43 from the German section of the Philadelphia Centennial Exhibition in 1876, had 44 notoriously labeled “cheap and bad.”5

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It would be erroneous to claim that the Prussian Ministry of Commerce was the 1 only state institution exploring new directions in arts, crafts, and trades in the early 2 twentieth century. On the contrary, the German states of Bavaria, Württemberg, 3 Hessen, Weimar, and Saxony all witnessed highly individualized private and public 4 design reform efforts which, taken together, led to the formation of the Deutscher 5 Werkbund in October of 1907. Prior to the First World War, the Werkbund, a 6 private, non-profit middle-class association for design reform, was far and away the 7 most advanced organization for the promotion of fresh approaches to design across 8 Germany. Uniting a diverse group of artists, craftsmen, architects, manufacturers, 9 entrepreneurs, cultural critics, and government officials, the Werkbund, according 0 to one of its early slogans, furnished multiple platforms for the “improvement of 11 German production through artistic intervention.” 12 Between 1907 and 1912, leading Werkbund figures met frequently to debate 13 how business, the applied arts, and industry could best reform and modernize 14 German production, distribution, and consumption. Beginning in 1912, however, 15 and in a development that is less well documented and understood, the Werkbund 16 began aggressively building a foreign network in tune with changes taking place in 17 the landscape of German industrial and foreign policy. This was not simply a 18 “normal” or predictable phase in the growth of a private, non-profit association, 19 however. It was the full-fledged mobilization of the Werkbund by forces in 20 government for the purpose of the global commercial expansion of the Wilhelmine 21 Empire. 22 More than a century after the creation of the Werkbund in 1907, a legacy of 23 disciplinary divisions into art history, design history, German history, German 24 studies, etc., has bequeathed scholars with a series of more or less aesthetically 25 oriented accounts of the famous “Werkbund debates” of 1914. This well-known 26 conflict pitted backers of Hermann Muthesius, who forcefully promoted the 27 “making of industrial types” (Typisierung) as the new focus of Werkbund industries’ 28 activities, against the supporters of Henry van de Velde, an artist, designer, and 29 passionate defender of “artistic individualism.” Indeed, events surrounding the 1914 30 debate are sufficiently murky that even its participants at the time admitted to some 31 confusion about the nuances of the various positions. The achievement of clarity 32 requires a fairly deep understanding of the organization, its leading players, and the 33 historical context in order to make sense of the debate.6 34 By contrast, and for the history of modern architecture during most of the 35 twentieth century, the pitting of “individualists” against the “backers of industrial 36 types” was at the core of a modernist teleology in which, supposedly, standardization 37 and an accompanying tendency toward machined abstraction were the inevitable 38 results of the progress of industrial culture. Individualist artist-designers with roots 39 in such heavily ornamented styles as Art Nouveau, this argument implied, were 40 merely out of date and doomed to fade from the scene of international develop- 41 ments. Just how widespread this sentiment was can be seen through the fact that 42 even such vociferous critics of the Werkbund as the Viennese architect Adolf Loos 43 helped further the anti-ornamental attitudes of early twentieth-century designers 44

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1 with his landmark essay, “Ornament and Crime,” itself the subject of recent critical 2 re-evaluation by scholars.7 But regardless of current re-evaluations of this important 3 era for German and worldwide design developments, the Werkbund debate on the 4 eve of World War I has remained a signal event for artistic upheavals that later 5 manifested themselves in the Weimar Bauhaus and the International Style. 6 German historians, for their part, have taken note of the Werkbund mainly from 7 an internal, organizational point of view. As a result, for example, when the historian 8 Joan Campbell published her classic study of the Werkbund in 1978, the so-called 9 “Politics of Reform in the Applied Arts” in her book’s subtitle referred mostly to 0 the politics within the organization. The book spends far less time investigating, for 11 instance, the developments in national politics and economic policy that are exam- 12 ined below, and which, it turns out, had an enormous impact on the development 13 and ambitions of the Werkbund. 14 To Werkbund leaders like Muthesius, Naumann, and Ernst Jäckh, the Werkbund 15 operated at the intersection of art’s claims to represent a civilizing German Kultur, 16 on the one hand, and, on the other, industry’s demands for a political influence 17 commensurate with its growing pre-eminence in German economic life. Jäckh, a 18 Naumann disciple from southern Germany, replaced Wolf Dohrn as the managing 19 director of the Werkbund in April 1912. This move was seen as crucial for enlarging 20 the sphere of the Werkbund’s international activities, as Jäckh prided himself on 21 his close contacts with the German Foreign Office and with newspaper editors 22 throughout German-speaking Europe. 23 It was no coincidence that Jäckh’s debut at the Werkbund annual conference in 24 June of 1912 coincided with the first truly “expansionist” meeting of the Werkbund 25 membership. Held on foreign soil in the Imperial Hapsburg capital of Vienna, the 26 Werkbund conference featured speeches by leaders like Peter Bruckmann, a south- 27 German silver manufacturer who had served as the organization’s president since 28 1909. Before an audience that included unprecedented representation of govern- 29 ment officials from both German and Austro-Hungarian government ministries, 30 Bruckmann, in an address entitled “The Next Tasks of the Deutscher Werkbund,” 31 announced that the Werkbund was now poised to become the official representative 32 of German foreign trade and finished goods’ industries abroad.8 When one considers 33 that April 1912 also marked the transfer of the Werkbund headquarters from Karl 34 Schmidt’s offices at the garden city of Dresden-Hellerau to an office managed by 35 Ernst Jäckh in Berlin, it is clear that the Werkbund was rapidly entering a new phase 36 of its development. 37 Most art histories cite the run-up to the First Werkbund Exhibition, planned for 38 the summer of 1914 in the historic Rhineland city of Cologne, as the primary reason 39 for these changes. Yet this is only one part of the story. It is a story that emphasizes 40 the Cologne Exhibition as a landmark pre-war spectacle of art, architecture, and 41 design. However, profound political changes were also afoot beginning in January 42 1912 that vaulted the Werkbund to the forefront of German commercial and foreign 43 policy. That winter ushered in events in Wilhelmine German history that earned 44 the designation of a period of “stable crisis” from the respected German historian

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Thomas Nipperdey.9 What happened, in short, is that the socialists of the Social 1 Democratic Party captured the majority in the Reichstag elections of January 2 1912—in spite of the fact that there was a discriminatory, three-class voting system 3 in Wilhelmine Germany that placed this party’s non-property owners at a distinct 4 disadvantage.10 5 In the clamor following these elections the government struggled to keep control, 6 and was forced to navigate among a series of unattractive political choices. For one, 7 German Chancellor Theobald von Bethmann-Hollweg rejected calls from outraged 8 conservatives in the military, heavy industry, and agriculture to dissolve the 9 Reichstag (parliament) and to ban political demonstrations in support of the Social 0 Democrats. At the same time, Bethmann-Hollweg also refused socialists’ calls to 11 convert Germany to a democracy. This was a central demand on the part of the 12 victorious Social Democratic Party, who wished for a system of one-man–one-vote 13 for its constituency of workers and other disenfranchised groups. The compromise 14 struck by Bethmann-Hollweg and Interior Minister Clemens Delbrück, who shortly 15 before had been Muthesius’ boss at the Prussian Commerce Ministry, is telling: the 16 government hoped to overcome the sudden gridlock in domestic policy caused by 17 the Social Democratic victory by aggressively promoting commercial expansion 18 both at home and abroad. The major agents of this commercial expansion were to 19 be the Deutscher Werkbund and Gustav Stresemann’s Association for Light Industry 20 (Bund Deutscher Industriellen, or BDI), a group that represented the makers of German 21 finished goods.11 22 By 1913, and working with Jäckh, Naumann, Muthesius, and Gustav Stresemann 23 (who was also a Werkbund member), the Chancellor’s office and the Foreign Office 24 were enlarging the Werkbund’s network by contacting German embassies and 25 consulates around the world. German diplomatic outposts in Rio de Janeiro, Beirut, 26 Calcutta, Genoa, and other cities received instructions about the Werkbund and its 27 central role in improving the quality of German products and supporting German 28 culture through the cooperation of artists, manufacturers, and merchants. The 29 Chancellor’s Office also requested that consulates furnish it with addresses of all 30 German businesses and professionals operating in foreign territory who could serve 31 as conduits for Werkbund propaganda, which the ministry wished to have businesses 32 disseminate as widely as possible in these countries.12 33 The shorthand for Germany’s aggressive expansion into world markets at 34 this time was known as “Weltpolitik,” or global politics, to secure well-designed 35 German products a place in the “Weltwirtschaft,” or world economy.13 In this new 36 system, Germans from the working to the middle classes, and from manufacturers 37 to business professionals, would benefit as a flood of revenues from the expanding 38 export and manufacturing economy would raise its participants on a rising tide. In 39 this vision, AEG appliances by the artist-architect Peter Behrens, or silverware and 40 flatware from the firm of Werkbund president Peter Bruckmann, would move 41 from being Werkbund exemplars of German “quality work,” or qualitätsarbeit, to 42 becoming leading German export items for distribution on a global scale. 43 Architectural and design historians have seldom placed emphasis on this explicit 44

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1 foreign and commercial policy goal. German historians, for their part, have tended 2 to focus on pre-World War I German naval fleet expansion, or on the gunboat 3 diplomacy that came into fashion in 1911 with the so-called “Morocco Crisis.” Yet 4 there are some important and under-appreciated ways in which the economics of 5 military expansion dovetailed nicely with global commercial success for Werkbund 6 designers and companies. The legendary Krupp Steelworks, one of the largest 7 Werkbund firms, is an example of a company that took maximum advantage of the 8 government’s new outlook. Working with company patriarch Gustav Krupp von 9 Bohlen und Halbach, Bethmann-Hollweg’s office arranged free passage on a luxury 0 steamer from South America to Germany for Major Joâo Simplicio de Carvalho, 11 Brazil’s incoming Minister of Transport and one-time War Ministry attaché, so that 12 he could tour the planned Werkbund Exhibition of 1914. Major Simplicio de 13 Carvalho was to be shown German industry’s finest examples of locomotives, 14 passenger train cars, automobiles, and planes, and was to be treated as an honored 15 minister of state throughout his visit. As the Chancellor noted in a letter to the 16 German consul in Brazil, the Krupp Company, one of Germany’s only heavy 17 industries to join the Werkbund, would also take de Carvalho on a tour through 18 the legendary Krupp steelworks, a family-owned global German company in 19 possession of eighty factories in nearby Essen alone.14 Here family patriarch Gustav 20 Krupp would usher the Brazilian dignitary through detailed explanations of the 21 Krupp steel production process, followed by a visit to sales displays of Germany’s 22 finest steel-plated armor, naval guns, artillery field pieces, and railway wheels and 23 rails.15 Between the Werkbund Exhibition and the Krupp tour, Foreign Office 24 officials expressed confidence that Major de Carvalho’s “far-reaching influence 25 would soon be of benefit to German commerce, German industry, and shipping” 26 in the form of sizable contracts from Brazil.16 27 It is in this context that we can understand such invited Werkbund design 28 competitions as the project for a House of German–Turkish Friendship for Istanbul 29 in 1916. The Stuttgart-based automotive giant Robert Bosch, a major Werkbund 30 patron, underwrote the competition, which drew designs from such Werkbund 31 architects as Bruno Taut, Peter Behrens, Hans Poelzig, and German Bestelmeyer. 32 Colonial expansion and a certain orientalist outlook informed German efforts to 33 gain influence over Ottoman territory as one of the few portions of the globe that 34 had not yet come under the sway of another colonial power. Werkbund managing 35 director Jäckh’s web of connections extended to the Ottoman Empire, where he 36 had served as a diplomatic attaché for years. Jäckh was active as the head of the 37 German–Turkish Union at the same time as he managed the Werkbund, and 38 conveniently had its offices located on a different floor of the same Berlin building 39 as the Deutscher Werkbund.17 40 In concert with official policies, Friedrich Naumann and especially Ernst Jäckh 41 stepped up measures to sketch a pre-war road map for imperialism in the 42 Wilhelmine Empire’s backyard. Friedrich Naumann’s Assistance (Die Hilfe) generally 43 “took a strongly imperialist line,” while Jäckh, a regular contributor, launched a 44 series of additional publishing projects to spell out the terms for a bold, expansive,

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German-led alliance.18 The foundation of the German-Austro-Hungarian Economic 1 Association in September 1913, only a year after the Werkbund’s Congress in 2 Vienna, lent fuel to Jäckh’s vision of a gigantic trading bloc dominated politically 3 and economically by Germany.19 Such programs for customs’ unions and various 4 degrees of unification of East Central Europe under German hegemony were 5 certainly part of a long tradition of discussions among pan-Germanists and colo- 6 nialists like Albert Ritter, Heinrich Class, Paul Rohrbach, and others.20 Jäckh 7 optimistically and perhaps naively assumed that a German challenge to the British 8 Empire at two of its “sorest spots,” namely Egypt and India, could succeed without 9 provoking war.21 He was certainly not alone among factions of German industry in 0 advocating a “Berlin to Baghdad line”—a rail line and axis of trade projected to 11 stretch well-beyond Germany, Austria-Hungary, through the Balkans and Turkey, 12 and ultimately to the Persian Gulf.22 13 The imperial visions of Jäckh, Naumann, and Stresemann hinged on a relatively 14 straightforward, interlocking mercantile scheme: Germany would be able to 15 purchase the raw material supplies it desperately needed from newly secured markets 16 in the Balkans, Turkey, and from Ottoman-Arab holdings extending around the 17 Red Sea. In exchange, these allies and trade partners would have privileged access 18 to products from Germany’s burgeoning finished-goods industries—i.e., Werkbund 19 industries. German commercial, banking, and industrial interests generally backed 20 these types of measures, while Jäckh’s patriotic and boosterist propaganda 21 publications detailed ambitions for challenging England’s “Pax Britannica” with an 22 alternative “Pax Germanica.” To promote this cause Jäckh produced such 23 publications as Germany in the Near East Following the Balkan War (1913), Greater 24 Germany (1914), The Rising Crescent: On the Path to German and Turkish Union (1915), 25 and Werkbund and Mitteleuropa (1916).23 Jäckh’s program was notably more expansive 26 than Naumann’s calls for a pan-German and East Central European Mitteleuropa, 27 although Naumann’s book of the same name, published in 1915, espoused similar 28 economic ambitions. Naumann’s Mitteleuropa was, in fact, to become the politician’s 29 best-selling, most-translated, and most-discussed publication.24 30 Jäckh’s pre-war publications are just the furthest projection of a pan-German 31 global economic and political power scenario that squared with the evolving policies 32 of government and the lobbying efforts of Germany’s largest industrial associa- 33 tions between 1911 and 1914. They are also of a piece with Muthesius’ July 1914 34 lecture at the Werkbund’s annual congress in Cologne, “The Future Work of the 35 Werkbund,” and with Naumann’s address a few days later, “The Werkbund and 36 the World Economy.” Barely six weeks after these speeches and the heated 37 Werkbund debates that so came to dominate pre-World War I German design 38 history, the outbreak of World War I and the general mobilization of German 39 military forces eclipsed the Werkbund’s expansive program for commercial domi- 40 nation. Even though the Werkbund would never be the same following the 41 outbreak of the war, it is worth noting just how closely the agenda of many leading 42 Werkbund designers and policymakers matched the German government’s pre- 43 World War I politics of global competition and commercial expansion. 44

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1 Immediately following the contentious Werkbund congress, Jäckh, Muthesius, 2 Naumann, and Bruckmann would unflinchingly use the power of the press, and 3 particularly Rudolf Mosse’s newspaper, the Berliner Tageblatt, to dissipate and 4 eventually to dismiss entirely the dissension arising from Henry van de Velde and 5 other Werkbund “individualists.” Well into World War I, the Werkbund 6 leadership’s propaganda and policy efforts pointed the way toward a far-reaching 7 program of “types” for manufacturing, production, and export. However, wartime 8 prerogatives, a militarized economy, and growing international isolation would 9 preclude the realization of the pre-war Werkbund’s ambitious plans. 0 Nearly a century later, what is important to realize is the degree to which 11 divergent disciplinary interests have kept both historians of German architecture and 12 design and historians of modern Germany from considering the interpenetration of 13 political history, economic history, and architectural and design history examined 14 briefly here. The unique character of the Wilhelmine era—a time that Kaiser 15 Wilhelm II himself privately described in 1903 as “an infinitely difficult period of 16 history” requiring “the reconciliation of traditional and modern times”25—calls on 17 historians and architectural historians to at least do this much: to employ current 18 interdisciplinary methods, in other words, to capture the layered, nuanced dynamics 19 of the Wilhelmine era and its particular—and likewise interdisciplinary—times. 20 21 Notes 22 23 1 The present chapter developed out of state-by-state analyses first explored in John V. Maciuika, Before the Bauhaus: Architecture, Politics, and the German State, 1890–1920 24 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005). 25 2 The Werkbund has been most trenchantly analyzed in the following: Joan Campbell, The 26 German Werkbund: The Politics of Reform in the Applied Arts (Princeton: Princeton 27 University Press, 1978); Frederic J. Schwartz, The Werkbund Design Theory and Mass Culture before the First World War (New Haven: Yale, 1996); on pre-World War I Bauhaus 28 precedents see also Hans M. Wingler, Das Bauhaus 1919–1933: Weimar, Dessau, Berlin 29 (Bramsche: Verlag Gebr. Rasch, 1962); Gillian Naylor, The Bauhaus Reassessed: Sources 30 and Design Theory (New York: E.P. Dutton, 1985). 31 3 Muthesius began serving as a civil servant in the Prussian Ministry of Public Works in 1893, and began working for the Commerce Ministry in 1897. See Hermann Muthesius, 32 “Mein Lebens- und Bildungsgang “ (25 September, 1900), Muthesius Estate, Berlin 33 Werkbund Archives; see also Eckhard Siepmann and Angelika Thiekötter, eds., Hermann 34 Muthesius im Werkbund-Archiv, (Berlin: Werkbund-Archiv, 1990), pp. 105–28. 35 4 During late nineteenth-century industrialization an “old” Mittelstand of artisans, tradespeople, and shopkeepers was joined by a “new” Mittelstand of white-collar clerks, 36 secretaries, and office workers in business and civil service. See Heinrich A. Winkler, 37 Mittelstand, Demokratie, und Nationalsozialismus (Koeln: 1972); Herman Lebovics, Social 38 Conservatism and the Middle Classes in Germany, 1914–1933 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1969), pp. 6–11; David Blackbourn, “The Mittelstand in German Society 39 and Politics, 1871–1914,” Social History, 4 (1977), pp. 409–33. 40 5 “Denkschrift über die Begründung eines Landesgewerbeamts und eines Ständigen 41 Beirats,” in Anlagen zum Staatshaushalts-Etat für das Etatsjahr 1905, II. Band [Nr.16, Beilage 42 G, Handels- u. Gewerbeverwaltung], p. 92. The famous phrase “cheap and bad” issued from the pen of Franz Reauleaux, a government reporter writing his Letters from 43 Philadelphia as a detailed review of German applied arts goods at the Centennial Exhibition 44 of 1876 in Philadelphia. Unless otherwise noted, all translations are by the author.

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6 For analyses of the debates in historical context see Maciuika, Before the Bauhaus, 1 Chapter 7. 2 7 See Christopher Long, “The Origins and Context of Adolf Loos’s ‘Ornament and Crime’,” Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 68, Nr. 2 (June 2009), pp. 200–23. 3 8 Deutscher Werkbund, Die Wiener 5. Jahresversammlung des Deutschen Werkbundes vom 6. 4 bis 9. Juni 1912 (Berlin: Geschäftsstelle des Werkbundes, n.d. [1912]), pp. 10–11. 5 9 Thomas Nipperdey, Deutsche Geschichte, 1866–1918, Zweiter Band: Machtstaat vor der 6 Demokratie (Munich: C.H. Beck, 1992), pp. 748–57. 10 Ibid., pp. 745–48; Carl Schorske, German Social Democracy, 1905–1917: The Development 7 of the Great Schism (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1955), pp. 224–35. For a more 8 recent analysis of electoral practices in Wilhelmine Germany see Margaret Lavinia 9 Anderson, Practicing Democracy: Elections and Political Culture in Imperial Germany (Princeton: 0 Princeton University Press, 2000). 11 Hans-Peter Ullmann, Der Bund der Industriellen, Kritische Studien zur Geschichtswissenschaft 11 21 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1976), pp. 27–33; also Dirk Stegmann, Die Erben 12 Bismarcks, Parteien und Verbände in der Spätphase Wilhelminischen Deutschlands: Sammlungspolitik 13 1897–1918 (Köln: Kiepenheuer & Witsch, 1970), p. 33. 14 12 German Federal Archives (Bundesarchiv-Berlin), BArch R901/18350, replies from German Consulates in Genoa, Jassy, Beirut, Singapore, Calcutta, and Batavia to 15 Chancellor Bethmann-Hollweg, 10 April 1913; 8 April 1913; 16 April 1913; 24 16 December 1913; 24 January 1914; and 7 February 1914 respectively; German Consulates 17 in Beirut, Kristiania to Deutscher Werkbund Geschäftsstelle, 16 April 1913; 29 April 18 1913; pp. 53–142. 13 This is most clearly expressed in the title of Friedrich Naumann’s keynote address at the 19 annual meeting of the Werkbund in Cologne in July of 1914, “Werkbund und 20 Weltwirtschaft.” 21 14 Correspondence between Imperial Foreign Office and Freiherr von Stein, German 22 Consul of Porto Alegre; between Chancellor Bethmann-Hollweg (Im Auftrag gez. Johannes) and Freiherr von Stein; and between Bromberg & Cie.-Hamburg and Foreign 23 Office, numerous letters all related to de Carvalho’s arrangements and dated between 24 4 May 1914 and 30 June 1914, Barch R901/18350, 147–151b. 25 15 Where the Werkbund would enter into a hopeful new phase by welcoming foreign 26 dignitaries to an exhibition for the first time in 1914, Gustav Krupp, the “Cannon King” (Kanonenkönig), was adding to a long list of foreign customers: Krupp sold armor, artillery, 27 shells, and other materials to fifty-two foreign governments before World War I, and sold 28 24,000 artillery pieces to the German military as well. See William Manchester’s 29 exhaustive study, The Arms of Krupp: 1587–1968 (Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1968), 30 pp. 263–64. 16 Freiherr von Stein, German Consul in Porto Alegre to Chancellor Bethmann-Hollweg, 31 8 April 1914, Barch R901/18350, p. 148b. 32 17 For a discussion of this competition see Wolfgang Pehnt, Expressionist Architecture, 33 translated by J. A. Underwood and Edith Küstner (London: Thames and Hudson, 1973), 34 pp. 71–2. See also primary sources such as Jäckh, Werkbund und Mitteleuropa (Weimar: Gustav Kiepenhauer, 1916), pp. 16–18; Der goldene Pflug: Lebensgeschichte eines Weltbürgers 35 (Stuttgart: Klett Verlag, 1957), pp. 202, 322–34; and especially Deutscher Werkbund and 36 Deutsch–Türkischen Vereinigung, eds., Das Haus der Freundschaft in Konstantinopel, ein 37 Wettbewerb für Deutscher Architekten (Munich: F. Bruckmann, 1918). 38 18 Quotation from Fritz Fischer, War of Illusions: German Policies from 1911 to 1914, translated by Marian Jackson (Dusseldorf: Droste, 1975), p. 236. See also Campbell, The German 39 Werkbund, pp. 93–8. 40 19 Fischer, War of Illusions, p. 237. 41 20 See Klaus Wernecke, Der Wille zur Weltgeltung: Außenpolitik und Öffentlichkeit im Kaiserreich 42 am Vorabend des Ersten Weltkrieges (Dusseldorf: Droste, 1970), pp. 288–310. 21 In 1913 Jäckh wrote, for example: “Helgoland and the fleet can protect Germany and 43 hold England at bay. Baghdad and the Railway can threaten England at its sorest spots – 44

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1 at the Indian and Egyptian borders. This is what England has to fear.” Ernst Jäckh, 2 Deutschland im Orient nach dem Balkankrieg (Strassburg: Verlag Singer, 1913), as quoted in Wernecke, Die Wille zur Weltgeltung, p. 292. 3 22 See Fritz Fischer’s discussion of “Groups and Associations aiming at Berlin–Baghdad as 4 the ‘New German Objective’” in War of Illusions, pp. 446–58. The historian Karl Erich 5 Born calls the Berlin–Baghdad railway project, which was first conceived by the Ottoman 6 Sultan Abdul Hamid II in 1887, “the most spectacular enterprise undertaken abroad by German banks.” See Karl Erich Born, International Banking in the 19th and 20th Centuries, 7 translated by Volker R. Berghahn (Warwickshire: Berg Publishers, 1983), pp. 138–46. 8 23 Ernst Jäckh, Deutschland im Orient nach dem Balkankrieg; Ernst Jäckh and Paul Rohrbach, 9 Das Grössere Deutschland, as described by Paul Rohrbach in “Zum Weltvolk hindurch!”, 0 in Preußische Jahrbücher (1914): p. 4, as cited in Fischer, War of Illusions, pp. 448–49, 449 n. 20; Ernst Jäckh, Der aufsteigende Halbmond: Auf dem Weg zum Deutsch–Türkischen 11 Bündnis (Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1915); Ernst Jäckh, Werkbund und 12 Mitteleuropa. 13 24 Friedrich Naumann, Mitteleuropa, in Naumann, Werke, 4: pp. 485–835. 14 25 Thomas A. Kohut, Wilhelm II and the Germans: A Study in Leadership (Oxford, New York, 1991), p. 159, as cited in James Retallack, Germany in the Age of Kaiser Wilhelm II (New 15 York: St. Martin’s Press, 1996), p. 1. 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44

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1 RESPONSE 2 3 Paul Betts 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 John Maciuika’s article is a wide-ranging piece that revisits some of the key argu- 18 ments advanced in his rich 2005 book, Beyond the Bauhaus: Architecture, Politics and 19 the German State, 1890–1920 (University of California Press). It addresses the 20 forgotten links between design, industry and the German Imperial government 21 (most notably the Prussian Ministry of Commerce and Trade) that shaped the 22 German design world both before and during the First World War, casting a long 23 shadow over the German design world ever since. He is particularly persuasive in 24 laying bare the Werkbund’s global imperial vision and how the pioneering 25 association of architects, designers and industrialists was to play a key role in German 26 commercial domination (e.g., Naumann’s famed Mitteleuropa dream) for the future. 27 His section on the baldly expansionist wartime Werkbund is illuminating, especially 28 his account of its close relationship to Krupp and the Foreign Office. Maciuika is 29 certainly right that Werkbund historiography has traditionally concentrated on the 30 internal politics within the organization or on its stylistic proclivities, thus ignoring 31 its larger relationship to the political and economic concerns of the day. 32 There are however a few points that I’d like to make about his article. First, his 33 analysis of the Werkbund raises the question of just how German these develop- 34 ments were. As he writes, the Werkbund (thanks in large measure to its co-founder 35 Hermann Muthesius) “transmuted the values of the British Arts and Crafts move- 36 ment into techniques of proto-industrial design at state schools” across Germany. 37 But what about similar institutional arrangements in other countries? The twentieth 38 century was of course the Golden Age of design councils across Europe and North 39 America, and later Japan, as design was embraced as a key instance of “soft power” 40 by regimes across the globe. How did the Werkbund campaign fit into this broader 41 international story of institutionalized design? Was it all that different from what was 42 practiced elsewhere, say the export of American design as an ideological instrument 43 as detailed in Victoria De Grazia’s 2005 book Irresistible Empire? The Werkbund 44

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1 certainly had its own globalized vision of national culture and commerce; but to 2 what extent was the Werkbund vision itself globalized in international economic 3 and cultural life? 4 Maciuika also raises interesting questions about Germany. Viewed from a broader 5 perspective, Maciuika’s Werkbund history was the rule, not the exception, in 6 twentieth-century German design history. At first this may seem rather axiomatic, 7 but this was hardly the case in the first half of the century. After all, the post-World 8 War I era witnessed a strong reaction against the Werkbund’s wartime coalition of 9 design, industry and government. The first Werkbund president during the Weimar 0 Republic, Hans Poelzig, devoted his first speech in 1919 (“Werkbund Tasks”) to 11 calling for modern architecture and design’s break from jingoism and commercial 12 opportunism, arguing in favor of the moral integrity of artisan production and the 13 independent designer. The early Bauhaus also had little interest in close relations 14 with national government, as the Werkbund’s combative wartime nationalism was 15 countered by an equally aggressive internationalism of the arts. Things did change 16 later though. In the aftermath of the Depression and the Nazi takeover in 1933, the 17 Werkbund began to seek more state patronage, and famously voted for a merger 18 with Paul Schulze-Naumburg’s Kampfbund in 1933. The sad story of the Nazi era 19 Werkbund and its various manifestations is by now well known; in any case, the 20 fusion of state and design—first brokered in World War I—saw its revival in the 21 Second World War, with many similarities, including a renewed Warenbuch of 22 canonized design objects distributed to manufacturers and planners for mass pro- 23 duction and export. While its bald imperial rhetoric may have been expunged after 24 1945, the Werkbund vision of national-level cultural organ survived the war. In 25 1951 the West German government founded a new design council in Frankfurt, the 26 Rat für Formgebung, and the East German government followed a few years later with 27 the Amt der industriellen Formgestaltung, both of which were charged with promoting 28 German design abroad in their respective Cold War orbits. As a consequence, the 29 Werkbund set in train a development that came to characterize much of German 30 design culture over the whole century, apart from the interwar years. 31 This leads to a final point about perspective. Macuika attributes scholarly 32 unawareness of these connections to “divergent disciplinary interests [that] have kept 33 both historians of German architecture and design and historians of modern 34 Germany from considering the interpenetration of political history, economic 35 history, and architectural and design history examined briefly here.” He is right in 36 saying this, but one could add that the reasons that these wartime connections were 37 not known for so long was also because of postwar developments. As noted, the 38 wartime mission of the original Werkbund fell out of favor, as those members once 39 sympathetic to its cause—such as Gropius and Mies—began to move in very 40 different directions. The broader Weimar effort to retag modernism as funda- 41 mentally international in orientation and spirit meant that earlier efforts to 42 nationalize (or “imperialize”) design were dismissed, repressed or forgotten. Of 43 course the intimate association of design, national government and imperialism was 44 resuscitated in the Nazi years; yet it was the Third Reich’s own fusion of design and

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the state that made this imperial Werkbund legacy all the more unpalatable after 1 1945. For those German modernists emerging after World War II in search of a new 2 moral mission of design in the wake of Nazism and the war, including post-1945 3 Werkbundler and exiled Bauhäusler, the First World War’s shotgun marriage of 4 state and design was greeted with wariness and trepidation, especially in West 5 Germany. Such political distancing, to be sure, required some nimble biographical 6 rewriting to suit new political circumstances. But the point is that the changed 7 political developments after military defeat in World War I (and again in World 8 War II) were as decisive as parochial disciplinarity in accounting for this long- 9 standing historiographical blindspot. Nonetheless, it is to our great benefit that John 0 Maciuika has restored these connections to their proper place. 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44

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1 2 3 9 4 5 WHERE IN THE WORLD IS DESIGN? 6 7 8 The case of India, 1900–1945 9 0 Victor Margolin 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 The complexity of industrialization 19 th 20 At the beginning of the 20 century, promoters of industrialization in India 21 faced uncountable obstacles—British resistance, lack of capital and personnel, and 22 especially the absence of a market for mass-produced products. Their initiatives were 23 further complicated by the extensive debates and activities that ranged from all-out 24 support for industrial development on a Western model to Gandhi’s extreme 25 exhortation of a simple life of self-sufficiency. The short-lived swadeshi movement th 26 in Bengal that began around 1903 extended the 19 century desire to be free of 27 British goods and prepared the way for Gandhi’s call for Swaraj, which combined 28 swadeshi practices of economic self-sufficiency with a political strategy of resisting 29 the British on a much wider front. Industrialists were frustrated with Gandhi’s 30 antagonism to machines and his espousal of a simple rural life but they benefited 31 from his ability to galvanize masses of people to struggle for independence.1 32 In general, capital was hard to come by and the British had little interest in 33 making it available to abet Indian initiatives. Thus, industrialization depended on a 34 small class of entrepreneurs, most of whom gained their initial wealth by providing 35 commercial services to British businesses or the Raj. The wealthy maharajas also 36 played a role. On the one hand, some supported local industrial initiatives and hired 37 Indian craftsman to decorate their palaces. On the other, they patronized foreign 38 architects and firms that manufactured furniture and provided interior design 39 services.2 40 To account for the complexity of design activity in India between 1900 and 41 1945, it is necessary to study the interplay between a number of different actors, 42 both Indian and British. Most numerous were the artisans, the main providers of 43 daily life objects for the vast market of rural and urban dwellers. While some scholars 44 argue that India’s artisan culture was severely crippled by competition from cheap

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mass-produced British goods, others claim that a considerable artisan class survived 1 because the British did not compete equally in every sector. Mainly it was the export 2 of cotton from the Manchester mills that challenged the Indian textile industry but 3 even there Indian entrepreneurs fought back and, in fact, Mahatma Gandhi made 4 the production of homespun cloth, or khadi, the central form of resistance to 5 Britain’s economic and political hegemony.3 6 As demand increased for metal products such as cutlery, tools, and machine parts, 7 small factories sprang up, especially in or near cities, to produce these goods.4 The 8 urban furniture industry also drew in carpenters who had previously made traditional 9 furniture for a rural market. Other products created in these small or medium-sized 0 workshops included trunks, safes, locks, and various electroplated goods. 11 By 1903, the swadeshi or self-reliance movement had begun to spread, particularly 12 in Bengal, where it was fueled by the British decision to partition the region in 1905. 13 This led to a call to boycott British goods and to a large number of initiatives to 14 create and market indigenous products. Swadeshi activists did not adopt a single 15 strategy. Some thought in terms of starting new industries, while others favored 16 strengthening local craftspeople. Beginning in the 1890s, efforts were made to 17 promote indigenous goods through exhibitions and shops and by 1905, the year of 18 partition, the number of swadeshi shops in Calcutta had increased considerably. The 19 medium-sized Calcutta Pottery Works was one of the few successful Bengali 20 enterprises. With imported machinery and a skilled ceramist who had studied in 21 Japan, the factory advertised swadeshi teacups, saucers, and teapots as well as addi- 22 tional items. Other competitors did less well due to undercapitalization and a lack 23 of skilled workmen. The strongest swadeshi efforts were several cotton mills, 24 although they barely scraped by due to a shortage of funds. 25 In general, the swadeshi movement in Bengal failed to produce the economic 26 renaissance its leaders had initially hoped for but it did encourage many Bengalis to 27 think in terms of economic independence and helped prepare the way for Mahatma 28 Gandhi’s powerful campaign to resist the British Raj by weaving khadi cloth instead 29 of buying British cotton.5 30 The British opposed industrialization for a number of reasons. Besides the desire 31 to prevent economic competitiveness—the attitude adopted by British businessmen 32 and the Raj—a few idealists were against it because they believed it would not be 33 good for Indians. Among them was the British art educator E. B. Havell, who served 34 as Superintendent of the Art School in Madras between 1884 and 1891 before he 35 became Principal of the Calcutta Art School in 1896. Havell was a craft romantic 36 who shared an antagonism to industrialization with William Morris and others in 37 the Arts and Crafts movement. He did not espouse a repressive view of Indian 38 economic development but he could not imagine a future for India that might 39 require relinquishing the spiritual ideals he believed to be part of the nation’s heritage 40 in favor of an industrial initiative that would wreak havoc on the heritage of 41 indigenous artisanry that he admired so much.6 42 Havell’s views were shared by Ananda Kentish Coomaraswamy, an Anglo- 43 Ceylonese scholar of South Asian art and a friend of Charles Robert Ashbee and others 44

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1 active in the Arts and Crafts movement.7 One consequence of Coomaraswamy’s Arts 2 and Crafts connection was his 1909 book The Indian Craftsman, for which Ashbee 3 wrote the foreword.8 Similar to Havell, Ashbee projected onto India all the ideals 4 he felt Europe had lost through industrialization. He foresaw the eventual disinte- 5 gration of what he called “the great city of mechanical industry” and claimed that 6 India sustained a fundamental and enduring order that was far more admirable.9 Like 7 others who imagined a nation of peaceful villages populated by satisfied craftsmen, 8 Ashbee ignored the colonial context in which Indians lived, as did Coomaraswamy, 9 a patrician himself, who condoned a caste system that insured the continuity of 0 distinct craft traditions even as it perpetuated wide disparities of privilege. 11 In contrast to the views of Havell and Coomaraswamy, Alfred Chatterton, a 12 young British engineer who went to India in 1888 to teach at the University of 13 Madras, was one of the rare British colonials who promoted Indian industrialization, 14 even though he did so at the level of small and medium enterprises. Chatterton 15 worked with the provincial government of Madras, becoming the Director of 16 Industrial and Technical Inquiries when the Madras government established a full- 17 fledged Department of Industries in 1906. 18 With a government grant, he began a program in 1898 at the Madras School of 19 Art to design and manufacture household vessels of aluminum, then a relatively new 20 material for industrial use. The program was a success. It led to the establishment of 21 the Indian Aluminum Company and stimulated the creation of other enterprises 22 that were based on existing craft skills, including a tannery where water buckets, 23 shoes and sandals were manufactured, using the industrial technique of chrome 24 tanning. Chatterton also helped to establish the Salem Weaving Factory, which 25 produced shawls, cotton goods, and silk cloths.10 However, he too believed in the 26 colonial project and supported it in his collection of essays and addresses, Industrial 27 Evolution in India.11 28 The lack of trained Indian industrial designers and engineers did not prevent the 29 founding of various small to medium-sized enterprises in the interwar years to 30 produce goods based on mechanical rather than craft processes. Though most lasted 31 only a short time, a few did become successful. But due to difficulties already stated, 32 entrepreneurs rarely envisioned companies on a bigger scale. The largest of these by 33 far was the Tata Iron and Steel Company (TISCO). 34 Although it was not a producer of finished goods, TISCO acquired and devel- 35 oped various subsidiaries that did produce industrial products made of steel or that 36 included steel in their manufacture. Few of these subsidiaries were exemplary but, 37 despite their uneven showing, the overall success of the steel mill inspired other 38 Indian entrepreneurs to think about enterprises on a comparable scale. 39 In 1935, a group of industrialists met in Bombay to discuss the establishment of 40 an automobile factory. Following an initial wave of enthusiasm, a 1936 report by 41 an Automobile Factory Committee expressed doubts, which were reinforced by the 42 Raj’s reluctance to provide any support. However, several projects were initiated 43 independently of the committee, one led by the industrialist Seth Walchand 44 Hirachand and another by Ghanshyamdas Birla. In 1942, the Birla group established

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1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 FIGURE 9.1 The Tata factory 21 Source: Courtesy of Tata Central Archives © Tata Central Archives, India 22 23 Hindustan Motors Ltd. in Calcutta, while Walchand formed Premier Automobiles 24 Ltd. in Bombay two years later. Because of the war, neither could begin production 25 until peace was declared when, due to lack of expertise, each had to find a foreign 26 partner with whom to collaborate, despite their mutual ambition to inaugurate a 27 home-grown automobile industry as a sign of India’s industrial progress.12 28 Not one to think small, Walchand also founded Hindustan Aircraft in 1940 with 29 assistance from Mirza Ismail, a high-ranking official who represented the King of 30 Mysore. Walchand’s aim was to manufacture airplanes for the Indian Air Force. The 31 undertaking was short of capital, thus he sold his stake. The Kingdom of Mysore 32 refused to follow suit, although due to a lack of experience, it decided to yield 33 management control to the British government. After independence, the company 34 was nationalized by the new Indian government and did play an important role in 35 modernizing the Indian Air Force. Eventually, it became one of the largest aerospace 36 companies in Asia.13 37 38 39 Visual culture 40 At the beginning of the twentieth century, literacy was still restricted to a limited 41 segment of the Indian population. With the establishment of S. S. Brijbasi, a pub- 42 lisher of lithographic prints in Karachi, and other publishers in the 1920s and 1930s, 43 the print culture inaugurated by the Calcutta Art Studio, the Ravi Varma Studio, 44

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1 and other studios in the 19th century was greatly expanded, thus insuring the con- 2 tinued traffic in cheap printed chromolithographs of mythological figures.14 Besides 3 the popularity of these images, however, the publication of reading matter also 4 expanded. Type fonts were available in most, if not all, indigenous languages and 5 presses existed throughout the country, producing a wide range of materials from 6 official documents to newspapers, books, and magazines. India’s linguistic diversity 7 was extensive, despite the large number of Hindi speakers and the prevalence of the 8 Devanagri script. Artists invented new forms of lettering for posters and other 9 printed matter but India in these years was not a sufficiently developed commercial 0 culture to warrant more extensive activity in type design. 11 The printing historian B. S. Kesavan estimates that more than 500 newspapers 12 and journals existed at the beginning of the 20th century.15 Among these was the 13 illustrated journal, Modern Review, published in Calcutta by Ramananda Chatterjee 14 (1865–1943) beginning in 1907. Modern Review, which appeared in English, pro- 15 moted nationalist views and quickly attracted a nationwide readership. It featured 16 lithographic illustrations but halftones were substituted for them as soon as the 17 technology was available.16 18 The magazine’s illustrations influenced publishers throughout India, and by the 19 1920s and 1930s a number of other illustrated magazines had appeared. Kalyan, 20 which was published first in Hindi and then in an English edition for overseas 21 Indians, disseminated religious imagery, which helped to address some of the 22 dilemmas of daily life.17 The educated class also read English-language pictorial 23 magazines such as the Illustrated Weekly of India, which had started as the Times of 24 India Weekly Edition in 1880 but was renamed in 1923. 25 For the mass public, however, prints were not simply pictures dedicated primarily 26 to intellectual explanation or aesthetic pleasure, but were the visual embodiment of 27 deeply held spiritual and religious beliefs. This latter quality was exploited by British 28 and Indian businessmen, who sought to link the goods they produced to mytho- 29 logical narratives.18 Spirituality and politics came together in a well-known litho- 30 graphic calendar poster of 1908 for Kali Cigarettes, which depicted the goddess Kali 31 in her most destructive aspect, waving a bloody scimitar. Produced by the Calcutta 32 Art Studio, the calendar featured a small crouched lion in the upper left corner—a 33 symbol for Britain—and a decapitated soldier in the lower right corner, both of 34 which provoked British officials to read the poster as a sign of political rebellion. 35 The artist Ravi Varma was perhaps the first Indian painter to earn money from 36 commercial art, a practice that began in the 19th century when several companies 37 adopted paintings of his for advertising purposes. This practice continued after his 38 death in 1906. Though his pictures of mythological subjects were most frequently 39 sought, there was also interest in his other genres such as portraiture. His painting 40 of the Maharaja of Mysore, for example, was adopted for a calendar to advertise 41 Maharaja Cigarettes, manufactured by the City Tobacco Company of Bangalore 42 (see Figure 9.2). 43 By the end of World War I, there was a sufficient consumer-oriented Indian 44 middle class to entice some of the large companies from abroad to establish

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1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 FIGURE 9.2 Maharajah Cigarettes, marketing material 37 Source: Courtesy of Osian’s Image Gallery © Ravi Varma/Calendar poster to advertise Maharaja 38 cigarettes, The Osian’s Archive & Library Collection, India 39 40 manufacturing facilities in India or else begin serious marketing operations there. 41 Among British firms, Lever and Associated Biscuit Manufacturers sold soap and 42 biscuits respectively. The Czech firm Bata intended to compete with indigenous 43 tanning factories to market shoes, while Dunlop promoted tires and General Electric 44

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1 and Phillips sold light bulbs. Kodak also set up operations in India to sell cameras to 2 the rising middle class. 3 The advertising strategies of these companies varied from one to another but also 4 depended on which audiences they were trying to reach. These varied. First was 5 the Indian consumer who might be from a range of economic strata although, given 6 the products on offer, the likely market was the middle class. Then there were the 7 foreigners living in India, including British colonials but not limited exclusively to 8 them. And for some services, like the Indian State Railways, the market was in 9 Britain. For each group of consumers there were distinct advertising strategies and 0 representations of Indian culture. 11 To encourage tourists from Britain to see India by rail, the Indian State Railways, 12 a company owned and managed by the Raj, used exotic imagery in an extensive 13 advertising campaign during the 1930s. Their posters featured scenic destinations, 14 including a number of temple sites. As fodder for the tourist gaze, Indians were 15 always included as part of the scenery. In some posters they were dwarfed by the 16 impressive monuments, while in others, such as posters that depicted the Khyber 17 Pass or the holy city of Benares, their activity was an essential part of the narrative. 18 The artists were all British and included Austin Cooper and Fred Taylor 19 (1875–1963), who had done posters for the London Underground and the London 20 and Northeastern Railway (LNER).19 21 In addition to advertising products, posters along with other means were used 22 extensively by Indian film companies to promote films.20 In 1913, D. G. Phalke 23 produced, directed, and edited the first Indian feature film Raja Harishchandra, a 24 mythological drama whose visual style Phalke adopted from Ravi Varma. Phalke 25 founded the Hindustan Film Company in 1917 and others soon followed it. 26 Early film advertising included painted banners, posters, and printed handbills. 27 Beginning in the 1920s, posters and handbills were supplemented by a new form of 28 advertising, the film booklet, which contained pictures of the film as well as a 29 summary of it. One of the earliest printed film posters, and among the first to depart 30 from the Ravi Varma aesthetic, was Baburao Painter’s Kalyan Khajina (The 31 Treasures of Kalyan) of 1924. Painter (1890–1954), who was the film’s director as 32 well as the poster designer, sought to imitate the realistic style of Bombay’s J. J. 33 School of Art, where so many artists who did advertising posters trained. 34 Art Deco graphics entered India by way of film posters, whose designers adopted 35 the style as a sign of modernity. By the 1930s, the themes of Indian films had 36 expanded beyond the original mythological and historical dramas to include modern 37 situations. As in the West, the stylized Art Deco graphics were associated with the 38 1930s and were rarely used in the postwar years. Their significance in India, 39 however, was to create hybrid graphic forms that mingled traditional Indian scripts 40 with modern Western lettering styles. 41 42 43 44

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Conclusion 1 2 The case of India demonstrates that economics, technology, politics, and culture are 3 essential components of design history and any attempt to incorporate the story of 4 Indian industrialization and mass communication into a world history of design must 5 take them into consideration. They are crucial in contributing to a design history 6 narrative that can incorporate not only India, both as colony and nation, but also 7 the many other places where engagements with design have heretofore remained 8 invisible. 9 0 Notes 11 1 Substantial material on Indian industrialization can be found in a number of economic 12 histories by Indian scholars including D. R. Gadgil, The Industrial Evolution of India in 13 Recent Times, 1860–1939; (Bombay et al.: Oxford University Press, 1971); Rajat Kanta 14 Ray, ed., Entrepreneurship and Industry in India, 1800–1947 (Delhi: Oxford University 15 Press, 1992), and Ray’s own Industrialization in India: Growth and Conflict in the Private 16 Corporate Sector, 1914–47 (Delhi et al.: Oxford University Press, 1979); Sumit Sarkar, The Swadeshi Movement in Bengal, 1903–1908 ((New Dehli: People’s Publishing House, 1973); 17 and Sunil Kumar Sen, Studies in Economic Policy and Development of India, 1848–1939 18 (Calcutta: Progressive Publishers, 1972). Vera Anstey’s The Economic Development of India 19 (London, New York, Toronto: Longmans, Green & Co., 1952 [1929]) contains helpful 20 information but looks at India’s economic history from a colonial point of view. 2 Amin Jaffer, Made for Maharajas: A Design Diary of Princely India (New York: The 21 Vendome Press, 2006). 22 3 Judith Brown, Gandhi: Prisoner of Hope (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 23 1989). S. Balaram discusses Gandhi’s ability to endow the weaving of khadi cloth with 24 political symbolism in “Product Symbolism of Gandhi and Its Connection with Indian Mythology,” Design Issues 5 no. 2 (Spring 1989): 68–85. See also Susan S. Bean, “Gandhi 25 and Khadi, the Fabric of Indian Independence,” in Annette B. Weiner and Jane 26 Schneider, eds., Cloth and Human Experience (Washington and London: Smithsonian 27 Institution Press, 1989): 355–376. 28 4 Gadjil, The Industrial Evolution of India in Recent Times, 1860–1939: 34. 29 5 For a comprehensive discussion of the Bengali swadeshi movement, see Sarkar, The Swadeshi Movement in Bengal, 1903–1908. 30 6 Havell’s role in India as an art educator and proponent of Indian crafts is discussed in 31 Partha Mitter, Art and Nationalism in Colonial India 1850–1922: Occidental Orientations 32 (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994): 246–254; Tapati Guha- 33 Thakurta, The Making of a New “Indian” Art: Artists, Aesthetics and Nationalism in Bengal, c. 1850–1920 (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992): 149–159; 34 and Pushpa Sundar, Patrons and Philistines: Arts and the State in British India, 1773–1947 35 (Delhi et al.: Oxford University Press, 1995): 148–155, 157, 172. See also Debashish 36 Banerji, “The Orientialism of EB Havell,” Third Text 16 no. 1 (2002): 41–56. Havell 37 stated his positive views of Indian crafts and his critique of industrialization in his book, The Basis for Artistic and Industrial Revival in India (New Delhi: USHA, 1986 [1912]). 38 7 For an account of Coomaraswamy’s life in Chipping Camden near Ashbee’s Guild of 39 Handicraft and his subsequent stay in India, see Roger Lipsey, Coomaraswamy: His Life 40 and Work, vol. 3 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1977 [Bollingen Series 41 LXXIX]): 41–54 and 75–93. See also Guha-Thakurta, The Making of a New “Indian” Art: Artists, Aesthetics and Nationalism in Bengal, c. 1850–1920: 159–167. 42 8 Ananda K. Coomaraswamy, The Indian Craftsman (London: Probsthain & Co., 1909). 43 9 C. R. Ashbee, “Foreword” in Coomaraswamy, The Indian Craftsman: ix. 44

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1 10 On Chatterton, see Vera Anstey, The Economic Development of India: 210–212, and Sarkar, 2 The Swadeshi Movement in Bengal, 1903–1908: 135. 11 Alfred Chatterton, Industrial Evolution in India (Madras: The “Hindu” Office, 1912): 340. 3 He says, “A leaven of Englishmen will always be required to preserve the present high 4 standard of service, and it is difficult to even imagine the time when the direction of affairs 5 will pass out of our hands.” 6 12 Ibid.: 176–182. 13 Ibid.: 281. 7 14 On the development of Indian print culture in the 19th and 20th centuries, see Anindita 8 Ghosh, Power in Print: Popular Publishing and the Politics of Language and Culture in a Colonial 9 Society, 1778–1905 (Delhi et al.: Oxford University Press, 2006); Kajri Jain, Gods in the 0 Bazaar: The Economies of Indian Calendar Art (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2007); Mitter, Art and Nationalism in Colonial India, 1850–1922: Occidental Orientations; 11 and Christopher Pinney, “Photos of the Gods”: The Printed Image and Political Struggle in 12 India (London: Reaktion, 2004). 13 15 B. S. Kesavan, History of Printing and Publishing in India: A Story of Cultural Awakening, v. 14 1: South Indian Origins of Printing and Its Efflorescence in Bengal (India: National Book Trust, 1985): 233. 15 16 Mitter, Art and Nationalism in Colonial India, 1850–1922: Occidental Orientations: 120–122. 16 17 Jain, Gods in the Bazaar: The Economies of Indian Calendar Art: 147–149. 17 18 Ibid.: 121–134. 18 19 Images of Indian State Railway posters can be found on the websites of various poster dealers. 19 20 For a discussion of Indian film advertising between 1913 and the end of the 1930s, see 20 Rachel Dwyer and Diva Patel, Cinema India: The Visual Culture of Hindi Film (New 21 Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2002): 101–135. 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44

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1 RESPONSE 2 3 Christopher Pinney 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 Victor does a good job of highlighting the diversity of approaches within India to 18 the ‘industrial’ and ‘artisan’ question. Swadeshi, as he says, did not invoke a singular 19 design or artifact-related strategy. 20 Some advocated artisanal self-reliance as an essentially moral strategy (M. K. 21 Gandhi most famously, and Rabindranath Tagore to a lesser extent), others advo- 22 cated mineral exploitation and heavy industrial development, such as the geologist 23 Pramathanath Bose (briefly alluded to) who discovered petroleum in Assam and was 24 instrumental in the establishment of the Jamshedpur TISCO steel works. Some, like 25 the extremely wealthy industrialist G. D. Birla were industrial tycoons of a highly 26 extractive variety, but he was also a main funder of Gandhi’s activities (he maintained 27 a very extensive correspondence with Gandhi, and facilitated his travel and residence 28 [Gandhi would be assassinated, recall, in the Birla House in Delhi]). 29 More critically, Victor’s account seems to simplify the British/India divisions: 30 British colonizers appear intent on ‘artisan-izing’ India so that it is forced to buy 31 Manchester textiles; Indians, correspondingly, are involved in ‘resistance’ to this. 32 Thus in the opening of the paper, the 1851 and 1886 Exhibitions appear to 33 unproblematically serve British interests. It may be that on balance they did, but 34 when one looks in detail at the various figures involved, a more complicated 35 story of intentions and outcome emerges. 1851 for instance had huge consequences 36 for English design – not only through the impetus to preserve the exhibition 37 collections in South Kensington, and subsequently the V&A, but also through 38 Mathew Digby Wyatt’s (Secretary to the 1851 Exhibition, EIC Surveyor and 39 assistant to Brunel) use of Paisley ornamentation of Brunel’s Paddington Station train 40 shed (here motifs probably emanating from English herbals circulating in the Mughal 41 period incorporated by ‘Kashmiri’ handloom weavers, subsequently inflected by 42 Scottish machine production and looped back through Kashmir became a central 43 feature of one of the new [as Ruskin put it] ‘cathedrals’ of the industrial age). 44

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1 These complex flows can of course be given a much longer history. Chintz – the 2 quintessential sign of Englishness would here be emblematic. Derived from the 3 north Indian term for spotted cloth (chint), the vibrancy of its colours was so 4 attractive that Indian imports would largely destroy the European textile industry 5 in the 17th century. Manchester’s role in the 19th century was a belated echo of a 6 much earlier globalization and set of capital flows. I will return to the economic 7 dimensions of design in my concluding thoughts later. 8 But let’s briefly expand on this longer history of aesthetic influence, not least 9 because it has been the subject of an important – and in my view unjustly neglected 0 – recent publication by Hermione de Almeida and George H. Gilpin, Indian 11 Renaissance: British Romantic Art and the Prospect of India (2005). Firstly consider the 12 impact of an Indian aesthetic on European Romanticism. Almedia and Gilpin have 13 recently marshalled convincing evidence that India was the uroffenbarung (moment 14 of revelatory insight) of Romanticism. Almeida and Gilpin propose that visual 15 images from India opened – in the words of James Forbes ‘a new scene. . .to the 16 intellectual view’. Images produced by the likes of Tilly Kettle, William Hodges and 17 Edward Moor introduced Britain to a fantastical, sublime and enchanted India. 18 Hodges was acknowledged by Joshua Reynolds in a presidential address to the Royal 19 Academy to have provided ‘hints of composition and general effect, which could 20 not otherwise have occurred.’ For the poet and artist William Blake, Reynolds’ neo- 21 classicial aestheticism sustained the evil of empire. In his copy of Reynolds Works 22 of 1798, Blake wrote that ‘The Arts and Sciences are the Destruction of Tyrannies 23 and Bad Governments. . .Empire follows Art and Not Vice Versa as Englishmen 24 suppose.’ In formulating an Art opposed to Empire, Blake drew heavily on Indian 25 sources – Charles Wilkins’ 1785 translation of the Bhagavad-gita affected him greatly 26 and an Indian aspiration seems to be at work in a number of his images: Almeida 27 and Gilpin have provocatively suggested that Blake’s celebrated Nebuchadnezzer 28 ‘resembles not so much King Lear as a sadhu or Hindu ascetic . . .’ and that his 29 Spiritual Form of Pitt Guiding Behemoth from c.1805–1809, derives much of its 30 structure and iconographic detail from Daniell’s depictions of monumental carvings 31 of Buddha and Siva. Blake’s Jerusalem from c.1804–1820 is clearly iconographically 32 indebted to Moor’s Hindu Pantheon (which was published by his friend Joseph 33 Johnson in 1810), just as many of its ideas owe much to Wilkins’ translation of the 34 Gita. More generally it seems plausible that Blake’s repeated creation of complex 35 ‘friezes’ – surfaces covered with elaborate mythological forms – owes much to his 36 engagement with depictions of Indian cave-temples 37 The key figure in the 1886 (and earlier) Exhibition(s), George Birdwood is 38 now much vilified for his refusal to concede that India was capable of producing 39 ‘fine art’. But to think of him as straightforwardly ‘orientalist’ deletes much of the 40 complexity of his Romantic Morris-ian nostalgia for ‘those ideals he felt India 41 had sacrificed through industrialization’ (to cite Victor’s observation about 42 Ashbee and Havell). Havell, by the way, also needs to be situated closely (alongside 43 Abanindranath Tagore) in relation to a pan-Asian anti-colonialism. Birdwood – 44 largely through his influence on John Lockwood Kipling (father of Rudyard) – is

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part of a complex network which connects John Ruskin, William Morris, Kipling 1 himself and the aesthetician Ananda K. Coomaraswamy to Gandhi. Lockwood 2 Kipling and Coomaraswamy both articulated within the sphere of art pedagogy 3 and aesthetic theory positions that prefigured Gandhi’s own essentialization of the 4 village, of artisanal – as opposed to industrial – production, and of a political ethic 5 rooted in a civilizational ‘craft’. But this flow of ideas – triangulating India, Britain, 6 and Gandhi in South Africa – would form the basis of a much more significant 7 aesthetic ‘intervention’ in the form of Gandhi’s somaticization of a political theology. 8 His increasingly naked body became an aesthetic surface incarnating an ethics of anti- 9 colonial practice, and this body incarnated in turn next to the chakra (the spinning 0 wheel which symbolized the self-production of swadeshi) made visible a political 11 performativity that lay at the heart of his endeavour. Separating the economics from 12 the aesthetic – as I think Victor does in relation to Gandhi – tends to lose sight of 13 the centrality of the moral somatics of khadi (see Bayly, Bean, Trivedi et. al.) 14 Victor usefully draws our attention to a range of industrialists, and industrial 15 projects, that often get left out of accounts of design in India. But alongside the 16 examples of the Indian Aluminium Company, Hindustan Motors and others that 17 he cites he might also have commented on phonography, cinema and lithographic 18 presses as archetypal economic/design institutions which draw our attention to the 19 infrastructure which makes possible the mechanical reproduction that cultural critics are 20 usually so happy to consider without reference to mechanics. 21 The swadeshi currents that drove Tata and Birla also informed the arts of 22 mechanical reproduction. H. Bose founded Swadeshi Records Ltd so that Indians 23 would not be forced to rely on the Gramophone Company of India (i.e., EMI). 24 D. G. Phalke, the father of Indian cinema, was prompted to make films because he 25 thought Indians had the right to see their own gods on the screen, not just those of 26 the Christian colonizers. In 1913, the year in which Phalke released his first feature, 27 Raja Harishchandra, he gave a series of interviews to the Maharastrian nationalist 28 B. G. Tilak’s newspaper, Kesari, and to Navyug in which he addressed the difficulties 29 of capital formation in the nascent Indian film industry. He famously recalled his 30 epiphany while watching The Life of Christ in the America-India Picture Palace in 31 Bombay in 1910. ‘That day’ he commented ‘marked the foundation in India of an 32 industry which occupies the fifth place in the myriads of big and small professions 33 that exist. And [that] all this could have happened at the hands of a poor Brahmin!’ 34 In this same article he then documented how he initially raised Rs. 25,000 which 35 was used to lever the larger sum that he required to start making his first films. In 36 so doing Phalke positioned this new technology for the animation of India’s gods 37 and goddesses within a strengthening Bombay-centric indigenous capitalism. Phalke 38 approached cinema as he would have approached any new business. 39 Gandhi’s message was powerfully nurtured – throughout the 1930s – by the 40 impact of pictures mass produced by the publisher S. S. Brijbasi. The Brijbasi 41 brothers ran a picture framing shop in Karachi for several years and were only 42 awakened to the possibility of becoming picture publishers by the coincidence of a 43 travelling sales representative from a German printing company, and a client 44

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1 requesting the framing of a photograph of his son dressed as Krishna in 1927. 2 Brijbasi’s images (which would soon come to dominate the pan-Indian market) were 3 initially reproduced photographically in Dresden in the form of postcard-size 4 bromide prints. 5 So Victor is absolutely right to draw our attention to the necessity of engaging 6 the economic history of design in India. But my suggestion is that we do not have 7 to confine ourselves to aluminium and automobiles. The history of all of India’s 8 visual culture is necessarily also an economic history, and it is one which, moreover, 9 was always (and remains) configured by complex global flows and exchanges. 0 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44

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1 2 10 3 4 HANDMADE MODERNITY 5 6 7 Post-war design in Turkey 8 9 Gökhan Karakus 0 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 The history of modern design in Turkey is only now beginning to be understood. 18 The largely undocumented designs of a number of architects, interior designers and 19 artists have recently been organized into a history that throws light on to the Turkish 20 experience of modernism providing an example of how design practice outside 21 of the Western context developed. The canon of Western design history, largely 22 concerned with industrialization, has tended to ignore the activities of practitioners 23 in agrarian and nomad cultures which continued to be dependent on non-industrial 24 tools and craft techniques. This form of production was, and still is today, a reality 25 in places such as Turkey. While post-war designers in Western Europe and the USA 26 sought ways to design furniture with an eye towards mass production, in Turkey 27 the question was how to work within the existing handicraft culture. While similar 28 issues can be seen in other geographies (such as Scandinavia for example), in Turkey 29 we have the added dimension of a craft culture associated with an Asian, Islamic, 30 and nomadic civilization. 31 In the design of furniture and interiors in twentieth-century Turkey, the relation 32 of modern and pre-modern practices existed in the spheres of both production and 33 consumption. Novel aesthetics and techniques of handicraft developed alongside 34 shifting requirements of daily life, during a period when there was a major trans- 35 formation of Turkish society. It is in this context of urbanization and growth that 36 new designs reached a wider population—a transformation that is ongoing even 37 today in Turkey. A lifestyle based on Western, modern modes of living was linked 38 to a type of design produced on the principles of modernist abstraction and industrial 39 materials. Ironically however, such objects were produced artisanally in what we 40 can call a handmade modernism. This short survey looks at key moments and figures 41 in design from the 1940s to the 1970s, showing how Turkey can be situated within 42 a global history of modern design. 43 44

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1 The late Ottoman and early Republican periods 2 Modernism in Turkey is closely associated with the foundation of the Republic of 3 Turkey in 1923 and the transformation in social life that ensued. From dress code, 4 to alphabet, to architecture, the founder of the Republic, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk 5 6 initiated an array of changes that had significant effects on material culture. While 7 design was not one of these, the turn towards Western oriented ways of living, 8 especially in the public realm, was comprehensive and radical. In private interior 9 design and furniture this change happened over a longer period of time and was a 0 more organic process, as might be expected given the deeply embedded physicality 11 of domestic space. 12 The concept of furniture in Turkey was itself something new for a culture that, 13 as late as the 1930s, still used traditional forms in many domestic settings. The 14 interior design of the late Ottoman period as well as the Anatolian peasantry was 15 based on textiles integrated into architectural interiors such as divans, cushions, 16 pillows and rugs. There were no tables, chairs, beds or storage units of a Western 17 format. It is interesting to note that in the interiors of public spaces that existed under 18 the Ottoman system—mosques, hamams, and medrese—there was very little 19 furniture in the Western sense. While the Ottoman royalty and the elite of Istanbul 20 and Izmir maintained close connections to European culture through the activities 21 of the merchant and professional classes of non-Muslim (Greek, Armenian and 22 Jewish) minorities, these Western-facing groups were a very small subset of urban 23 society. Domestic society and lifestyle in Turkey changed very little up until the 24 post-war period, with major changes occurring only in the past 30 years.1 25 With the advent of the new Turkish Republic new prototypes for architecture 26 and to a lesser extent design were offered as a substitute for the Ottoman system. 27 Based on the combined efforts of Republican architects such as Emin Onat.2 and 28 Sedad Hakki Eldem,3 as well as Austrian, German and Swiss architects such as Bruno 29 Taut, Clemens Holzmeister and Ernst Egli who were brought to Turkey in the 30 1930s, a radically new design paradigm based on the modernist architecture of 31 Central Europe was instituted by the state, primarily for public buildings. As a 32 symbol of power and authority this architecture served the purposes of the new 33 regime, pointing to universal values through geometrical abstraction and modularity 34 synthesized with a heavy, somber style similar to that of Stalinist and fascist 35 architecture. The architects did have an interest in certain elements of Ottoman 36 architecture, particularly its mathematical complexity, but this was abstracted and 37 subsumed within a modernist idiom. 38 This architectural prescription was however not translated into furniture, 39 furnishings and interior decoration. While new forms of architecture and urbanism 40 were served up as models for a modern lifestyle, domestic life for the most part 41 maintained a resilient continuity with Ottoman and Anatolian precedents. There 42 was no active political reorganization of domestic space, as interior design did not 43 merit consideration by the state. A notable exception was Eldem, whose attempt to 44 develop a national architecture involved disciplined studies of the Turkish house.

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His very thorough analyses were the only substantial study integrating architecture 1 and interior design, including furniture.4 There was also an almost complete lack of 2 education in design, with only one school, the Istanbul State Fine Arts Academy, 3 providing classes from 1929 through the 1940s. Interior design and furniture was 4 largely left to a class of tradesmen and craftsmen, as had been the case since Ottoman 5 times.5 6 While the minorities and Turkish urban elites of Istanbul, and to a certain extent 7 Izmir, applied versions of the neoclassic and later art nouveau and art deco styles to 8 interior design,6 they were a very small subset of the population despite their 9 economic and political power. This is not the place for a long exegesis on the 0 relations between cultural and economic capital in the early Republican period in 11 Turkey; suffice it to say after the calamities of World War I, the elites were a small 12 group largely concentrated in Istanbul, disconnected from the regions and the new 13 capital of Ankara. It was in this context of the Republican period of the 1940s, 14 especially after the end of World War II that a new form of domestic life started to 15 emerge. While again this trend was concentrated and initiated amongst the elites, 16 this shift in lifestyle was not an ideological phenomenon like the state-sponsored 17 early modern style. It was a bottom-up social transformation facilitated by demand, 18 an aesthetic and intellectual pursuit motivated by the dynamic economic conditions 19 of the day. 20 21 22 Architecture and design in Turkey in the post-war decades 23 The post-war period in Turkey was deeply affected by a global system of capital, 24 with American culture as the model. In Turkey this meant the rise of design 25 motivated by the demands of popular culture and an end to the top-down statist 26 system imposed since the foundation of the Republic. In the 1940s many public 27 buildings were designed by architects like Eldem and Onat, culminating in the 28 competition for the Istanbul Municipality building of 1952 won by Nevzat Erol. 29 These stark buildings of the “second national movement” were exponents of the 30 state’s desire for an outward-looking, modern, and rationalist idiom that was 31 universal. While efforts were made (especially by Eldem) to fuse Ottoman and 32 rationalist principals, for the most part this monolithic style was exceedingly spare, 33 purposefully anonymous. The second national movement in architecture would not 34 live beyond these state-sponsored buildings. 35 In the late 1940s popular politics would start to motivate new design trends. The 36 architect, designer and tastemaker Selcuk Milar, a graduate of the School of 37 Architecture of the Istanbul State Fine Art Academy, was one of these figures.7 His 38 publication in 1947 of editions of the magazine Eser, covering architecture, interior 39 design, and art, represented the beginnings of this interest. Milar’s greatest fame was 40 gained in 1950 with a design of a political poster for the newly forming centrist 41 Democrat Party that was a catalyst in the shocking defeat of the Republican party 42 for the first time since the foundation of the Republic. The poster, featuring 43 an upturned hand with the slogan “Enough, It’s Time for the People’s Voice” 44

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1 announced the end of unitary state politics. As an editor and designer Milar pointed 2 to Western models that eschewed the harsh lines of the dominant rational archi- 3 tecture; he had a particular liking for Danish wood furniture of the 1940s by the 4 likes of Finn Juhl. During the 1940s and 1950s this Scandinavian style was a 5 benchmark for taste, particularly in Ankara. Long known for its woodworking 6 culture, the city’s carpenters included figures such as the trade-school trained 7 manufacturer Ali Ihsan Sark, who produced a raw, heavy version of the Danish style. 8 This furniture was popular amongst high government officials, Ankara’s cultural elite 9 and the many foreign nationals who lived in the city. Milar would in 1957 open an 0 art gallery in Ankara that married his hodge-podge modernist aesthetic with avant- 11 garde art by Turkish artists such as ceramicist Fureya Korel and the neo-primitive 12 artist and textile and ceramic designer Bedri Rahmi Eyubogˇlu, creating one of the 13 first original interior design concepts of the time. 14 Istanbul during this period saw a similar introduction of other modernisms 15 through the efforts of young architects such as Turgut Cansever8 and Abudurrahman 16 Hancı9, graduates of the Istanbul State Fine Arts Academy Architecture School. The 17 Architecture School at the Academy, under the leadership of Eldem throughout the 18 1940s, had sought to blend a thorough knowledge of local traditions with universal 19 principals, but had largely failed to generate a convincing design idiom. Cansever 20 and Hanci, however, would both go on to become important figures in Turkish 21 architecture. They first teamed up in 1951, designing the house Yalman Evi on the 22 Princes Islands, for the industrialist Mehmet Rifat Yalman. Hanci had interned with 23 Auguste Perret in France, and Cansever had recently returned from a tour of 24 Europe. The pair were filled with a youthful energy, and designed everything down 25 to the slightest detail. This gesamtkunstwerk was based thoroughly on modernist 26 principals, but the furnishings were produced by the last remnants of Istanbul’s 27 Greek cabinetmakers and carpenters. Open living areas flowed towards the exterior, 28 emphasizing light and space. The sumptuous yet minimal furniture, primarily 29 in wood with upholstery, sculpturally commanded the interior. Stylisically, it 30 continued the interest in Danish wood furniture that Milar had popularized in 31 Ankara. There was a mix of orthogonal storage units and spiky, organic seating units, 32 all in light-colored locally available woods. The only deviation from the modernist 33 credo was a handmade wooden staircase with brass fittings, its wavy lines seemingly 34 evoking the island setting to surreal effect. Also notable were woodblock print textile 35 designs by the painter Bedri Rahmi Eyubogˇlu10 for the house, which included a 36 primitive flower motif that was applied to the curtains. Hanci and Cansever would 37 go on to design and build another building on the Princes Islands, the Büyükada 38 Anadolu Klübü (Anatolian Club of Büyükada) of 1950–1955. This was a social club 39 for Turkish parliamentarians that extended the modernist architecture vocabulary 40 while integrating interior design elements including the wooden handmade furniture 41 similar to those produced for the Yalman Evi. 42 Later in the decade Hanci would produce many noteworthy interiors and 43 furniture, especially for hotels and retail spaces. He would design a series of office 44 furniture and chairs for the German manufacturers Domus K. G., H. Shoeck,

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Schwaikheim in 1961. These lean, flowing forms in steel, chrome and wood were 1 highly refined, industrially produced furniture for a European context. In 1961 he 2 worked again with Eyubogˇlu to produce an abstract ceramic wall piece for the 3 meeting rooms at the NATO Headquarters in Paris. The contrast of Eyubogˇlu’s 4 primitive ceramic wall mosaics with Hanci’s urbane and spare furniture was a unique 5 Turkish synthesis that had its gestation in the Istanbul avant-garde of the 1950s and 6 1960s. (Other important names within this group were the sculptor Ilhan Koman, 7 ceramicists Fureya Koral and Jale Yilmba_ar, and the decorative artist Mustafa 8 Pilevneli.) Cansever also continued to produce buildings, furniture and interior 9 designs, his work at the Turk Tarihi Kurumu (Turkish Historical Society) in 1966 0 being the most successful project of the decade. 11 Post-war prosperity in Turkey also saw the arrival of architecture and design from 12 the U.S. The first Hilton Hotel outside of the U.S. was completed in Istanbul in 13 1955. For the Turkish government, the major investor in the project, this was an 14 opportunity to bring a utopian vision of America into the country while generating 15 revenue from the burgeoning global tourism sector. Designed by Gordon Bunshaft 16 of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM) in collaboration with Sedad Hakki Eldem, 17 the Istanbul Hilton was extremely influential in its stylized orientalist aesthetic. It 18 was aimed at a tourist audience, but was also a powerful example of American 19 culture for the Turks. For the local population, the Hilton presented the first live 20 example of the muscular corporate modern architecture being produced in the 21 U.S. at the time. While the guest rooms offered the full-blown conveniences and 22 comfort of American consumer culture, the public spaces were a fusion of Eldem’s 23 Turkish geometries and domes and flowing forms mixed with Bunshaft’s severe 24 Corbusian language. 25 The hotel’s upholstered furniture, designed by SOM but produced in Ankara 26 was again based on the Danish teak style. The Hilton, a “Little America” in Istanbul, 27 would be copied many times in Western-style hotels and restaurants in Turkey in 28 the coming decades. 29 30 31 Kare Metal: the beginnings of contemporary furniture in Turkey 32 In writing the history of contemporary design in Turkey, it is possible to find a 33 moment that shows that the Western version of events provides an incomplete 34 history. One such case is the metal furniture designed and produced from 1953 35 onwards by the sculptors Sadi Özis¸, Ilhan Koman and S¸adi C¸ alık at the Metal 36 Sculpture Workshop at the Istanbul State Academy of Art in Istanbul. The project 37 was the basis for the Kare Metal company, which operated from the late 1950s 38 through to 1967. 39 Made exclusively in metal, the spare and geometric furniture produced by this 40 small group provides a unusual example of modernist design applied in a non- 41 Western context. We see in the tables, chairs, and other furniture produced by Kare 42 Metal how industrial materials and methods can combine with craft techniques, 43 a modernist sensibility informed simultaneously by universal and local ideas. 44

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1 Combining as they do industrial materials with abstraction, the furniture can be 2 compared to the work of Western designers such as Charles and Ray Eames, Isamu 3 Noguchi and Georges Bertoia for companies such as Herman Miller and Knoll. In 4 comparison to the fame of these “icons” of post-war design the work of Kare Metal 5 is virtually unknown—showing how biased history can be as a result of uneven 6 documentation. 7 Working at the Istanbul State Academy of Fine Art, Özis¸, Koman and C¸ alık 8 gained the attention of Istanbul’s small community of architects and interior decora- 9 tors. They soon received a commercial offer from one the leading furniture show- 0 rooms in Istanbul, Baki Aktar and Fazil Aysu’s Moderno furniture shop in Elmadagˇ. 11 At the end of 1954, emboldened by the commitment of Moderno, Özis¸, Koman 12 and C¸ alık set up their first workshop outside of the Academy in S¸is¸li and recruited . 13 two young craftsmen, Ahmet Pilevneli and Ismail Sakız to help them meet their 14 growing order list, which included commissions from the architect Sedad Hakki 15 Eldem and other contemporary designers. Together with a close family associate of 16 Özis¸—Mazhar Süleymangil—and his father Tevfik Özis,, the company Kare Metal 17 was created—its name (meaning “Square Metal”) reflecting not only the geometry 18 of the products but also the four partners (S¸adi C¸ alık was not a partner but provided 19 assistance to the group). 20 The Kare Metal group was most prolific from 1954 to about 1958. Although 21 over time the designs of the chairs were fine-tuned, they retained a commitment to 22 certain prototypes and forms developed early on. Dependent on a vocabulary of 23 abstract shapes, the simple, minimal style of the furniture was driven by the limited 24 means of handmade production. Perforated sheet metal was bent in a few places to 25 produce a lounge chair. Metal rods were soldered into a wavy grid to produce a 26 horizontal chaise longue. Mesh was shaped around forms derived from the human 27 body, and rendered into a wide armchair. Overall the design of Kare Metal empha- 28 sized the industrial sources of the material, while providing a clear and organized 29 geometry. Similar work was being produced around the world at this time, as 30 designers responded to the new industrial possibilities that were a part of the post- 31 war economic boom. In Turkey there was a similar expansion, based on Prime 32 Minister Adnan Menderes’ economic reforms. 33 Yet prosperity was limited prosperity for designers and producers such as Kare 34 Metal. 35 With all imports banned, and with limits on the movement of currency outside 36 of the country, Turkish producers were cut off from outside sources of materials 37 and had to make do with the means at hand. On the material side, the Kare Metal 38 group made do with what they could find. Özis¸ recalls (in a recorded interview from 39 Autumn 2008): 40 41 . . . during that period there was no material to make steel furniture. Only 42 plumbing pipes and steel construction rods. Small bent rods. We thought of 43 ways of straightening them out. We found a metalworker in the Pers¸embe 44 Pazarı market who had a roll mill. He was a well-known man, a roller named

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Miço who worked in an oily workshop. He would straighten out our rods 1 and stiffen them up under the fire. It was very difficult for us to find pipes for 2 new furniture. 3 4 But it was perhaps the limited resources and techniques that gives the work of Kare 5 Metal its interest, when compared to the mass produced work of Eames, Bertoia, 6 Noguchi and others. In the case of Kare Metal we have the use of industrial materials 7 but not an industrial production process. They never managed to produce their 8 furniture in large volumes in a factory, and hence the furniture has the simplicity 9 and directness that one might expect of craftsmanship. This was modern furniture 0 produced by hand, yet to the designs of individuals who had a very advanced 11 understanding of abstract sculpture. 12 The Kare Metal group’s furniture gained them the attention of important global 13 figures in their day. Through their contacts from their days in Paris, a small article 14 was written about them in 1958 in the magazine Architecture d’Aujourd’hui, edited 15 by the French theorist and publisher Andre Bloc. This was quite an accomplishment 16 for a Turkish group at the time, and the publicity resulted in interest from Florence 17 Knoll who offered to put Kare Metal furniture into mass production. Unfortunately 18 by this time Özis¸ was running the firm by himself; the group had dispersed, with 19 Koman in Stockholm and C¸ alık spending time on his art in Izmir. Kare Metal was 20 not able to respond to Knoll’s proposal and take this important step into the global 21 furniture sector. 22 23 24 Design and retail: Turkish modern furniture in the 1960s 25 and 1970s 26 The next phase in the history of modern furniture in Turkey again emerged out of 27 Istanbul and Ankara and was created by idealistic graduates from the Academy of 28 Fine Arts. Figures such as Yildirim Kocacıklıogˇlu and Turhan Uncuogˇlu, who 29 founded Interno in Istanbul, and Azmi and Bediz Koz of the Ankara design company 30 MPD, were inspired by their modernist teachers at the Academy, such as Hayati 31 Görkey, Sadun Ersin and Utarit Izgi. Interno and MPD were among the first design 32 firms to set up their own showrooms. 33 In tandem with their development of retail spaces, these designers also synchron- 34 ized their furniture and interiors, a strategy aimed at selling design products and 35 design services together. Although many of the initial designs of this period were 36 copies of European models, a unique local approach to design gradually developed. 37 As such this period represents the foundations of a modern attitude to design and 38 interiors in Turkey that is influential today. Of course there were other important 39 actors in the furniture sector (such as the architect Yılmaz Zenger, who experi- 40 mented with fiberglass in the early 1960s, and the office furniture producer Armo), 41 but for the purposes of this short survey, we will focus on Interno and MPD. 42 Driven by a zeal for early modern and contemporary Italian design, ranging from 43 Mies van der Rohe and Le Corbusier to Giò Ponti, Achille Castiglioni and Carlo 44

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1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 FIGURE 10.1 Azmi and Bediz Koz designed this interior and furniture for architects Nes¸et and S¸aziment Arolat, Ankara, Turkey, in the mid-1960s. This private apartment 20 shows the type of chunky handmade wooden furniture being produced by Ankara’s 21 cabinetmakers from the 1950s inspired by Danish models mixed in with ethnic 22 Turkish glass and textiles. (Couch concept design by Nes¸et and S¸aziment Arolat.) 23 Source: © Azmi Koz, through the auspices of the Architecture and Design Archive of Turkey, 24 Garanti Galeri 25 26 Scarpa, these young designers looked abroad for visual examples of the kind of 27 design they were being taught at the Academy. The source they found most 28 inspirational was the Italian magazine Domus, edited by Ponti. This publication had 29 been at the center of design practice since the 1920s, and more recently Italy had 30 seen the growth of a contemporary furniture design sector exploiting new materials 31 such as fiberglass and plastic. Turkish designers were strongly influenced by this 32 Italian success story. 33 Yildirim Koçacıklıogˇlu and Turhan Uncuogˇlu were both graduates of the 34 Istanbul State Academy of Fine Arts Interior Design Department. They set up their 35 design office in 1962 in the Kadrı Han in Beyoglu in downtown Istanbul, producing 36 copies of early modernist furniture by Marcel Breuer and Le Corbusier and the 37 contemporary work of the Italians. Due to the ban on importation into Turkey, the 38 challenge for Interno was to recreate this industrially produced furniture with local 39 craftsmen, most of whom were Turks trained under the Armenian and Greek 40 artisans who had until now been the main workshop-based producers of furniture 41 in Turkey. Interno’s work, focusing on residential apartments for Istanbul’s new 42 corporate elite, involved the design and production of complete interiors. 43 Following their move into a showroom on Mim Kemal Oke Caddesi in 1968, 44 Interno became a sort of museum of modern design. They displayed copies of the

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leading examples of early Modernist furniture (some for sale, some not) and new 1 Italian pieces that they brought in their luggage from trips to Italy: a Castiglione 2 lamp here, a Scarpa table there, new fiberglass and plastic pieces by Joe Colombo 3 from Italy, Breuer copies. The showroom and its design were a unified design 4 statement that had not been seen before in Istanbul. Interno continued to push their 5 unique cosmopolitan fusion in successive decades, serving as the model for 6 contemporary interior design to the educated, business and cultural elite of Istanbul, 7 as well as to Izmir, the Mediterranean coast and the Marmara Region. 8 In Ankara, meanwhile, Academy graduates Azmi and Bediz Koz opened a small 9 store called Butik A on Selanik Cadesi in 1960. They had also studied interior design 0 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 FIGURE 10.2 The interior of the Interno shop in the mid 1960s in Istanbul, Turkey. Interno was a showcase for the icons of modern design favored by the young design 40 team of Yıldırım Kocacıklıogˇlu and Turhan Uncuogˇlu. Due to 41 a ban on imports these pieces were handmade, locally-produced copies 42 Source: © Yıldırım Kocacıklıogˇlu, through the auspices of the Architecture and Design Archive 43 of Turkey, Garanti Galeri 44

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1 with Koçacıklıogˇlu and Uncuogˇlu in Istanbul, and shared their interest in the early 2 modernists and Italians such as Vico Magistretti. They also shared the Ankara taste 3 for Danish wooden furniture that had been popularized by Selcuk Milar and Ali 4 Ihsan Sark (see above.) The partners went through a similar development to 5 Interno’s, first producing copies and then adapting these forms. Their work was 6 especially suited to Ankara’s mix of Turkish political and cultural elites and foreign 7 diplomats, and their popularity grew throughout the 1960s, leading to the formation 8 of the company MPD (Mobilya, Proje, Dekorasyon, still operating today) in a 9 showroom across from Kugˇulu Park in Ankara. Ankara’s social scene was more 0 progressively aligned than Istanbul’s, and MPD also showed art by well-known 11 artists such as the painter Orhan Peker. 12 Both Interno and MPD achieved their success during a difficult time in Turkish 13 history. Unable to import materials and technologies, these designers’ understanding 14 of a global modernist style developed gradually from the practice of copying. While 15 their formal innovation perhaps remained limited, they introduced the concept of 16 furniture as a designed product—as opposed to the traditional conception of the 17 medium as a service provided directly by craftsmen. As trained designers they 18 bridged the gap between the Turkish craftsmen’s limited but robust capabilities in 19 joinery, and the taste of a Turkish urban elite that wanted to share in their modernist 20 vision. Though these design studios and showrooms worked in a relatively closed 21 world, they were the founders of a design and production strategy that has served 22 as an important model in Turkey in ensuing decades. Furniture companies founded 23 in the 1970s, such as Utarit Izgi and Ali Muslubas’ ARMO, the designer Faruk 24 Malhan’s Koleksiyon, and Aziz Sariyer’s Atelye Derin, were all still based on the 25 craft workshop system. 26 27 Conclusion 28 29 This short history shows the slow evolution of a design aesthetic in Turkey based 30 on international modernism. Starting from ideological state-built architecture, 31 a different sort of modernism emerged in opposition to—but also dependent 32 upon—agrarian and nomadic craft culture. A new urban elite was the catalyst for a 33 grass-roots design culture involving designers, manufacturers and clients in a joint 34 enterprise. This was Turkey’s first design aesthetic created by social dynamics as 35 opposed to the dictates of the state. Connected to the way people live and the means 36 of production, this furniture presented a resolved synthesis of the modern and the 37 pre-modern agrarian, rural and nomad cultures still vital in Turkey today. 38 Kare Metal, MPD and Interno founded modern furniture design in Turkey by 39 resolving the complex requirements of craft production and modernist design 40 practice. Though they worked with a restricted palette of materials, in hand 41 techniques, and served a small market, these groups produced a unique contribution 42 to the history of modern design that is only now being understood. 43 Note: Source material on Kare Metal, MPD and Interno is from recorded 44 interviews conducted by Gökhan Karakus¸ with Sadi Özis¸, Yıldırım Kocacıklıogˇlu

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and Bediz Koz as part of the Garanti Kültür Architecture and Design Archive in 1 Turkey. 2 3 4 Notes 5 1 Deniz Kandiyoti and Ays¸e Saktanber, eds., Fragments of Culture: The Everyday of Modern 6 Turkey, New Brunswick, New Jersey, Rutgers University Press, 2002, especially Sencer 7 Ayata, “The New Middle Class and the Joys of Suburbia,” pp. 24–42. 2 Afife Batur, Emin Onat: Kurucu ve Mimar, TMMOB Mimarlar Odasi, Ankara, 2009. 8 3 Bülent Tanju, Ugˇur Tanyeli, Sedad Hakki Eldem 2: Retrospektif, Osmanlı Bankası, Ars¸iv 9 ve Aras¸tirma Merkezi, Istanbul, 2009. 0 4 Eldem had published as early as 1931 studies of interiors of contemporary Turkish houses 11 and furniture in the principal. architectural magazine Mimar in two articles, Mimar Sedat Hakkı, “Evlerimizin Içi” (The Interiors of our Homes), Mimar, 7 July 1931, pp. 233–236 12 and Sedat Hakkı, “Mobilya” (Furniture), Mimar, 8 August 1931, pp. 273–274. In the 13 1940s after a number of propositions for a Milli Mimari (National Architecture) based on 14 Turkish historical house types and urbanism he again turned to interior design with the 15 article “17. ve 18. Asirda Türk Odası,” (The Turkish Room in the 17th and 18th Century), Güzel Sanatlar, 1944, pp. 1–2. Eldem’s attempts throughout the 20th century 16 to create a new idiom for modern Turkish architecture culminated in his massive 3 17 volume Turk Evi/Turkish House, analyzing the classic Ottoman-era Turkish houses. Turk 18 Evi/Turkish House, Tu_rkiye Anıt, C_evre, Turizm Deg_erlerini Koruma Vakfı, 1984. 19 5 In 1923, interior design education had appeared as a section labelled Tezniyat (Decoration) of the Ottoman state’s first art school, the Sanayi-i Nefise Mektebi in 20 Istanbul founded by the French-trained orientalist painter, Osman Hamdi. This. school 21 was later turned into Istanbul State Fine Arts Academy which in 1929 set-up a Iç Mimari 22 (Interior Architecture) division within the Tezniyat (Decoration) Department that also 23 included ceramics, graphics and poster design. The creation of Industrial Design departments would have to wait until the late 1960s. See Alpay Er, “Does Design Policy 24 Matter?—The Case of Turkey in a Conceptual Framework,” in Lee Soon-in, World 25 Design Forum 2002: Design Policy and Global Network, Korean Institute of Design 26 Promotion and ICSID, Seoul, 2002; and Alpay Er, Fatma Korkut and Özlem Er, “U.S. 27 Involvement in the Development of Design in the Periphery: The Case History of Industrial Design Education in Turkey, 1950s–1970s,” Design Issues, Vol. 19. n2., 2003. 28 6 Of these applications of the art nouveau and art deco styles the most important was the 29 work of Raimondo D’Aronco, Italian architect to the Ottoman Sultan Abdülhamid II 30 from 1893–1909, Diana Barillari and Ezio Godoli, Istanbul 1900: Art-Nouveau Architecture 31 and Interiors, New York, Rizzoli, 1996. 7 Selcuk Milar, Arkitekt, 03/1991, p. 46. 32 8 Atilla Yücel and Ugˇur Tanyeli, Turgut Cansever: Düs¸ünce Adamı ve Mimar, Osmanli 33 Bankasi, Istanbul, 2007. 34 9 Abdurrahman Hancı, “Yapılar/Projeler, 1945–2000,” Literatür, Istanbul, 2008. 35 10 Eyübogˇlu was an important figure in 20th century art in Turkey. He entered the Academy in 1929 to study painting but left in 1931 to tour Europe, working briefly in the studio 36 of cubist painter André Lhote in Paris 1932. He returned to Turkey in 1934 but always 37 maintained ties to Europe. His first one-man show was in Bucharest in 1935. His neo- 38 primitive style was a synthesis of early modernist styles merged with primitive forms 39 similar to examples of ancient Anatolian cultures. He was best known for the highly labor- intensive mosaics and prints. Sabahattin Rahmi Eyübogˇlu and Ömer Faruk S¸erifogˇlu, 40 Yas¸asın Renk 1911–1975, Istanbul, 2008. 41 42 43 44

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1 2 RESPONSE 3 4 Edward S. Cooke, Jr. 5 6 7 8 9 0 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 Gökhan Karakus¸ provides an important new case study that charts the establishment 19 of a modern furniture culture in a region that, under Ottoman rule, relied on textiles 20 and upholstery and thus had little real furniture history. In examining this develop- 21 ment of “furniture as a designed product,” Karakus¸ pays attention to the overlap 22 between the exploration of regional vernacular expression, attempts to forge national 23 aesthetics, and a fascination with transnational modernism. His narrative charts the 24 limits of ideologically motivated state-built architecture, which succeeds only in the 25 public realm, and the rise of a new design culture drawn from local traditions, limited 26 by economic policies, and adapted within the domestic realm. Karakus¸ identifies 27 academically trained designers as the crucial link between a skilled artisanal class and 28 the fashionable urban elite. 29 However, Karakus¸’ exciting new research needs to be considered within a 30 broader comparative sense of both design history and craft history. As throughout 31 much of the Euro-American world in the interwar years, Austrian, German, and 32 Swiss architects provided designs in the latest International Style for Turkish state 33 commissions, while Istanbul’s elite—merchants, professionals, and non-Muslims 34 (Greeks, Armenians, and Jews)—sought art deco and modern furnishings. Certainly 35 the move in the 1920s and 1930s towards a modern aesthetic based on European 36 examples and introduced by immigrants is a story familiar in America since Karen 37 Davies’s pioneering At Home in Manhattan.1 But as Davies pointed out, modernism 38 at this point had two sides: the rational new urban aesthetics of Donald Deskey and 39 other industrial designers, and the more synthetic updated traditionalism of architects 40 like Eliel Saarinen and Eugene Schoen. In Turkey this desire to blend contemporary 41 abstraction and local convention can be seen in the efforts of Sedad Hakki Eldem, 42 a seminal figure in Ankara who should be explored in greater depth in the future. 43 Karakus¸’ essay suggests that during the 1930s Turkish modernisms seem to have 44 geographic dimensions.

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The tension between Istanbul and Ankara, between hard modern and soft modern, 1 and between imports and local work grew in the post-war period and endows this 2 story with depth and urgency. Istanbul became the most cosmopolitan market for a 3 new design in the 1950s. Architects like Turgut Cansever and Abudurrhanman Hanci 4 had traveled or worked in the centers of European architecture, and were embraced 5 by a clientele that read Domus and purchased locally made versions of archetypal 6 modern furniture designed by Mies van der Rohe, le Corbusier, and Gio Ponti from 7 shops such as Moderno and Inferno. But increasingly the dominant influence seemed 8 to be American commercial modernism, epitomized in SOM’s Hilton Hotel of 1955, 9 and copied by Hanci and others for another decade. In Istanbul steel, chrome, and 0 wooden furniture filled totally integrated gesmtkunstwerk interiors that also boasted 11 block printed textiles and ceramic wall mosaics designed by other Istanbul State Fine 12 Arts Academy (ISFAA) graduates. As in America, a certain educational institution rose 13 up at this time to dominate the discourse and practice of modern interior design in 14 the post-war period. In America it was Cranbrook, while in Turkey it was the Istanbul 15 State Fine Arts Academy, whose graduates would comprise the leaders of the 1950s 16 and 1960s. Even the metal furniture of Kare Metal seems to echo the sculptural metal 17 wire work of Harry Bertoia and Charles and Ray Eames; it was hatched within the 18 school’s sculpture department and then adapted into the high end retail market. That 19 Knoll, the American shop run by a Cranbrook graduate and stocked with the work 20 of Bertois and Eero Saarinen, expressed interest in the line in 1958 simply underscores 21 the parallel.2 22 In Ankara, Karakus¸ uncovers a different sort of trajectory. In the capital, Selcuk 23 Milar rejected the cold rationalized work of central European modernism, most 24 commonly linked to Bauhaus design, and instead gravitated towards a soft modern- 25 ism more dependent upon the work of Scandinavian designer craftsmen. Initially 26 local craftsmen such as Ali Ihsan Sark made close copies of the work of Finn Juhl 27 and others, but then developed their own versions sold at shops such as MPD. Such 28 preference for a warmer, more personal sort of modern expression produced in 29 democratic northern European countries also characterized much of the work of 30 designer craftsmen in America during the same period. Milar’s interest in blending 31 Scandinavian principles and Turkish workmanship resembles the goals of the 32 American Ben Thompson, a founding member of The Architects Collaborative in 33 1947 who established Design Research in 1953. Just as DR imported Scandinavian 34 furniture, ceramics, glass, and textiles and sought out local craftspeople making 35 similar products, the Ankaran shops offered an alternative modernism to that 36 promulgated in Istanbul.3 37 Although he claims the introduction of modern furniture was “a bottom-up 38 social transformation,” Karakus¸ focuses primarily upon the institutional history of 39 modern design in Turkey—the ISFAA’s educational system for designers, the 40 experimental shops established by ISFAA graduates, and the dominant retailers who 41 promoted the work of people whose professional genealogy led back to ISFAA. This 42 provides one part of the history of Turkish modern furniture, one that substitutes 43 Turkish names and forms into an outmoded design history paradigm. Karakus¸ 44

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1 seeks to distinguish the Turkish “new design practice” from that of contemporary 2 European and American firms but bases this argument on the assumption that all 3 non-Turkish work was the result of industrialized mass production and that only 4 Turkish work was “modern furniture produced by hand, yet to the designs of 5 individuals who had a very advanced understanding of abstract sculpture.” Using 6 terms like “handmade modernity” or “handmade modernism” underscores the 7 problematic nature of relying on handmade as a technical process rather than a 8 cultural attitude.4 Recent close analysis on modern furniture production, from 9 Breuer to Aalto to Eames, reveals that all modern furniture up until injection molded 0 plastic furniture or metal contract furniture relied upon some elements of artisanal 11 skill and non-industrial tools and could be categorized as jigged batch production 12 rather than mass production.5 Such a revised perspective places the Turkish story 13 firmly within a global story rather than singling it out as exceptional or unique. 14 In seeking to offer an alternative story to top-down state design dicta, Karakus¸ 15 privileges the designer. But the focus upon architects, interior designers, and artists 16 does not fully comprise a bottom-up movement. To explore a more grass-roots 17 movement during this time, Karakus¸ might focus upon the craftsmen who actually 18 made the work. He seems to suggest that the traditional cabinetmakers of Istanbul, 19 who were Greek and Armenian, might not have been totally integrated into the 20 social or production system and lost work to Turkish craftsmen who had con- 21 nections to the ISFAA. A closer examination of the craftsmen, their training, and 22 their type of work might yield insights into a more complex furniture trade that 23 expands the strands of modernism to include Byzantian, Asian, and Islamic features. 24 The craft structure of Ankara, where the cabinetmakers seemed to maintain their 25 status, offers an alternative Turkish model. What allowed the native craftsman there 26 to maintain their status? Might one chart the emergence of a craft economy in 27 Ankara? Certainly the Milar gallery that opened in 1957 sounds more like an 28 alternative to or critique of high design. Exploring the woodworking culture of 29 Ankara more fully might complicate the narrative Karakus¸ has laid out in his 30 essay. 31 I offer these critiques of Karakus¸’ underlying paradigm and his glossing over of 32 the artisanal issues so that future work might investigate shop floor history and the 33 makers’ worlds so that we may more fully contextualize, historicize, and theorize 34 modern Turkish furniture. Karakus¸’ work is a valuable first step in this process. 35 36 37 Notes 38 1 Karen Davies, At Home in Manhattan: Modern Decorative Arts, 1925 to the Depression (New 39 Haven: Yale University Art Gallery, 1982). 40 2 On Cranbrook, see Robert Judson Clark et al., Design in America: The Cranbrook Vision, 41 1925–1950 (New York: Abrams, 1983). 3 On the American response and the rise of designer craftsmen, see Edward Cooke, Jr. 42 et al., The Maker’s Hand: American Studio Furniture, 1940–1990 (Boston: Museum of Fine 43 Arts, Boston, 2003), esp. pp. 18–37. On Design Research, see Industrial Design 4, no. 10 44 (October 1957), pp. 86–91.

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4 On the importance of historicizing “handmade,” see Edward Cooke, Jr., “Arts and Crafts 1 Furniture: Process or Product?” in Janet Kardon, ed., The Ideal Home: 1900–1920 (New 2 York: American Craft Museum, 1993), pp. 64–76. 5 For example, see Clive Edwards, Twentieth-Century Furniture: Materials, Manufacture and 3 Markets (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1994); Derek Ostergard, ed., Bent Wood 4 and Metal Furniture: 1850–1946 (New York: American Federation of Arts, 1987); Sharon 5 Darling, Chicago Furniture: Art, Craft, & Industry, 1833–1983 (NewYork: Norton, 1984), 6 esp. pp. 269–341; Pat Kirkham, Charles and Ray Eames: Designers of the Twentieth Century (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1995); and Don Wallance, Shaping America’s Products (New 7 York: Reinhold, 1956). On the differences between batch and mass production, see Philip 8 Scranton, “Diversity in Diversity: Flexible Production and American Industrialization, 9 1880–1930,” Business History Review 65, no. 1 (Spring 1991), pp. 27–90; and Scranton, 0 “Manufacturing Diversity: Production Systems, Markets, and American Consumer Society, 1870–1930,” Technology & Culture (July 1994), pp. 476–505. 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44

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1 2 3 11 4 5 OLD EMPIRE AND 6 7 NEW GLOBAL LUXURY 8 9 Fashioning global design1 0 11 12 Peter McNeil 13 14 15 16 17 18 In 1989, fashion designers Pam Easton and Lydia Pearson began to create from an 19 Australian provincial city of Brisbane their range of garments that were deliberately 20 nostalgic and feminine, with an air of knowing retrospection generated through an 21 engagement with historical and ethnographic sources. At first they were not widely 22 known and their market was completely local. Within ten years their female clothing 23 line, manufactured in Brisbane but made of textiles garnered from Vietnam and 24 India, as well as Italy and France, was retailing to a global clientele: in Browns, 25 London; Neiman Marcus, USA; and Alta Moda, Kuwait. 26 For contemporary designers, it is not uncommon to engage with ethnographic 27 elements; this can sometimes amount to an unthoughtful activity. Within Easton 28 Pearson’s design imagination, traditional designs are not simply copied but rather 29 amended to create new allusions and aesthetics. In going to the ‘source’ of ethnic 30 textiles and re-commissioning in India fabrics that had not been produced in some 31 cases for decades, their practice raises questions about authenticity, intervention and 32 revival. 33 This short paper uses a specific case to address a series of issues affecting the rela- 34 tionship between design, textiles and fashion in a world that is often perceived as 35 increasingly ‘globalised’. It investigates the micro-processes through which local actors 36 (producers of traditional fabrics in India; entrepreneurs in provincial Australia; and 37 consumers in cosmopolitan and provincial cities in the Western hemispheres) interact 38 to create a series of ‘relational connections’. These connections affect all actors but are 39 in turn also affected by a series of concepts, practices, images and representations – 40 some of which are historically inspired – that allow meaning to be formed, shaped and 41 negotiated. This paper raises issues of ‘otherness’, of constructed exoticism, and centre- 42 periphery, but emphasises how certain topics such as class, conspicuous consumption 43 and lifestyle, themes that are more generally associated with fashion, continue to be 44 significant in understanding the formation and success of design at a global scale.

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Who owns fashion? 1 2 Fashion today, like design, is conducted along transnational lines in which the West 3 (Europe and North America) no longer has a monopoly on the idea of fashion, if 4 in fact it ever did. The debate regarding the West’s ‘invention’ of fashion is lengthy, 5 complex and unresolved.2 Nonetheless, it becomes increasingly problematic to 6 suggest that fashion can only emanate from several cardinal points or centres, as today 7 its very means of imagination and production are completely global. As Simona 8 Segre Reinach argues in her analysis of Italian fashion made and marketed in and 9 for China: 0 11 having or not having a ‘national fashion’ on which to rely is fundamental for the success of brands operating in the contemporary market, although produc- 12 tion may be transnational or perhaps due to the very fact that production is 13 transnational. 14 15 Segre Reinach notes the denting of the conviction of certain ‘Euramerican’ centres 16 as having ‘sole rights’ to fashion: ‘the possibility of creating fashion, i.e. of being 17 recognised as “author countries” is however part of a process in which hierarchies 18 and roles are being constantly renegotiated according to the contexts and players 19 concerned’.3 20 As Christopher Breward comments in this book, the nature of the fashion city 21 has changed. The role of particularised consumer taste has become significantly more 22 important within late twentieth-century fashion as media and marketing contexts 23 move away from the notion of fashion as a uniform or even a dictatorial force. 24 Secondly, new important centres of global fashion have appeared next to the more 25 traditional European and North American ones. They interact reciprocally to form 26 identities that are often globally constructed. Some Asian cultures, such as those 27 expressed in Singapore, Hong Kong and parts of China, have undergone a ‘re- 28 orientalism’, in which they buy back the imagery created in the vision of the 29 European colonisers. As scholar Hazel Clark wrote of Hong Kong in her most 30 prescient essay of 1990: 31 32 Increasingly at the end of the twentieth century major cities tended to 33 promulgate their own fashion looks which are interpretations rather than 34 imitations of what is current globally . . . What becomes fashionable in a city 35 relies largely on the way that contemporary urbanites choose to identify 36 themselves through fashion.4 37 38 In order for nations to assert a healthy state of fashion in the current system, they 39 must first argue for distinctive national patterns of design innovation as well as 40 conformity to a general international fashion ‘template’. The case of Easton Pearson 41 is an example of the disposition of a business and fashion-design project spanning 42 several continents that originated from a rejection of the pervasive – one might even 43 say ‘proto-global’ – fashion trends of the late 1980s based on minimalism, to ‘take 44

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1 refuge’ instead in a more local but also romanticised and nostalgic vision of Australian 2 fashion that is self-consciously cosmopolitan.5 3 4 Virtuosity in variation 5 6 Not everyone wants to dress in futuristic clothing. For some people, ‘the future 7 seems scary and alien’ Easton Pearson explained.6 Such strategies were also apparent 8 at the time in contexts as different as the reasonably-priced revivalist designs of the 9 very British Laura Ashley and in the elite neo-rococo couture of Frenchman Christian 0 Lacroix. Easton Pearson’s agency as designers became stronger when they refused 11 mass-produced textiles and worked instead to commission and design their own 12 fabrics in India, South-East Asia and Europe. Easton Pearson have been responsible 13 for introducing European, North American and Australian women to a range of 14 textile possibilities they were unlikely to encounter unless they travelled abroad and, 15 even then, only if they ventured from the main tourist trails. The issue of homo- 16 geneity, brought about by globalisation here becomes, in a local context, a matter 17 of the variety, broadening the spectrum available more generally. Unlike some 18 designers – such as Kenzo and Etro, who take the feel and texture of Asian textiles 19 and then apply them to a European form – Easton Pearson embrace the effects of 20 indigenous tradition and textiles. ‘The possibilities offered by specific textile 21 techniques clearly influence us in terms of what might be adapted into clothing’, 22 notes Easton.7 23 Company records reinforce the proud focus on the artisan: ‘all handwoven’, for 24 instance, is noted of the raw silks for September 1991. Some of the textiles they 25 commissioned in India had not been produced for several decades. This re- 26 manufacturing process has been made possible through a sustained engagement with 27 both merchant-brokers and also craftspeople in India. On several occasions, the 28 designers noticed old order books in business premises and asked to see the samples 29 therein. From early interactions of the 1980s which relied on faxes, hand-coloured 30 photocopies and telephone calls, ironically now the designers eschew digital 31 communication, and insist upon personal interactions face to face, travelling to India 32 and Vietnam on a regular basis in order to develop their textile ranges. 33 In pursuing this ‘ethnic’ turn, Easton Pearson is aligned with a group of con- 34 temporary designers, including Dries Van Noten, Rifat Ozbek, Kenzo, Ugur Ile 35 Alijan, Anna Sui and, more recently, Peter Som. These designers continue the 36 interest in the exotic evident in clothing influenced by Japonisme in the second half 37 of the nineteenth century, and revisited in different forms throughout the early 38 twentieth century by designers including Mario Fortuny, Maria Monaci Gallenga, 39 Maurice Babani and Jeanne Lanvin. Fashion designers seem often to be allured by 40 orientalism. However, orientalism in fashion is difficult to assess in cultural terms: 41 as scholar Nancy Troy argues in relation to the work of Paul Poiret in the early 42 twentieth century, it can be a symbol of conventional luxury or transgressive 43 liberation at the same time.8 The ‘ethnic turn’ might be a reference not to the East 44 but to Scottish tartans, however in the consumer mind over the course of the

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twentieth century it has been constantly drawn back to Central and South East Asia, 1 as well as South America. Some of this attention was directed by intertwined cultural 2 and political imperatives, such as fashion designer Bonnie Cashin’s 1956 trip to India, 3 paid for by the Ford Foundation. 4 5 6 Portable decoration 7 Easton Pearson’s engagement with textiles and their design raises two issues with 8 global implications: labour and agency. Too often debate over the production of 9 textiles and apparel is equated primarily with the exploitation of labour. When one 0 considers ‘design’ and the wider meaning of craftsmanship, however, the cultural 11 politics of labour and in particular its gendered nature become central. The quilts 12 made by the women of the Great Raan of Kutch are well known to textile experts, 13 and Easton Pearson were first to import the work of the Shrujan women’s 14 cooperative into Australia.9 The Raan of Kutch in Gujarat, western India, is one of 15 the poorest parts of the world. Women were once day labourers (majoor) but have 16 now found, through their ability to sew collectively, a new source of income and 17 agency. As a woman says of the project: ‘A few years ago I would have introduced 18 myself as a majoor. Now I can proudly call myself an artisan. We design patterns, set 19 deadlines, embroider and market ourselves. The work you buy is not just 20 embroidery, it’s an expression of our pride.’10 21 As scholar Judy Frater notes, in such a resource-limited environment objects are 22 scarce, but this does not mean that textiles are not embellished. Quite the contrary. 23 The outlining stitches of Rabari textiles become affiliation markers and bonds, as 24 well as a form of portable wealth. Each motif is named and refers to a natural form 25 and also visualises women’s lives, becoming ‘virtuosity in variation’.11 The complex 26 meanings generated by traditional craft practices and techniques thus become a 27 design ‘resource’ of unparalleled flexibility in which the distinctiveness of each hand- 28 worked stitch and irregular dyed colour-way are transferred to more Western 29 notions of ‘individuality’ and ‘variety’ in clothing and tastes. 30 The portable decorations of certain Indian nomadic peoples – traditionally the 31 embroideries that introduced a bride into her groom’s family – now find their way 32 into the wardrobes of urban and affluent women. The exportation of garments that 33 are manufactured in Brisbane, Australia, from textiles woven and embellished in 34 centres as different as India and Italy, raises some interesting questions regarding the 35 circulation and consumption of goods that are not necessarily rare, but rather carry 36 meanings of distinction and place. Thus in describing the garments created by Easton 37 Pearson that are directed at wealthy consumers in the boutiques of London, Sydney 38 and Dubai, we cannot lose sight of the fact that the ground of which they are 39 composed has specific meanings in the centres where they are manufactured. Easton 40 Pearson have noted that they always face a challenge in persuading the desert women 41 in Kutch to accept their packages of sewing – compared to the indigenous colour 42 ways, the women dislike the pale colours and anaemic palette designed by Easton 43 Pearson. Thus, in viewing a textile as ‘ethnic’ or ‘authentic’, we can be blind to its 44

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1 very reception at the place of its making, amongst the poor labourer, and it may 2 well take on another cast when placed in an upper-middle-class boutique. In placing 3 scissors and needles in the packages to tempt the women to prioritise the bundles 4 of Easton Pearson sewing over their other commissions, a great deal is said about 5 the dilemma of the West in interacting with the poorest in the developing world. 6 7 New luxury 8 9 Easton Pearson’s success is now international. The company has developed a range 0 of luxurious lines for export to North America and Dubai, and approximately 65 11 per cent of Easton Pearson garments are exported.12 Their work quickly found 12 favour with style gurus such as Joan Burstein of Brown’s, London, and Stacey Kaye 13 of Henri Bendel’s, New York. Luxury department stores including Neiman Marcus, 14 Dallas and Los Angeles, and Lane Crawford, Hong Kong, have featured stories and 15 run events around Easton Pearson ranges. Sheik Majed Al-Sabah, nephew of the 16 Emir of Kuwait, hosts exclusive ‘trunk’ parties for his wealthy clients. The Sheik 17 runs the well-known ‘Villa Moda’ boutique in Kuwait, his so-called ‘luxury bazaar’ 18 which first opened in 1992 in Dasman, later shifting to a 20 million US$ building 19 on the edge of Kuwait City in 2001. The Sheik is an influential figure in shaping 20 the consumption of Western luxury in the Middle East, not least because he was 21 the financial backer of the up-market Islamic fashion magazine, Alef, aimed at Gulf 22 readers as well as women of the diaspora.13 The Sheik noted in interview that 23 ‘Australian designers perform very well for us. The fabric weights. The exchange 24 rates, the climate compatibility.’14 25 Clearly the ‘ethnic’ allusions also resonate with the Gulf clients. Motifs appearing 26 in Easton Pearson designs have deep meanings in Asian cultures, as well as strong 27 formal qualities that make them ideally suited to being incorporated into fashion 28 design (see Figures 11.1 and 11.2). Patterns borrowed from the Ottoman Empire of 29 the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, the types of silks extensively traded with 30 Europe, include the Ottoman triple-spot motif which originally concerned power 31 and strength and might refer to the spots on the prestigious coats of leopards and 32 tigers. Shisha, or mirror work from India, once used mica or beetle wings rather 33 than glass, and may indicate the evil eye. Mashru (meaning ‘permitted’) is a fabric 34 with a silk warp and a cotton weft; Islamic tradition says that, in order to protect 35 against vanity, men should not wear silk against the skin. Raffia is used in cultures 36 originating in Africa; and tie-dye is used in Japan, Indonesia, China, South-East Asia, 37 Central America and Africa. Sufi embroidery, made by the Sodha women of India, 38 relies on skills of detailed memory. Kantha is a quilt made from old white saris in 39 Bangladesh and eastern India; fabric is layered and then quilted using a running stitch 40 to produce a padded effect. They also make women’s jackets that refer to the keriya, 41 a jacket traditionally worn by Gujarati men with a hand-embroidered yoke.15 42 Within Easton Pearson’s design imagination, traditional designs are not simply 43 copied but rather amended to create new allusions and aesthetics. Easton Pearson 44 clothes are not primarily about cutting. When they use an indigenous textile, the

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FIGURE 11.1 Easton 1 Pearson, Designers. 2 Picos bolero, spring/ summer 2004, cotton 3 net, hand embroidered 4 with raffia, silk lining. 5 Ciel dress, spring/ summer 2004, cotton 6 net, hand embroidered 7 with raffia and 8 decorated with stone chips, silk lining. Berri 9 skirt, spring/summer 0 2004, grosgrain 11 viscose belt 12 Source: Photograph 13 courtesy of Queensland 14 Art Gallery 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44

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1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 FIGURE 11.2 Easton Pearson, Designers. Detail. Berri skirt, spring/summer 2004, 42 cotton net, hand embroidered with raffia and decorated with stone chips, wired tiers and silk lining 43 44 Source: Photograph courtesy of Queensland Art Gallery

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garment also tends to be more abstracted. Many of the garments are based on 1 traditional clothes and many were originally made for men, such as the skirted 2 garments worn by Mughals in India and the little jackets worn by working men in 3 Rajasthan and Gujarat. More recently they have generated collections from ideas 4 around artists and moments, such as the New York School of the 1940s to the 1970s 5 – shortened artists’ smocks in deep colours with decoration along the necklines 6 and cuffs. 7 Continuing from the modernist tradition in which both the cut and the 8 materiality of non-Western garments provided European and American designers 9 with the opportunity to create new visions of dressing the female body, ‘traditional’ 0 garments are given new contexts and meanings. Unlike many designers who import 11 mass lengths of sequinned fabrics from India and then cut them to shape, Easton 12 Pearson delivered the pieces and had them reworked in Mumbai or Kutch, then re- 13 importing them to Australia for making-up, and then onwards to export markets. 14 Such journeys were taken to ensure a particular designerly vision in which the 15 precise (Western) vision of the textile was realised, often by trial and error, but the 16 journey is also redolent of the new global flow of garments and other commodities. 17 18 19 New global or old empire luxury? 20 Easton Pearson’s ability to mix ethnic textiles with European lines also generates a 21 self-conscious narrative about the garments. They have a playful desire to pursue 22 combinations that would have seemed absurd, even offensive, in a colonial society. 23 The spring/summer 2002 collection, for instance, mixed Victorian blouses with 24 batik skirts. Clothes of empire become warped and distorted, as if a local dowager 25 went slightly mad and had her servants remake all her clothes in indigenous textiles, 26 or if a debutante were stranded in a colony and embraced the textile tradition of 27 her retainers (see Figure 11.3). Even the names of the garments reinforce this: 28 Sabrina, Edwina, Albertina, Wallace, Edith and Bella. ‘An aura of dilapidated suf- 29 fragette’, announced an undated press release. 30 Given the high prices involved, the indigenous woman would be likely denied 31 access through either pricing or prohibitions to access the type of garments suggested 32 by the Easton Pearson designs. Yet today, in a global market, the commodity they 33 produce may now be targetted for women of multiple nationalities, ethnicities and 34 indeed sites, and this spatial and ethnic complexity loops back and becomes a part 35 of a marketing strategy, a public relations campaign, and a narrative set up through 36 titles of dresses, themes of parades and fashion magazine styling. Although examples 37 from the cultures of literature, art, music and performance are more commonly 38 interrogated to gain understandings of colonial, post-colonial and global experiences, 39 I would suggest that in this case fashion design provides a possible case. As Angela 40 Woollacott notes in her monograph To Try her Fortune in London. Australian Women, 41 Colonialism, and Modernity, for Australians ‘after 1901, being part of an empire meant 42 being both a citizen of a ruling power of a small empire and a subject of a global 43 empire’.16 Empire, as Woollacott notes of Simon Gikandi’s position, means a 44

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1 FIGURE 11.3 Easton 2 Pearson, Designers. Coro shirt, spring/summer 3 2004, stripe-weave 4 shirting cotton, hand cut 5 and stitched. Esme top, spring/summer 2004, 6 crystal dobie cotton, 7 hand decorated. Larkin 8 skirt, spring/summer 2004, screenprinted 9 cotton, hand decorated 0 with plastic sequins. 11 Grosgrain and silk belt, spring/summer 2004, 12 hand made 13 14 Source: Photograph courtesy of Queensland 15 Art Gallery 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44

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‘messing’ of identity of both coloniser and colonised.17 So the Easton Pearson design 1 using a vintage 1950s or 1960s textile produced for the tourist trade takes on ironic 2 meanings. 3 The reference to an imperial or colonial past to create a ‘new global present’ can 4 be seen not just in the choice of fabrics and their material mixing, but also in cultural 5 references to personalities and historic periods known for their glamorous and exotic 6 internationalism. Easton Pearson have on several occasions noted their interest in 7 particular women who are bridges between ethnicity, feminism and folklore, such 8 as Mexican artist Frida Kahlo.18 They also exhibit an interest in style icons and 9 freethinkers of the 1930s to 1950s such as socialite Slim Keith (2001 collection), 0 artist Georgia O’Keeffe, photographer Tina Modotti, writer Jane Bowles, and art 11 collector Peggy Guggenheim, whom they imagine wearing their vintage Fiji silk 12 scarf print: ‘We were imagining Peggy Guggenheim leaving the canal in Venice 13 for a cruise to the South Pacific. She was pretty wacky.’19 14 Easton Pearson’s interest in interwar vintage fashions points to the presence of 15 colonial networks and experiences contained within certain twentieth-century 16 fashion itself. These years generated a category of clothing whose messages are still 17 under-researched – what we might call ‘fashions of empire’ – in which high-end 18 European fashion was deliberately modulated for a colonial setting. An example is 19 Anne Messel, Countess of Rosse, and her 1935 honeymoon trousseau for a trip to 20 Asia, which included a fascinating piece of chinoiserie based on a Balinese palette, a 21 wrap dress by the iconic designer Charles James. The mother of former New York 22 fashion editor Polly Mellen would have her Chanel pyjamas copied in the West 23 Indies in brightly coloured cotton cloths by furnishing houses such as Scalamandré. 24 Within the ‘experience economy’, the ‘cultural turn’ and the era of ‘new econ- 25 omy’ that dominates contemporary hotel tourism and up-market shopping, the 26 conjunction of eccentricity, luxury and exclusivity confers prestige and market 27 advantage.20 In referring back to outmoded notions of aristocracy co-mingled with 28 retrospection and an image of the interwar avant-garde, fashion consumers can 29 imagine themselves to be equally distinctive, resistant in fact to the very homogenous 30 forces that make their airline connections, currency transfer and duty-free shopping 31 possible. This might be particularly important for a generation of middle-class post- 32 feminist women, who wish to engage with fashion in a thoughtful manner that does 33 not suggest that they simply follow trends and marketing devices like a fashion 34 ‘victim’, and whose wearing of hand-worked textiles suggests that their fashion 35 purchase is beyond the quotidian (see Figure 11.4). 36 37 38 Conclusion 39 There is something meticulous and orderly about Easton Pearson. Even their sample 40 books are immaculate and thoughtful; nothing is left to chance. There is none of 41 the tearing hand and hasty scribbles of a French male couturier of the 1950s. All is 42 measured, careful and organised. Samples, such as silk organza, are often tied down 43 in knots so as to show the inherent properties of the textile. This sense of respect, 44

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1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 FIGURE 11.4 Easton Pearson, Designers. Detail. Larkin skirt, spring/summer 2004, 42 screenprinted cotton, hand decorated with plastic sequins. Grosgrain and silk belt, spring/summer 2004, hand made 43 44 Source: Photograph courtesy of Queensland Art Gallery

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of materiality, of making and of authoring textiles with a series of actors from 1 entrepreneurs in Mumbai to rural workers in Kutch, is presented here as a possible 2 new way to consider the process of fashion design. Although the global fashion 3 industry demands a series of narratives, stories, styling opportunities and allusions, 4 these images are no longer so very ‘white’, Anglo-Saxon, centrist, or homogenous. 5 Perhaps it makes a great deal of sense that Easton Pearson generated this design 6 practice from a city and a region that had been noted for awkward and hostile race 7 relations with indigenous peoples and a frontier mentality based on an economy of 8 primary production and mining. We might not require that nasty linguistic con- 9 struction the ‘glocal’ in order to understand that centre-periphery and metropolitan- 0 provincial binaries have never been neat nor simple one-directional flows. 11 12 13 Notes 14 1 This essay is based on research commissioned to accompany the Gallery of Modern Art 15 (Queensland) exhibition (Miranda Wallace, Peter McNeil and Jane de Teliga, Easton Pearson, Queensland Art Gallery, 2009). 16 2 On this point see Peter McNeil, ‘Introduction’, in Peter McNeil (ed.), Critical and Primary 17 Sources in Fashion. Volume 1. Late Medieval to Renaissance, Oxford and New York: Berg, 18 2009, pp. xix–xlii. 19 3 Simona Segre Reinach, ‘Fashion and national identity: Interactions between Italians and Chinese in the global fashion industry’, in Giorgio Riello and Peter McNeil (eds), The 20 Fashion History Reader, Routledge, forthcoming 2010. 21 4 Hazel Clark, ‘Fashion, identity and the city: Hong Kong’, Form/Work: An Interdisciplinary 22 Journal of Design and the Built Environment, University of Technology, Sydney, no. 4, 23 March 2000, p. 90. 5 The British journalist and writer Colin McDowell has criticised Australian labels for ‘the 24 ethereal and deeply feminine ethos that can loosely be described as a Japanese influence’, 25 ‘Editorial: Style’, Sunday Times, London, May 2000, p. 13. 26 6 ‘On the world stage’, Vogue Australia, September 1999, p. 36. 27 7 Easton Pearson Transforming Traditions, Exhibition Catalogue, Virginia Commonwealth University School of the Arts, Qatar, 2005, Easton Pearson Archive (henceforth EPA). 28 8 Nancy Troy, ‘Paul Poiret’s minaret style: Originality, reproduction and art in fashion’, 29 Fashion Theory, 6, 2 (2002), pp. 117–43. 30 9 Easton Pearson personal notes. EPA, Box 11/4. 31 10 Statement from KMVS (Kutch Mahila Vikas Sangathan) product brochure, Bhuj, Gujarat, c. 1990, author’s collection. 32 11 Judy Frater, A Thousand Dialects in Stitches, Bhuj-Kutch, India: Kala Raksha Folk Art 33 Museum, 2000, p. 11. 34 12 Courier Mail, 16 May 1998. EPA, Box 10 Nos 1–6: Loose Editorial Folders. 35 13 I thank Professor Reina Lewis for assisting me with this information. 14 Advertorial, Vogue Australia, July 2004, n.p. 36 15 Precious Lovell, Easton Pearson Transforming Traditions, Qatar, Virginia Commonwealth 37 University School of the Arts, 2005. 38 16 Angela Woollacott, To Try her Fortune in London. Australian Women, Colonialism, and Modernity, New York: Oxford University Press, 2001, p. 149. 39 17 Woollacott, To Try her Fortune, p. 179. 40 18 Rhana Devenport, ‘Artisans and artist colonies: The fabrics and frocks of Easton Pearson’, 41 Object, 43 (2003), p. 37. 42 19 [Anon], ‘Be frayed, be very frayed’, Age, 21 November 2003, p. 10. 20 See Paul du Gay and Michael Pryke (eds), Cultural Economy: Cultural Analysis and 43 Commercial Life, London, Thousand Oaks: Sage, 2002. 44

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1 2 RESPONSE 3 4 Shehnaz Suterwalla 5 6 7 8 9 0 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 Peter McNeil offers a vivid and detailed insight into the complexities of global 19 fashion design. Through his case study analysis of Easton Pearson, an Australian 20 fashion house set up in 1989 that recreates and revises ethnic textiles and designs, 21 he illustrates the opportunity for originality and ‘new allusions’ engendered by the 22 innovative ‘relational connections’ between local producers and global consumers. 23 Meanwhile the article highlights concomitant issues of ‘otherness’ and constructed 24 exoticism that lie beneath the surface of such global design practice. 25 McNeil’s account of Easton Pearson’s methods, which refuse mass-produced 26 textiles and work instead to commission and design their own fabrics in India, 27 South-East Asia and Europe, highlights the double advantage of this fashion house 28 to the Western consumer: the benefit of original design, and an emphasis on the 29 embodied effects of indigenous tradition and textiles. We also learn how Easton 30 Pearson privilege face-to-face interactions with local producers as a means of 31 reinforcing authenticity within their pursuit of ethnic artisanship and revivalism. So 32 far so good. 33 However, as McNeil himself points out, this case study raises disquieting debates 34 about labour and agency, in particular how changes in temporal and spatial frames 35 invert the meaning and significance of ethnic design, with the result that Easton 36 Pearson’s cultural raiding of ethnic traditionalism can be seen as a historical recon- 37 struction of artisanal practice that suits the global story of the design house, but 38 distorts the agency and meaning of the objects that they appropriate. As McNeil 39 writes, ‘Thus in viewing a textile as “ethnic” or “authentic”, we can be blind to its 40 very reception at the place of its making, amongst the poor labourer, and it may 41 well take on another cast when placed in an upper-middle class boutique.’ 42 In the world of fashion the incorporation of the exotic, through objects and 43 styles, presents ‘an effective way of creating a frisson (a thrill or quiver)’1 especially 44 when the differences between the ‘East’ and the ‘West’ are accentuated stereo-

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typically. However, exaggerated differences between the East and West only serve 1 to solidify historical and essentialized markers of difference based on the binary of 2 familiar and strange.2 Exotic dress, such as the sari or the veil, for example, have 3 often been used in orientalist discourse to mark the production of ‘third world 4 difference’ by the racialized gaze.3 This process has most often involved static 5 readings of ethnic textiles and design as ‘authentic’ symbols of tradition. Their 6 appropriation into the social space of global consumption has served to highlight the 7 ‘whiteness’ in capitalist marketing of exotica at both local and global level. 8 In the case of Easton Pearson, McNeil’s description emphasizes how the design 9 house attempts to unfix ethnic design so that ‘traditional’ garments are given new 0 contexts and meaning. However this unfixing is undertaken still to ensure that a 11 particular designerly Western vision of the textile is realized, in line with Easton 12 Pearson’s self-conscious narrative about its garments. As outlined in McNeil’s 13 chapter, as much as the design house champions the traditional craft practices of 14 ethnic design, in actual fact it is using it merely as a resource to fuel the consumption 15 of social things associated with the ‘other’. 16 Arjun Appadurai has shown in his analysis of the social life of things that this sort 17 of process is not that different from how art and archaeology collections are put 18 together in the West, where ‘extremely complex blends of plunder, sale, and 19 inheritance combined with the Western taste for things of the past and of the other’.4 20 The result is that objects are turned into eroticised commodities set up to be 21 mythologized, idealized and rendered into tropes. The creation of fantasy around 22 the ‘other’ is further exaggerated as Easton Pearson’s processes of revivalism trans- 23 form textiles from traditional to cool hybrid, decontextualising them from place of 24 production and overlaying them with new meanings. By placing these objects in 25 the Western fashion system,5 the company facilitates the consumption of difference 26 or ‘other’, giving rise to the opportunity to ‘recode and neutralize long-standing 27 tropes while simultaneously intensifying them’.6 28 On a more positive note, however, the Easton Pearson case study offers an 29 example of ‘cosmopolitan localism’,7 which refers to the point of intersection 30 between local and global dimensions that exist through specialized networks of 31 activity. Through the development of complex networking systems within the local 32 and the global in South-East Asia and Europe, Easton Pearson are able to draw from 33 the richness of different actions – connected to specialized labour – occurring in the 34 different temporal frames that vary through regions and cultures, based not only in 35 time zones but also on individual subjectivities. This is thanks to their ability to 36 identify particular and unique personal skills such as the craft practice of the women 37 of the Great Raan of Kutch in India. Easton Pearson’s challenge lies in navigating 38 the murky ground of transnational revivalism to avoid the pitfall within Western 39 design methods where local places and territories are turned into commodities, to 40 be consumed as the authentic ‘other’, even though paradoxically, and at the same 41 time, they can be seen to enable agency among subaltern women. 42 43 44

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1 Notes 2 1 J. Craik, The Face of Fashion: Cultural Studies in Fashion, London and New York, 3 Routledge, 1993, p. 17. 4 2 I refer in particular to the highly influential text, E. W. Said, Orientalism, London, 5 Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1978. 3 C. T. Mohanty, A. Russo and L. M. Torres, Third World Women and the Politics of 6 Feminism, Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 1991. 7 4 A. Appadurai, ‘Introduction’, in A. Appadurai (ed.), The Social Life of Things: Commodities 8 in Cultural Perspective, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1986, pp. 26–7. 9 5 I allude here to R. Barthes, The Fashion System, London, Cape, 1985, because of its exploration of how within the world of fashion words become loaded with idealistic 0 bourgeois emphasis. 11 6 D. Root, Cannibal Culture: Art, Appropriation and the Commodification of Difference, Boulder 12 and Oxford, Westview, 1996, p. 136. 13 7 See Ezio Manzini’s paper ‘A cosmopolitan localism: prospects for a sustainable local development and the possible role of design’ (2005): . 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44

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1 2 12 3 4 ANALYZING SOCIAL 5 6 NETWORKING WEBSITES 7 8 The design of Happy Network 9 0 in China 11 12 Basile Zimmermann 13 14 15 16 17 Today, China is the country in the world with the greatest number of Internet users, 18 and the overall amount of web pages in Chinese is estimated at over sixteen billion.1 19 As in the West, the development of the Internet – very strongly supported by the 20 government of the People’s Republic of China – has changed millions of peoples’ 21 lives and work habits. Web-based platforms for online communities, also called 22 Social Networking Sites (SNS), are part of this revolution. 23 In April 2008, a new SNS was launched in China: (Happy Network). Its 24 particular rhetoric, compared to existing social networking websites at the time, was 25 that it focused on the idea of ‘having fun’.2 In June 2009 the number of registered 26 users of the site exceeded 30 million, and was growing at a fast pace. The company 27 was eleventh in a list of top Chinese websites, and analysts called it China’s top 28 Internet phenomenon of 2008/2009.3 29 Websites and web pages are paradigmatic objects for anyone interested in the 30 question of global design as they are at the same time circulating inside and part of 31 the structure of an international network: the Internet. Based on research beginning 32 in July 2008 in Beijing, this paper presents ongoing research about Happy Network’s 33 web interface design process. It shows how the network interpreted design concepts 34 already used by other social networking websites, improved them by providing 35 different ways of interaction between users, and developed its own means of adver- 36 tising. Methodologically, it also suggests how web design can be analyzed using 37 insights taken from two different theoretical frameworks in social sciences: the 38 grounded theory and the actor-network theory. 39 40 41 Ongoing research about ongoing design 42 A key challenge of studying web-based design of all kinds, and SNS in particular, is 43 conducting ongoing research about ongoing design. Websites and web pages, in 44

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1 contrast to other design phenomena, experience rapid changes. To observe them 2 and archive information about their design calls on the researcher’s ability to deal 3 with a moving (sometimes even disappearing) target. Rather than going through 4 general statements about the issues at stake, I relate how I conducted – and still 5 conduct – this research, and I explain how decisions about the work process were 6 taken. By doing so, I hope to provide readers with a ‘research case study’ that will 7 contribute to how this type of design research can or cannot be conducted. 8 In short, two methodological points form the basis of this research. First: the 9 results take the shape of a description written using the first person singular, rather 0 than the more ‘objective’ or ‘scientific’ voice in which the research is present but 11 the narrator is absent. A sentence like ‘During the summer of July 2008, while 12 staying at a Chinese friend’s place in Beijing, I noticed he and many of his friends 13 were spending a lot of time on a website I had never heard about before’ differs in 14 more than tone from ‘In July 2008, a new social networking website was spreading 15 among Mainland Chinese net surfers.’ The second sentence hides both the subject 16 and the subjectivity behind the research. The first, while sounding more personal 17 and not very ‘scientific’, is actually more precise in the sense that it gives more detail 18 about the process that produced the results.4 Reliable information means traceable 19 information. A second methodological point is that making comparisons and asking 20 questions are the main tools used to bring relevant elements into the description.5 21 22 Happy Network 23 24 During the summer of July 2008, while staying at a Chinese musician friend’s place 25 in Beijing, I noticed he and many of his friends were spending a lot of time on a 26 website I had never heard about before. When he opened his user page, usually 27 several times a day, he used to make this joke: ‘ ’ (‘Let’s be happy for a while’). 28 The name of the web site was , Happy Network, a new social networking site. 29 My friend’s joke referred to the name of the site. Intrigued, I registered and started 30 to edit my own user page on July 23. 31 At that time, I already had experience of doing research on the Internet in China. 32 One thing in particular I had learnt while working on Chinese blogs with my students 33 was the need to take screenshots of the web pages. The content changed very 34 frequently, sometimes within minutes, and most of the time it was difficult to archive 35 the pages using the print or save functions of the browsers. Some content was available 36 only through streaming from far-away servers. Quite often, it varied according to the 37 information the machines got about the person visiting the page. For example, in the 38 case of a connection using a browser in French, the page would display advertisement 39 banners in French. That meant a French-speaking student who configured her 40 computer in French did not see the same page as, say, a Spanish-speaking student – 41 even if both were visiting the same address on the Web at the same time. Also, since 42 blogs are frequently edited, some pages gave me the feeling that they were ‘alive’, as 43 their contents were changing constantly. As with human beings, the only way to 44 archive the movements of web pages is to take pictures or record movies.

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Therefore, from the very start of the research process on Happy Network, I 1 decided to take screenshots. I also tried – on the basis of the two research tricks 2 mentioned above – to make systematic comparisons with the well-known Western 3 SNS Facebook and to ask myself the following question: ‘How is advertisement 4 provided on Happy Network?’ Of course, I could have made comparisons with 5 another SNS, and chosen another research question. At that time, I’d already had 6 an account on Facebook since 2007. It was heavily used among my friends and 7 colleagues in Switzerland, which made comparative analysis convenient. Also, I had 8 announced a new seminar on advertising in China at the University of Geneva, 9 Switzerland. A friend working in the advertising industry had told me about SNS 0 as ‘advertisers’ paradises’ because users could be selected according to their age, 11 gender, taste, habits, etc, and targeted with appropriate advertisements. So I hoped 12 Happy Network would provide me with some useful observations. 13 14 15 The user page 16 Figure 12.1 displays sections of three screenshots I took on my laptop in Beijing at 17 the end of July 2008. At that time, two basic features of Happy Network were 18 radically different from Facebook. First, where the latter used one page for my user 19 information (screenshot A) and another for the news feed about my friends 20 (screenshot B), Happy Network mixed the two on a single page (screenshot C): my 21 information on top, the news feed about my friends’ activities at the bottom. 22 Second, while Facebook told me very explicitly that it would never tell my friends 23 about whose profile or photos I viewed, Happy Network did exactly the opposite. 24 On the right-hand side of my user page, a dedicated section called Recent 25 visitors (screenshot C, upper right) told me who viewed my profile and at what time. 26 If I found the avatar of an unknown visitor intriguing, I could click on it in order 27 to visit his or her user page – which would then display my avatar and time of visit 28 in their own Recent visitors section. This feature, sometimes called Footprints, although 29 not used on Facebook, is actually standard on many social networking sites, 30 especially in Asia.6 31 Another obvious difference between the two sites can be found in their name. 32 Happy Network clearly indicates the notion of having fun, without any relation to 33 a particular social class (anyone could register on the site). Facebook’s name is related 34 to the published directories of American universities for new students, and evokes 35 the presentation of individuals. Its design also looked more serious than Happy 36 Network’s, which displayed a cartoon-like yellow star as a logo (the respective logos 37 can be seen on the upper left of screenshots B and C). 38 39 40 Games 41 Happy Network provided several games, which, contrary to most of Facebook’s 42 applications, were mostly designed by the owners of the site themselves.7 Some were 43 heavily used by my Chinese acquaintances and the many other Chinese people I 44

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1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 FIGURE 12.1 Screenshots of Parking Wars on Facebook and Happy Network. The grey 19 patches have been added to hide users’ names and avatars 20 21 quickly got to know while trawling through the ‘recent visitors’ pages.8 A game 22 called Parking Wars was particularly successful.9 Almost everyone I knew was 23 playing it, and although it was quite simple, I noted that some friends were still 24 playing on a daily basis eleven months later. The basic rules of Parking Wars were 25 that users had to place their cars on friends’ streets, and could earn virtual money if 26 they remained there. The way to cash in the money was by moving the car to 27 another space, but friends could take away money by giving tickets to your cars (if 28 parked on their streets). The goal was to make as much virtual money as possible, 29 so as to buy new virtual cars. 30 Interestingly, Parking Wars seemed to be a copy of a game of the same name that 31 had been running previously on Facebook. It had been developed as a teaser for a 32 television reality show,10 and was also very successful on the Facebook network (a 33 friend in Switzerland told me he kept moving his virtual cars for months). However, 34 Happy Network developed its own way of using the game as an advertising 35 platform. On March 27 2009, I noticed for the first time that some of the walls 36 behind the parking places had started to display advertisements (see Figure 12.2). A 37 few weeks later I also noted that some car manufacturers had a link to a commercial 38 for a real vehicle on their website, right next to the corresponding virtual car.11 39 Another fascinating application on Happy Network was the Polls game, which 40 was also clearly among the most popular applications. It allowed users to create polls 41 and answer other people’s polls. Topics varied from ‘What would you do first if you 42 could change one thing in China?’, with an array of politically related answers, to 43 more personal questions like ‘What kind of computer do you use?’ and ‘How old 44 were you when you had sex for the first time?’ There were also topics only relevant

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1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 FIGURE 12.2 Comparison of screenshots of on Facebook and Happy Network 22 23 within circles of friends, such as ‘Why did Xiao Wang go home so early at 24 yesterday’s party?’ Some polls were directly related to Happy Network and allowed 25 me to get some kind of feedback straight from the users. For example, a poll started 26 on June 25, 2009, on the topic of ‘To what extent did you play on “Happy 27 Network”?’ The poll had received 103,180 votes by July 8; twice as many people 28 selected ‘Feeling too lazy to move cars on Parking Wars’ as ‘Feeling too lazy to start 29 new polls’.12 30 Advertisement banners appeared at the end of poll pages at about the same time 31 as the wallpaper in Parking Wars. Unlike Facebook, which increased the number of 32 banners on my user page from one in July 2008 to three in August 2008 when it 33 switched to its new version, advertisements on Happy Network were never 34 displayed directly on my user page, but only inside the games and applications I was 35 using. 36 Interestingly, while Facebook’s advertisements clearly related to my profile 37 information – e.g. my gender, the languages I speak, my age and location (typically 38 I got advertisements for men’s underwear, or in one case, an iPhone advertisement 39 in French saying that 36 years old was the right age to get one) – Happy Network’s 40 advertisements focused on which kind of activity I was performing. For example, 41 when I clicked on a button named ‘part-time job’ to get some virtual money in 42 order to buy seeds for my garden (in another game), the advertisement banner at 43 the bottom of the page displayed an advertisement for a job placement company. 44

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1 Evolution in time 2 Today, my Happy Network user page looks very much like the one I had twelve 3 months ago, but with a few additions. Tabs are now available in the news feed 4 section and allow me to filter what kind of information I want to see about my 5 friends: pictures, diaries, notes, forwards, status, or conversations. Several new 6 7 applications are available, and I have added a couple of them. One in particular was 8 strongly suggested by the website in April 2009: the transfer tool. It allows me 9 to forward almost anything coming from a friend. For example, if someone posts a 13 0 picture or a story I like, in two clicks I can forward it to all of my contacts. 11 12 What to think about all this? 13 14 Having reached the end of this short report, readers may be looking for explanations. 15 In many academic texts, a description is traditionally followed by an explanation. 16 As the French sociologist of science Bruno Latour put it, this question lies in “. . . 17 the difference between the empirical and the theoretical, between ‘how’ and ‘why’, 18 between stamp-collecting – a contemptible occupation – and the search for causality 19 – the only activity worthy of attention. Yet nothing proves that this kind of 14 20 distinction is necessary.’ In a more recent publication, Latour tells us more about 21 descriptions, and – maybe the most interesting and difficult point – what makes a 22 good description. 23 24 The simple fact of recording anything on paper is already an immense 25 transformation that requires as much skill and just as much artifice as painting 26 a landscape or setting up some elaborate biochemical reaction. No scholar 27 should find humiliating the task of sticking to description. This is, on the 28 contrary, the highest and rarest achievement . . . If a description remains in 29 need of an explanation, it means that it is a bad description . . . A good text 30 should trigger in a good reader this reaction: ‘Please, more details, I want more 31 details.’15 32 33 While I hope the story I have been relating here does not remain too much in need 34 of an explanation, it definitely warrants more detail. The few elements described in 35 this essay are only a very tiny part of a huge and highly complex object. Happy 36 Network has hundreds of features which have not been discussed in this paper. Even 37 a short list would range widely: the interface for its use on mobile phones, the 38 various applications users can add,16 its commercial and legal battles with the other 39 SNS on the Chinese market,17 interaction with the government on censorship 40 issues,18 users selling their virtual goods against real money,19, debates in the local 41 media about the impact of SNS on society,20 etc. Unlike for archeologists who often 42 expend great effort in order to discover only a little information, ongoing research 43 about the current design of websites raises the question of how to choose what 44 information to discuss among the billions of web pages available.

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After one year of research on Happy Network, I can say for certain that the huge 1 success of this website and its impact on Chinese society makes it an object of 2 interest. It is worth noting that at the beginning I had no idea whether the site would 3 even survive long enough for me to conduct my study of it. Design research, applied 4 to software objects which quickly become obsolete and disappear forever, requires 5 more researchers taking random screenshots of what is happening on their screens. 6 If most of these pictures will never be used in publications, the few that will be kept 7 for analysis and comparisons will be useful in that they provide precious evidence 8 of what was going on between machines and people at a certain period of time in 9 history.21 0 11 12 Global design 13 Common features between Happy Network and Facebook as well as many other 14 online communities’ sites illustrate the fact that we are currently witnessing extremely 15 rapid exchanges of flows of ideas on a global scale. It is important to keep in mind 16 that these movements are simultaneous, and that they are not going in one direction 17 but in many. For example, when Michael Jackson passed away in June 2009, Chinese 18 users on Happy Network reacted a few hours before European Facebook users, 19 because the time difference meant that they got the information at a time when 20 people in Europe were still asleep. 21 At the moment, on the English-speaking Web, Happy Network is often 22 described as a ‘fake’ Facebook. It is true that Facebook was launched in 2004 – more 23 than four years before Happy Network – and probably inspired the latter’s creators. 24 But Facebook also came along after other online community sites, which have a 25 long history that goes back to the very first days of the Internet. In China, one of 26 the first SNS websites, UUZone,22 was launched in 2003, and Campus (which 27 emulates Facebook by focusing on universities and students) has existed since 2005. 28 Japan’s most successful SNS, Mixi, started about the same time as Facebook. So did 29 Facebook inspire the design of Happy Network? Or maybe it was UUZone, 30 Campus, or Mixi? Most probably, considering the amount of exchange of 31 information between China and the rest of the world, not one but all these existing 32 social networking sites and many other technical objects inspired the designers of 33 Happy Network. 34 The question of whether or not to try to interview Happy Network’s designers 35 was one of the main points of debate when I presented this research at the Royal 36 College of Art in London, in May 2009. After eight years of ethnographical work 37 on Chinese electronic musicians in Beijing (a previous research topic), I am 38 personally convinced that the designers would not tell me straight away how and 39 why they designed their online community. Trust and understanding need months, 40 if not years, of participant observation in order to make out the real stories behind 41 these kinds of activities, especially at times of trouble such as the huge competition 42 today between Campus and Happy Network. So it is not merely a matter of 43 interviewing the designers (hundreds of such interviews can be found on the 44

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1 Chinese Web) but of opening several new chapters for this research. Maybe I’ll cross 2 the line in a few weeks and try to meet these people. 3 4 Acknowledgements 5 6 Glenn Adamson and Sarah Teasley, for making me write this paper; Nadia Sartoretti, 7 for her advice and research assistance; Michèle Ramponi, Alvaro Cosi and Yves 8 Bennaim, for stimulating conversations and teaching about the advertising industry; 9 Nicolas Nova, for telling me about Parking Wars on Facebook, letting me park 0 illegally on his street for a while, and useful comments on the first draft of this paper; 11 and Andrej O’Murchu for helping me improve my English. The financial support 12 of the Société Académique de Genève, Fonds Han Suyin, is gratefully acknow- 13 ledged. 14 15 Notes 16 17 1 Statistical Survey Report on Internet Development in China, p. 28, January 2009, 18 Online. Available , accessed September 4, 2009. The 24th Survey Report from July 2009, at the moment only 19 available in Chinese, doesn’t provide an update of the number of web pages but indicates 20 a growth of 6.4% for the overall number of websites in China between the end of 2008 21 and June 2009. 22 2 The concept is presented as Happy Network’s main strategy in several sources in Chinese (see for example . Online. Available , accessed July 9, 2009. Or in its competitors’ discourse: Louis Lau (ed.), 24 ‘ . Online. Available , accessed April 14, 2009. It can also easily be observed by analyzing 26 the site’s discourse, features, and main applications. The idea of going on the Web to have fun, rather than for work or to look for information, is often described as one of the 27 main characteristics of Chinese net surfers. 28 3 It is difficult to get real figures for Happy Network at the moment, given the complexity 29 of the Chinese Web and the very competitive environment which doesn’t encourage site 30 owners to let outsiders know too much about their business. There are also some problems in evaluating the figures given by statistics since users of Happy Network often open more 31 than one account in order to get fast virtual money by playing with themselves. The 32 information summarised here comes from various sources I compared, as well as my own 33 observations on the site (discussed in the paper). In Chinese, synthesized and fairly reliable 34 information about Happy Network is available on Baidu , accessed July 9, 2009; Wikipedia in Chinese , accessed July 11, 36 2009; as well as in the press, e.g. , ‘ . Online. 37 Available , accessed July 11, 2009. 38 Statistics are available on China Websites Ranking: , accessed July 11, 2009, or from Alexa , accessed July 11, 2009, as well as Google 40 Insights for Search , accessed July 9, 2009. 41 4 Most writings of the American sociologist Howard S. Becker are written in 42 autobiographical style and had a deep influence on the way I wrote this paper. For more information about Howie’s specific approach to scientific writing see H. Becker, Writing 43 for Social Scientists, Second Edition, Chicago: University Of Chicago Press, 2007. On the 44 use of the passive voice in scientific articles, see also B. Latour, Science in Action: How to

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Follow Scientists and Engineers Through Society, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1 1988, p. 54. One can note that autobiography is a classic way of writing for ethnographies. 2 Since this report is based on participant observation on the social networking site Happy Network, it makes sense to describe the results in this way. 3 5 J. Corbin and A. Strauss, Basics of Qualitative Research: Techniques and Procedures for 4 Developing Grounded Theory, London: Sage Publications, 1998. 5 6 This information comes from a Swiss Web designer who worked in Japan and China 6 during the past few years. I also remember using a ‘footprints’ section myself on in January 2007 (an SNS based in Japan which focused on cultural 7 exchange, now closed). 8 7 In July 2009, it had 38 applications, 29 of which were designed by Happy Network, one 9 in collaboration with another company, and eight by third parties. 0 8 I didn’t notice any other foreigner until February 2009, when some of my students registered after I presented them the website. 11 9 For a short article in English about this game at the moment of observation, see ‘Chinese 12 “facebook” friends hooked on games’, China Daily. Online. Available , accessed July 13, 2009. 14 10 , accessed July 13, 2009. I have been able to find posts on the discussion board of the application Parking Wars on Facebook which were 15 dated from December 29, 2007 – which makes it clearly much older than the version on 16 Happy Network. A short article on this game and its development for Facebook can be 17 found here: Simon Carless, ‘AGDC: Area/Code’s Lantz On Creating Parking Wars For 18 Facebook’. Online. Available , accessed July 13, 2009. Several games in Happy Network are described 19 by Chinese net surfers as copies of existing applications on other SNS. The complete list 20 with references can be found on Baidu or Wikipedia in Chinese (see links in previous 21 notes). 22 11 A blog post, Tangos, ‘Kaixin001 Has Ads on Apps’, China Web 2.0 Review. Online. Available , accessed 23 July 13, 2009, dated December 8, 2008 mentions the presence of ads for the car 24 manufacturers on Happy Network. 25 12 There were seventeen possible answers, voters could pick up to eleven. 26 13 Facebook has a similar feature called ‘share’ but at the moment its use is limited to several kinds of data, whereas Happy Network’s transfer tool is more general. 27 14 B. Latour, ‘Technology is Society Made Durable’, in A Sociology of Monsters: Essays on 28 Power, Technology, and Domination, edited by John Law, London: Routledge, 1991, p. 129. 29 15 B. Latour, Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network-Theory, Oxford: Oxford 30 University Press, 2005, pp. 136–7. 16 A short description of the apps on Happy Network in October 2008 is given in this blog 31 post from Alan Rutledge, ‘Kaixin001: China’s Apple of Social Networks’, TechCrunch. 32 Online. Available , accessed July 14, 2009. 34 17 See Juliet Ye, ‘Kaixin001 v. Kaixin: Social Networking Goes to Court’, China Journal. Online. Available , accessed July 13, 2009. 36 18 The ‘Great Firewall of China’, so-called, and censorship issues are often discussed in the 37 Western media in a very truncated way, usually much closer to a Hollywood movie script 38 (the ‘bad’ Chinese government against the ‘good’ dissidents fighting for their freedom) than to what is really going on in the PRC, especially on the Internet. Z. Tai, The Internet 39 in China: Cyberspace and Civil Society, New York: Routledge, 2006, provides a detailed 40 discussion on this issue. 41 19 For example, in this article from February 2009, a user is reported selling his account – 42 containing amazing virtual goods – for 80,000 RMB (about twelve thousand US$) ‘ . Online. Available 43 , accessed July 14, 2009. 44

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1 20 Articles in the Chinese media on SNS have very similar concerns to those that I hear 2 in Switzerland, e.g. on privacy or legal issues. See for example . Online. Available , accessed July 13, 2009. 4 21 Many attempts are made in order to archive what is going inside computers today. 5 The Internet Archive stores the data available on the World 6 Wide Web, and computer museums are trying to keep old machines able to run old software. However, pages such as those inside the SNS are most of the time password 7 protected, and therefore cannot be archived automatically. 8 22 UUZone.com closed recently, see ‘Chinese SNS Website UUZone.com to Close in 9 March 2009’, China Tech News. Online. Available , accessed July 13, 2009. 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44

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1 RESPONSE 2 3 Ngai-Ling Sum 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 Basile Zimmermann examines a fascinating topic in the popular social networking 18 site Happy Network, which can be seen as an equivalent in China to Facebook and 19 its social networking practices. The author draws his methodological-theoretical 20 insights from grounded theory and actor-network theory (ANT). Inspired by these 21 more hermeneutic and ethnographic entry-points respectively, he argues in favour 22 of (a) using a ‘first person’ writing style to provide more precise and grounded descrip- 23 tions of the research process; and (b) ‘making comparisons’ and ‘asking questions’ to 24 bring relevant elements into the description. Following these introductory metho- 25 dological remarks, the author moves to a ‘first person’ description of the importance 26 of taking ‘screenshots’ in order to compare Happy Network with Facebook, and to 27 ask ‘how are advertisements provided on Happy Network?’ His answers are found 28 in subsequent detailed descriptions of ‘the user page’, ‘games’ and ‘global design’. 29 Though this is an admirable attempt to generate ideas about social networking 30 sites through one ‘research case-study’, I want to raise questions on four grounds: 31 First, the claim to uniqueness of grounded theory and ANT is to generate thick 32 descriptions of their research objects via micro-sociological theory. One must note 33 that these aims may be inconsistent. Whereas grounded theory (as described by 34 Zimmermann) takes the first person as its entry-point, actor-network theory 35 highlights the plurality of perspectives generated by actors located at different parts 36 of a network. Whereas grounded theory privileges first-person observation as an 37 entry-point, ANT emphasizes the need to understand social relations and processes 38 in terms of plural standpoints with no actor (or, indeed, actant) being privileged 39 above the network. This theoretical dilemma is not easily solved and is, indeed, an 40 issue faced by social scientists more generally and designers more specifically. In the 41 case of user-centred design, the challenges of adopting the first-person stance drawn 42 from grounded theory and the needs to understand all plural standpoints of the user 43 community require further reflection. 44

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1 Second, grounded theory bases its research on all sorts of data (e.g., observations, 2 personal stories, interviews, statistics, etc.) to generate codes, categories and possibly 3 new theories. It is clear that Zimmermann seeks to gather data by collecting screen- 4 shots and making comparisons – important strengths of his article. But it is less clear 5 what we do with these data. What about generating categories to understand social 6 networking sites and their design, including the extent to which these reflect existing 7 networks or, as ANT would suggest, actants in constructing new forms of network 8 and interaction? It is also unclear why the author chose to focus on how advertise- 9 ment are provided on Happy Network; one would have thought that if Happy 0 Network is the research object, more attention would be devoted to examining the 11 ‘idea of having fun’ and related practices. This would involve closer investigation 12 of the construction of virtual friends, online games, etc. 13 Third, the author quotes from Latour to support his case for a thick description. 14 ANT seeks to achieve that goal by paying attention to the semiotic-material dimen- 15 sion of networking. In this regard, it is interested in the ‘how’ of the networking 16 social process – in this case, this would require attention to the specificities of the 17 Web-based social networking platform in China. A serious application of ANT, for 18 historians and designers as well as sociologists, must involve the examination of some 19 elements of the semiotic logic(s) (or mini discourses) in the constitution of the social 20 and, in addition, the constructive role of materialities or affordances such as the Web 21 itself (Latour 2005; Law 2007). In this case, the discourses of ‘having fun’ or the 22 production of ‘happiness’ would be an interesting entry-point. From a narrower 23 perspective, this would involve examining the constant (re-)making of this network 24 via discursive practices, such as the construction of ‘friends’ via user pages, the rolling 25 out of ‘games’, Happy Network’s engagement in legal battles with its clones, and 26 the more recent entrance of traditional and official media (e.g., Xinhua newspaper) 27 into the arena. On a broader level, this involves asking whether ‘having fun’ can be 28 designed. This seems almost contradictory, insofar as ‘fun’ could be seen as neces- 29 sarily spontaneous, rather than planned or designed. How interactive is that design, 30 and who participates? What role does the Web, the site or material for networked 31 happiness play in defining ‘fun’? And how does the global nature of the Internet 32 affect local experiences of ‘having fun’ online in China? 33 Fourth, and relatedly, Zimmermann seems to overlook some important con- 34 textual issues related to Happy Network, which is targeting white-collar workers in 35 a transitional China under one-party rule. Happy Network exists under the shadow 36 of the famous Internet ‘Great Firewall’ and the call for the building of ‘Green Dam’ 37 (i.e., Internet censorship software pre-installed on all computers). Such controls raise 38 several issues concerning the place of networking sites in the broader scheme of 39 Internet design in China, and possibly elsewhere. First, in information terms, what 40 are Happy Network’s conditions of existence, its use of information, and privacy 41 policy? Second, in Foucauldian-biopolitical terms, why does it appeal to the white- 42 collar population? How do they take part in the management of their own con- 43 trol, and what are the mechanisms that are involved in the micro-management of 44 leisure time, risk and security of a society based on one-party rule that privileges

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consumption over democracy? Recently, Happy Network started charging users on 1 some items (it costs 2 yuan to send a birthday cake to a ‘friend’).1 Is this a sign of 2 a passage from the socialization to the economization of games?2 What are the 3 responses of users towards the emergence of social networking platforms as a society 4 of consumers and part of the cultural industries? 5 Finally, there are questions to raise about Happy Network’s problematic interface 6 with the global Internet, the micro-managerial nature of these games, and their 7 relation to the expansion of capitalism. Such issues pose critical political, ethical and 8 commercial questions for designers. In particular, by contributing to the design of 9 ‘fun’ sites that may dull the critical senses of consumers and/or citizens, is one 0 complicit in reproducing a system of control? Or, given that many believe that the 11 growth of market capitalism eventually requires greater political as well as economic 12 freedom, does good design in this area contribute, indirectly, to a better future? The 13 historical record on this is mixed and provides no easy answers. 14 15 16 Notes 17 1 Detailed discussion is widely circulated on the Chinese language websites (e.g., , accessed on 29th August 19 2009. 2 On this discussion, see ‘New Commune Challenging the “Happy Network”’, , accessed 21 on 29th August 2009. 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44

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1 2 3 13 4 5 FROM NATION-BOUND 6 7 HISTORIES TO GLOBAL 8 NARRATIVES OF ARCHITECTURE 9 0 11 Jilly Traganou 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 How can the “global” as a methodology, as suggested by the editors of the present 19 book, help us understand architecture today? I will consider the “global” as a way 20 of thinking about contemporary architecture, but also as a way of reconsidering 21 architecture’s history. In what follows I will suggest the need to perform a shift from 22 the orthodox focus on the nation-state as a conflated political and cultural unit 23 within which architecture emerges, to considering conditions of internal otherness, 24 as well as architectural networks that operate beyond national borders, crystallized 25 in an array of localities across the globe. I will also suggest the need to look at con- 26 temporary global architectural networks with the eye of the ethnographer, in order 27 to listen and understand not only the grand stories of global architectural production 28 but the voices of the “multitude” of mobilities that are generated across the globe. 29 30 Layered places, plural identities 31 32 I recognize the place, I feel at home here, but I don’t belong. I am of, and not of, this 33 place. 34 35 Caryl Phillips, Introduction: A New World Order, 2001 36 37 In the words of Caryl Phillips, more and more people today “feel of, and not of” 38 the places where they spend their lives.1 In his writings, Phillips, a black British 39 author, shows an acute consciousness of this growing condition of plural belonging. 40 As immigration alters ethnic demographics of most regions throughout the globe, 41 and cases of multiple national affiliations are proliferating, the association of people’s 42 identity with place and origin is becoming complicated. At the same time, new 43 professional patterns create conditions that make people live in more than one 44 location at the same time. Whether they are call-center employees of US companies

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physically residing in Mumbai, or architects in the world’s peripheries working 1 for US architectural offices that “offshore” part of their digital design production 2 overseas, increasing numbers of people live in what Arjun Appadurai has called 3 “layered places.”2 What does this tell us about the condition of belonging today, 4 and how does this affect the way we perceive architecture as a symbolic enterprise? 5 The experience of “internal otherness” can have particular effects on practice in 6 any discipline. In his book, A New World Order, Phillips discusses his experiences as 7 a young black person raised in an environment as predominantly white as Northern 8 England, being made to feel a stranger, one who does not belong. But this experi- 9 ence is far from unique, and does not relate only to race. Phillips soon discovered 0 that he was not alone in his experience of not belonging. In fact he was one among 11 many individuals who had similar dual or multiple attachments. As Phillips explains 12 in his book Extravagant Strangers it has been precisely strangers, those who do not 13 fit, who have played key roles in canonical British literature. Figures such as George 14 Orwell, J. G. Ballard, Shiva Naipaul and Kazuo Ishiguro were not born in Britain, 15 and have all been strangers in one way or another. Some writers who have marked 16 British literature were colonized subjects being brought to the metropole where 17 they had an experience of disenchantment; others were descendants of the colonizers 18 who lived too long away from their motherland to maintain any vital ties with it. 19 Phillips reminds us that it is often the experience of estrangement that gives rise 20 to creativity, as “all these writers are trying to understand how they belong to 21 ‘Britain’”3 but also, and most importantly, that notions of selfhood and otherness 22 are not as distinct as usually we are taught to believe. 23 It is the job of the intellectual to tease out these elements of internal otherness 24 as they are entangled in national narratives of literature, architecture, design, or 25 culture at large. In no way should these conditions be considered as only the effects 26 of contemporary globalization. In fact, the whole world history of material pro- 27 duction could be rewritten by taking into account encounters among different 28 groups, rather than essences of cultures, as they occurred due to trading, coloniza- 29 tion, missionary expeditions, and other processes that brought groups in contact 30 with each other. 31 How can the notion of internal otherness affect the way we look at architecture 32 today, contemporary or historical? In their eagerness to question the domination of 33 postmodern architecture by corporate values as well as the Eurocentric narrative of 34 architecture since modernity, scholars of architecture (especially those who worked 35 within the framework of critical regionalism) have looked at the architecture of non- 36 Western cultures as a resource of resistance that derived from the positions of the 37 world’s peripheries. These newly articulated forms of resistance, however, bordered 38 dangerously with essentialized views of identity. Tadao Ando became valorized as the 39 Japanese architect par excellence; architects Dimitris Pikionis and Aris Konstantinidis 40 as the paradigmatic representatives of Greekness, and so on. However, many of these 41 architects may have not been as natives to their respective lands as historians wished 42 to believe; most importantly, neither did these lands have as singular traditions as these 43 views implied. 44

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1 In her article in an anthology on travel and architecture I recently co-edited, 2 architectural historian Katharine Bartsch gives us the example of one such architect, 3 Geoffrey Bawa, who has been misguidedly considered as a “native” of Sri Lankan 4 culture. Throughout his life, Bawa was celebrated for creating architecture that was 5 rooted in Sri Lanka, and recent scholarship has seen his work as a paradigmatic case 6 of critical regionalism. It is perceived as a product of an assumed “local” architect 7 who masterfully combined tradition with modernity. However, Bartsch reveals how 8 both the “regional culture” of Sri Lanka and the “identity” of the architect are much 9 more complex than the majority of Bawa’s historians chose to acknowledge. Bartsch 0 questions the certainty about the architect’s “origin” from a pure Sri Lankan 11 tradition, as well as the very existence of a “Sri Lankan tradition.” She suggests that 12 Bawa’s diverse heritage (Anglican, German, Muslim, Scottish and Sinhalese) and 13 personal trajectory (between Sri Lanka and the United Kingdom) resists his being 14 classified as a local. Even more so, Sri Lanka’s diverse ethnic environment (Muslim, 15 Sinhalese and Tamils) and multifaceted history (which is influenced by various types 16 of encounters that ranged from Buddhist and Hindu settlers and Arab traders to 17 Portuguese, Dutch and British colonizers) render the recognition of a singular or 18 unified Sri Lankan “tradition” impossible. In doing so, Bartsch finds that contem- 19 porary architectural historiography, in its urge to re-appreciate the regional as an 20 alternative to a Euro-centered modernity fell into an understanding of culture (in 21 this case Sri Lankan) as “homogeneous, distinct to a group, and rooted-to-place 22 entity.” This view obscured internal local differences and hybridizations which had 23 occurred through various encounters among others.4 24 25 Architecture beyond the nation 26 27 Today, the conditions of internal otherness and multiple affiliation are more and 28 more on the rise. National architectures are being produced equally by nationals and 29 by non-nationals, whose culture has little to do with the cultures of the places where 30 they practice. Whether they have an immigrant relation with the place of their 31 practice or have been commissioned to build in locations with which they share no 32 ties (as in the case of most global firms today) more and more architects practice in 33 places with which they have a contested relation. The recent interest in David 34 Adjaye’s architecture is symptomatic of an awareness of these conditions. David 35 Adjaye, principal of Adjaye Associates, is a Ghanaian, Tanzanian-born, London- 36 based architect, who, as the son of a diplomat, spent most of his childhood as an 37 expatriate in various countries of Africa and the Middle East. After settling in 38 London in 1979, and during his formative years in architecture, traveling became a 39 means of expanding his architectural vocabulary, bringing him to different parts of 40 the world (such as Portugal and Japan) that proved to be instrumental to his 41 professional development. As his work has gained international recognition in the 42 last ten years, traveling has come to dominate Adjaye’s daily routine, both as a 43 practicing architect and an educator. One should not disregard the partial truth in 44 curator Deyan Sudjic’s claim that Adjaye’s architecture sprang out of 1990s London,5

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where he lived most of his life, conducted his architectural studies and set up his 1 practice. But neither should one disregard the architect’s itinerant life from early 2 childhood to the present and his internal otherness within the United Kingdom, as 3 well as the role that race, ethnicity, and the conditions of plural belonging that he 4 experienced since his childhood have played in his approach to architecture. It is 5 the last, in combination with a broader campaign that is branding blackness, that has 6 triggered the architectural audience’s imagination which repeatedly and unfailingly 7 focuses on Adjaye’s biography, beyond the unquestionable quality of his work. 8 “Making Public Buildings,” an exhibition that focused on Adjaye’s travels exem- 9 plified the case of an architect whose “native” culture is not just fluctuating between 0 Africa and Europe, but rather aspires to be cosmopolitan, and, thus, defies his simple 11 classification as “other” to his Western counterparts. 12 What do such “of, and not of” conditions, to use again Phillips’ vocabulary, mean 13 for the architectural histories that have been written in the name of nations, 14 especially now, with the mistrust in the master-narratives of Euro-centered mod- 15 ernism that characterizes the contemporary world? Books and dedicated magazine 16 issues on nation-bound architecture, such as those of Holland, Spain or Japan, have 17 been attractive to students and consumers of architecture, who want to see national 18 spirit as being crystallized in unique and differentiated architectural productions. It 19 is true that architectural production is affected to a certain extent by the national 20 economic climate, by the nation’s manufacturing capacities and traditions, by the 21 national (or often regional) architects’ associations and educational establishments, 22 and by the degree to which architecture is held in esteem in the local place. But for 23 many thinkers, nations are becoming today more and more incapable of maintaining 24 their autonomy in regards to all the above. According to Arjun Appadurai, “the 25 nation state has become obsolete and other formations of allegiance and identity 26 have taken place.”6 Moreover, as geographer Donald McNeil has stated in his 27 discussion on global architects, “the territorial boundaries that had kept most 28 architects tied to a small set of national markets no longer make much sense for 29 design firms capable of operating in the dynamic economies of [places like] the Gulf 30 and China.”7 Architects’ education takes place in global schools, manufacturing takes 31 place often overseas, and economies on all scales are increasingly subject to trans- 32 national conditions rather than or in addition to national endeavors and policies. 33 It is true that unlike other design processes, architecture seems inescapably 34 localized. However, today it operates as a multi-sited enterprise that involves net- 35 works of locations and actors. The realization of most major architectural projects 36 today involves major managerial enterprises that have largely to do with co- 37 ordinating works and teams of experts located remotely from each other. In a rather 38 perverse realization of modern architecture’s dreams of industrialization, the 39 manufacturing of architecture today often happens at remote locations from the 40 actual building site. The manufacturing of major parts of Santiago Calatrava’s roof 41 of the Athens 2004 Olympic Stadium, for instance, was realized in Italy and shipped 42 to Greece; the special steel plate used for its construction was made in Germany. 43 Even in the work of architects who declare their practice as committed to aspects 44

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1 of environmentalism, building materials are habitually being harvested and brought 2 from areas far away from the building’s site despite attempts for sustainability. Lisa 3 Findley informs us how Renzo Piano’s Centre Culturel Tjibaou (Cultural Center 4 of Tjibaou) in the French territory of New Caledonia, a building that was built as 5 a means of reflecting and preserving the indigenous culture of the Kanak people, 6 used natural resources from far away locations. Mahogany, one of the main materials 7 of the building, was harvested from forests in Africa, shipped to France for intensive 8 shaping, gluing and forming, then arrived in New Caledonia for assemblage at the 9 final location.8 The architectural site is not more than a node within a broader system 0 of spaces where architecture is being conceived, produced, reproduced, consumed, 11 and imagined. It is ironic that despite these conditions, architecture is often used as 12 the last resort of nations to prove their uniqueness or, even, their status. 13 As architectural production is less and less associated with the place where it is 14 built, and as, with the flow of immigration and changing demographics, many 15 citizens today do not anymore subscribe to nations as cultural units, our perception 16 of national architecture cannot remain the same. The debate around the New 17 Europe, echoing the contested condition within each of its nations, can provide a 18 new way of thinking about architecture. As Ash Amin writes: 19 20 Slowly, Europe is becoming Chinese, Indian, Romany, Albanian, French and 21 Italian, Christian, Islamic, Buddhist or New Age, American, Disneyfied, one- 22 earth conscious, ascetic or locally communitarian. It is becoming a place of 23 plural and strange belongings, drawing on varied geographies of cultural 24 formation. And thus it is constantly on the move in cultural terms.9 25 26 “Are all these migrants and movers undermining a European identity or are they 27 promoting a European consciousness?” Donald McNeil asks.10 And how do national 28 narratives function in light of supra-national frameworks such as those of Europe, 29 the Middle East, or Islam? 30 31 Global architectural networks 32 33 As scholars of sociology and architecture have shown, architects’ professional 34 development has been strongly related to “networking” operations, which are 35 conducted through combined physical, virtual, and communicative travels.11 The 36 architecture profession is not only “highly mobile,” as architects move to study and 37 work, but also “rich in networking capital,” as architects will often “undertake long 38 journeys for social networking.”12 This condition has been pertinent since the 39 modern era (starting with the CIAM (Congrès Internationaux d’Architecture 40 Moderne – International Congress of Modern Architecture) architects and 41 continuing with those in the circle of Constantinos Doxiadis in the 1960s) but has 42 further accelerated nowadays. 43 Manuel Castells (1996) has argued that post-industrial networks differentiate 44 between “spaces of flows”—nodes and hubs for the elites—and ordinary “spaces of

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places.” In the case of architecture, the “spaces of flows” include prestigious global 1 schools of architecture, locations designated as major construction sites for the global 2 building industry (Berlin after the reunification of Germany, or China today), cities 3 mythologized as emblematic of the zeitgeist or even of the future (Tokyo in the 4 1980s and 1990s), or, more recently, areas of the developing world where trans- 5 national, non-governmental organizations seek architects’ and designers’ collabora- 6 tion for improving impoverished environments and providing emergency shelter. 7 The highly hierarchical international networks that modern architecture established 8 across the world keep to a certain degree their influential role even today. Within 9 the context of modern architecture, travel and connectivity secured prestige; to be 0 an elite architect meant to be also a cosmopolitan architect. Established centers of 11 architectural education such as the Architectural Association in the UK and the 12 Harvard Graduate School of Design in the US are still the places where most 13 renowned architects obtain their qualifications. These schools offer an education 14 that has little to do with national or regional needs or standards. Students in global 15 architectural schools are trained in strategic thinking that is subsequently applied in 16 various locations across the world (thus travel is an essential part of their curriculum); 17 in other words students in these schools are trained to function as global architects, 18 not unlike students of other design disciplines, as in the project described by Barker 19 and Hall in this volume. Most importantly these are the places where they also obtain 20 their networks of support. As the architect Markus Schaefer described in an 21 interview: 22 23 What is interesting about the current time is that architecture culture is in 24 many ways thoroughly globalized. Of course, there are regional differences, 25 and these regional differences are very important. But in the end, the agenda 26 is set by a network of people who act very globally and who are inter- 27 connected through star culture and academia. This happens at the level of 28 established architects who often are not only stars by virtue of being invited 29 to the important competitions and winning them, but who also have a 30 professorship at a prestigious university . . . Circles of the professional and 31 academic worlds overlap. Architects who are very successful, like Rem 32 Koolhaas or Jacques Herzog and Pierre De Meuron, are people who bridge 33 this gap, obtaining legitimacy through their academic work while at the same 34 time drawing commissions from the commercial world. In addition, they 35 obtain visibility through professional and academic publications, for which 36 you need to know the right journalists and the right magazines. In this model, 37 constituted out of these three elements, successful careers play themselves out 38 . . . Only rarely does an outsider rise to global awareness with respect to any 39 of these three circles.13 40 41 In fact, it seems that architecture is still operating within a system that is similar to 42 the one that was established by the early internationals. It consists of elite architecture 43 firms whose principals meet at globally important nodes (cruise boats in the case of 44

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1 the CIAM and Doxiadis circle, MIPIM fair today14) and operate beyond national 2 borders. To use Castells’ term, this system clearly operates through the “spaces of 3 flows.” But at the same time, one should not underestimate the vast numbers of 4 architecture students and professionals who also operate in network relations on a 5 daily basis, that expand far beyond the well known “epicenters” of architectural 6 education and publicity. Indeed in today’s world, architectural networks proliferate 7 being often entangled with other networks of pervasive mobility that include a wide 8 array of movers: economic immigrants, tourists, professional travelers, illegal 9 immigrants and celebrities. Even schools that may not be considered as global do 0 function within broader supra-national networks, while architecture students across 11 the globe can easily be exposed to global networks of architectural education 12 through blogs and audio feeds. According to McNeil, “one of the most innova- 13 tive manifestations of European integration is the growing number of European 14 exchange students following programmes in Universities in other European 15 countries. Here the ERASMUS or SOCRATES initiatives were designed to create 16 a common European experience among its youth, and stressed the potential 17 integrative power of a Europeanization of education.”15 Even though again this is 18 not a new phenomenon (and plentiful examples of educational exchanges can be 19 found since the Renaissance) the volume of these travels today and their overall 20 expansion to social strata beyond the elites is unprecedented. 21 22 Instead of conclusions 23 24 Beyond the global histories of architecture which unfold in highly prestigious 25 architectural schools and at the financial centers of the world, numerous micro- 26 narratives remain to be heard and written. Here the historian needs to work more 27 as an ethnographer, following such subjects as: architects in their hotel rooms being 28 updated on the development of construction sites at remote locations; exchanges 29 and misunderstandings during students’ pin-ups presented in languages other than 30 their native ones; architecture educators’ routines in trains and airplanes in their 31 weekly commute to their affiliated schools; groups of architecture students with their 32 instructors visiting newly exotified locations around the globe; countless exchanges 33 in blackberries, emails and wiki platforms; and executives’ dinners with clients and 34 strategic partners. Historians should also be attentive to the flows of immigrant 35 workers in their search for jobs at construction capitals in the world; architectural 36 offices and freelancers in the world’s peripheries rendering digital products for 37 renowned European and US-based architects; as well as networks of politicians, 38 realtors, cultural impresarios, and planners; and also tourists, the locals, and the wider 39 public at large, those who are the consumers, users, critics and “stakeholders” of 40 what may be called global architecture. It is by studying all these constituencies 41 together that one can grasp the meanings and makings of global architecture, which 42 unfold beyond the cult of the starchitect or high visibility projects. 43 44

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Notes 1 1 C. Phillips (2001) A New World Order, London: Secker and Warburg, p. 1. 2 2 A. Appadurai (2002) “The Right to Participate in the Work of Imagination,” in L. Martz 3 (ed.), (2002), Transurbanism, Rotterdam: NAi Publishers. Interview with Arjun Appadurai 4 conducted by Arjen Mulder in January 2001. 5 3 C. Philips (1997) Extravagant Strangers, New York: Vintage Books, p. xiv. 4 K. Bartsch (2009) “Roots or Routes? Exploring a New Paradigm for Architectural 6 Historiography through the Work of Geoffrey Bawa,” in J. Traganou and M. Mitrasinovic 7 (eds.) (2009), Travel, Space, Architecture, Aldershot, Hampshire, England; Burlington, VT: 8 Ashgate. 9 5 D. Sudjic (2005) “Building in London,” in P. Allison, (ed.), David Adjaye: Houses; Recycling, Reconfiguring, Rebuilding, London and New York: Thames and Hudson, p. 186. 0 6 A. Appadurai (1996) Modernity at Large, Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 11 p. 169. 12 7 D. McNeil (2009) The Global Architect: Firms, Fame and Urban Form, New York: 13 Routledge, p. 1. 8 L. Findley (2005) Building Change: Architecture, Politics and Cultural Agency, London and 14 New York: Routledge, p. 44. 15 9 A. Amin (2004) “Multi-Ethnicity and the Idea of Europe,” Theory, Culture & Society, 16 21:2, p. 2. 17 10 D. McNeil (2004) New Europe: Imagined Spaces, London: Hodder Education, p. 125. 11 J. Larsen, J. Urry, and K. Axhausen (2006), Mobilities, Networks, Geographies, Aldershot, 18 Hampshire, England; Burlington, VT: Ashgate, p. 4. 19 12 Larsen, Urry, Axhausen, Mobilities, pp. 64 and 74. 20 13 J. Traganou (2009) “Mobility and Immobility in the New Architecture Practice: A 21 Conversation with Hiromi Hosoya and Markus Schaefer,” in Traganou and Mitrasinovic, Travel, pp. 261–62. 22 14 McNeil (2009) The Global Architect, p. 56. 23 15 McNeil (2004) New Europe, pp. 126–27. 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44

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1 2 RESPONSE 3 4 Lucia Allais 5 6 7 8 9 0 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 What is really new about the global predicament of the 21st-century architect? It is 19 not mobility—the cathedral builders of the 13th century were famously itinerant. Nor 20 is it the modern image of the architect as afflicted by a kind of global agoraphobia, 21 for which building in as many places as possible appears to be the only palliative. 22 Already in 1444, Leon Battista Alberti advised architects to situate themselves in 23 Rome by using a modified astrolabe—an instrument designed to find land while 24 navigating the seas.1 Indeed, ever since “the globe” was discovered and theorized as 25 such, architects have portrayed themselves as carriers of a global coordinate system, 26 applicable wherever the homogeneity of space could be detected.2 27 Nor can we say that the mobility of architectural forms is new, although it has 28 very much intensified since the 19th century, when architectural traditions were 29 reinvented and attached to nation-states to anchor their political identities. Already 30 in 1856 Owen Jones had no trouble describing his color scheme for the Crystal 31 Palace as inspired by Arabian carpets, and copied from motifs of the Persian textile 32 trade, and designed to filter the gray skies of Victorian London into a wholly new 33 colored atmosphere, truly representative of imperial England in her industrious 34 cosmopolitanism.3 Ever since industrialization itself became a place-making strategy, 35 modern buildings have absorbed foreign localities and imported techniques into a 36 universal situatedness. 37 Yet only later in the 20th century, after international histories of modernism had 38 been established and contested, did architects and historians began to recognize 39 “vernacular,” “non-pedigreed,” and “non-Western” building traditions as belong- 40 ing to the same “world” as the classical Vitruvian system and modern European 41 architecture. Architecture became global at the same time as its historiography: 42 towards the end of “The Short Twentieth Century,” when the large geo-political 43 blocks that anchored modernism were fragmented into innumerable constituencies, 44 each clamoring for political autonomy and cultural representation.4

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What is new, then, as Jilly Traganou writes, is the expectation that architecture 1 creates a sense of global “belonging,” that it express an infinity of local identities 2 while addressing mobility as a fundamental human condition. Traganou borrows 3 from the rich literature in anthropology, sociology, and culture of mobility to make 4 a link between architecture as a “symbolic” practice, the deceivingly “situated” 5 nature of buildings, and the hyper-mobility of a growing class of cosmopolitan 6 architects. She traces this convergence to the transformation of the architectural 7 profession into an international network since 1900, and, calling for historians to 8 become architecture’s resident “ethnographers,” predicts that a proliferation of 9 micro-narratives will result from the “unbinding” of architectural narratives from 0 national historiographies. This is a political stance: a call for architecture to become 11 a medium of representation that transcends the nation by taking mobility as common 12 ground. As such, it raises methodological questions. To what extent is the tie that 13 binds peoples to nations the same tie that has bound modern architectural histori- 14 ography to national narratives? Do the mobility of peoples and the mobility of 15 architectural forms follow the same logic? Are identity and belonging, and the 16 politics of recognition these concepts imply, the only ways for architecture to 17 participate in a global political imaginary? 18 Many of these questions can be addressed by considering the case of Nubia: a 19 desert region that entered architectural discourse in the second half of the 20th 20 century as the site of a paradigmatically “situated” architecture, even as its inhabitants 21 became increasingly uprooted. Nubian architecture consists of mud-brick houses, 22 built by their inhabitants from aggregate collected on the banks of the Nile, then 23 decorated with distinctive lattice-work and brightly-colored motifs marking pas- 24 sages and doorways.5 Roofing methods vary by district—the Kanuz build catenary 25 vaults and domes, the Arab and Mahas make flat canopies—but house-plans are 26 consistently organized as sequences of domestic spaces around a vast open court. 27 Villages are loosely aggregated and oriented towards the Nile, leaving a narrow strip 28 of fertile land to be harvested annually. The overall effect is of rootedness in the 29 desert, hospitality amidst transience. But this architecture is not only self-built, 30 situated, and oriented—in a word, local——it is also transnational in the ancient 31 sense of the term: Nubia lies across the border between Egypt and the Sudan, and 32 it has long figured as “The Corridor to Africa” in canonical texts of World History, 33 from Herodotus to Hegel.6 Nubia’s vernacular architecture has cohabitated for 34 millennia with the massive Pharaonic temples, rock-cut Meroitic tombs, and 35 Roman-era Christian shrines built along the Nile by conquerors from the North 36 and South. As a product of a region whose cultural autonomy has survived a history 37 of imperialisms, Nubian architecture evokes a world where mobility does not 38 necessarily mean homogeneity. 39 Yet Nubians became famous in the 1960s and 1970s because they are trans- 40 national in the modern sense: a constituency forcibly relocated by national planners 41 several times over the course of the 20th century, to make way for the flooding 42 produced by the building and raising of a hydro-electric dam in Aswan. With each 43 resettlement, Nubian architecture became known in ever-finer ethnographic detail. 44

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1 During the first major move, in the 1930s, the Egyptian cultural ministry sent 2 anthropologists and architects to document the submersion of old villages and the 3 rebuilding of new ones. One of the visitors to these new villages was the architect 4 Hassan Fathy, who later spearheaded an anti-modernist movement for the revival 5 of traditional building methods. It was in Nubia that Fathy “discovered” the mud- 6 brick vaulting he used in his famous scheme for the village of Gourna, experiencing 7 the epiphany he described in his bestseller, An Architecture for the Poor.7 While Fathy 8 genuinely admired Nubia’s builders, and while he was lucid about the role of 9 modernization in triggering a “renaissance” of their craft, he undeniably helped to 0 distance Nubia’s architecture from its people. He had no trouble combining Nubian 11 vaulting with Mamluk and Ottoman elements from disparate regions of Egypt into 12 the trademark neo-traditionalist style that he deployed as an expert in vernacular 13 architecture.8 In Fathy’s hands, the lessons of Nubia became applicable across the 14 Middle East. 15 Nubia’s passage into global history was completed in the 1960s, when the Aswan 16 High Dam was built. This time, the entirety of Nubia disappeared under water and 17 over 100,000 farmers were relocated to distant new towns. They promptly plastered 18 and painted over their prefabricated houses with their signature colors, encouraged 19 by anthropologists funded, this time, by the Ford Foundation.9 But ethnographic 20 scrutiny, decorative motifs, and modern amenities proved poor substitutes for the 21 Nile, whose rhythms and materiality had regulated their lifestyle. Nubia’s male 22 population became fully transient: living in far-away cities; sending wages home. In 23 contrast, the region’s ancient monuments were carefully taken apart and relocated 24 along the Nile by a UNESCO-led international consortium of experts, which also 25 conducted an extensive archaeological survey.10 Indeed as Nubians were gradually 26 marginalized, their culture was institutionalized into a global framework. Their 27 ancestors, now known as “the Black Pharaohs,” became protagonists in a variety of 28 multicultural policies worldwide, including the project of Afro-American studies in 29 the United States.11 In 1997, a Nubian Museum was built in Aswan, where life- 30 sized replicas of Nubian houses are displayed next to Pharaonic sculptures. The 31 museum’s building, fronted by an enlarged Kanuz arch, combines Nubia’s archi- 32 tectural tropes into a postmodern image so cohesive that it earned an Aga Khan 33 Award for Architecture in 2001.12 34 Thus Nubian “belonging” has been modernized into a self-perpetuating 35 globalism, in a three-way architectural division. Nubian vaulting has become an 36 emblem of universal constructive integrity, pitched against the industrialized build- 37 ing methods of the West. Nubian village plans have been inscribed into a discourse 38 about the environmental consequences of large-scale development projects.13 39 Nubian decorative motifs have entered the market of African iconography as 40 products of a living tradition, a global art of hospitality.14 Yet the question of where 41 the Nubians themselves “belong” remains a local—or national—problem. The case 42 of Nubia shows that architecture’s ability to convey identities in the global imaginary 43 does not ensure its accountability to the political constituencies from which these 44 identities are drawn. What matters here is not the weakening of the nation-state per

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se—Egyptian and Sudanese governments still hold power over their Nubian 1 citizens—but the weakening of the nation as privileged form. 2 How then can global architectural histories be told, when global knowledge has 3 advanced hand in hand with global disenfranchisement? One answer, as Traganou 4 suggests, is to deploy social-scientific methods in charged and unexpected ways. A 5 Latourian anthropologist recently studied the model shop of the Office for 6 Metropolitan Architecture, identifying its language of “scaling up” as an architectural 7 Esperanto for young designers, and revealing that design firms are also “places” 8 themselves, important sites of provenance for many of the architects Traganou 9 interviews.15 Another form of visual Esperanto lies in a brand of spatial analysis that 0 relies on diagramming of quantitative research. Thus the magazine Urban China, 11 which is bound by its Chinese subject, language, and state controls, nevertheless 12 sustains a dialogue with the Western avant-garde, largely through its visual style, 13 about the role of research in design disciplines.16 A more narrative genre of social 14 theory permeates recent scholarship that takes apart national histories of architecture 15 by showing the multi-, inter- and transnational agents they contain.17 And one new 16 textbook takes a series of time-cuts through five millennia of global architectural 17 history, culminating in a final chapter, “Globalization Takes Command,” that 18 identifies seven modes of global contemporary architectural practice.18 19 What these methods have in common is a move away from the architect as an 20 identifiable author of communicable political meanings, towards architecture as a 21 practice of material delegation, engagement, situation, assemblage, aggregation and 22 mediation. Perhaps the liberation from nation-building and nation-binding 23 narratives requires precisely a freeing from the symbolic politics of identification and 24 recognition, from the expectation that architects create stable forms which are to be 25 deciphered as cohesive political fictions by everyone else, historians included. A 26 global method pays attention less to the mobility of architects and objects and more 27 to mobilities through architects and objects. The antidote to global agoraphobia is 28 not an ontology of worldwide belonging or an epistemology of the world of 29 mobility, but a history where architecture is itself an act of worlding. 30 31 Notes 32 33 1 In his 1444 Forma Urbis Romae Alberti gave instructions for making a portrait of the city 34 by surveying its monuments using a radial coordinate system using a “horizon.” Jean- Yves Bouriaud & Francesco Furlan, eds., Forma Urbis Romae (Firenze : L. S. Olschki, 35 2005). A decade later, in Book X of his De Re Architettura, he introduced the practical 36 task of flattening a site for building with an in-depth discussion of the size and shape of 37 the earth. Alberti, On the Art of Building in Ten Books, trans. Joseph Rykwert and Neil 38 Leach (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1988). 2 I borrow the expression from Branco Mitrovic, “Leon Battista Alberti and the 39 Homogeneity of Space,” in JSAH 63/4 (Dec 2004): 424–439. 40 3 Owen Jones, The Grammar of Ornament (London : B. Quaritch, 1868). See also Anneke 41 Lenssen, “Travels of the Carpet Myth: Retracing Owen Jones, Ibn Khaldun, and 42 Gottfried Semper,” in Thresholds 34: Portability, (Summer 2007): 70–73. 4 I borrow the phrase from Eric Hobsbawm’s seminal The Age of Extremes: The Short 43 Twentieth Century, 1914–1991 (London : Michael Joseph, 1994). 44

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1 5 The effect of hospitability is especially marked in districts where the bottom of the 2 courtyard walls are shaped into exterior benches. The authoritative source on Nubian architecture is Omar El-Hakim’s Nubian Architecture (Cairo: the Palm Press, 1993), with 3 a foreword by Hassan Fathy. See also Horst Jaritz, “Notes on Nubian Architecture and 4 Architectural Drawings,” in Robert A. Fernea & Georg Gerster, eds., Nubians in Egypt: 5 A Peaceful People (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1973). 6 6 Known as “the Land of Kush” in the Bible, Nubia appears in Diodorus Siculus’s Library of History and Herodotus’s Histories. For a summation of this literature, see William Y. 7 Adams, Nubia: Corridor to Africa (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1977). 8 7 Hassan Fathy, Gourna: A Tale of Two Villages (Cairo: Ministry of Culture, 1969); An 9 Architecture for the Poor (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1973); and “Notes on 0 Nubian architecture,” in Robert Fernea, ed., Contemporary Egyptian Nubia: A Symposium (New Haven: Human Relations Area Files, 1966). For a critical evaluation of the Gourna 11 project, see Timothy Mitchell, Rule of Experts (Berkeley: UC Press, 2002). For Fathy’s 12 career in relation to national and regional identity politics, see Nasser Rabat, “Fault Lines: 13 Hassan Fathy and the Identity Debate,” in Gilane Tawadros & Sarah Campbell, eds., Fault 14 Lines: Contemporary African Art and Shifting Landscapes (London: Institute of International Visual Art, 2003): 196–203. 15 8 Fathy developed his stance as a regional expert after working in Athens for Doxiadis, a 16 Greek internationalist architect who played a major role in bringing modernist 17 architectural principles to global agencies of planning and development. While there are 18 many differences between the ideologies of Doxiadis and Fathy, they both saw architecture as a comparative system of knowledge, wherein environmental, constructive, 19 and symbolic criteria determine which architecture “belongs” where. Doxiadis’ system 20 was a cybernetic matrix he called Ekistics; Fathy’s was a holistic vision for building a 21 worldwide network of “Palaces of Mud.” See Panayiota Pyla, “Hassan Fathy Revisited,” 22 in JAE 60/3 (Feb 2007), 28–39, and Fathy, “Palaces of Mud,” in Malcolm Miles and Tim Hall with Iain Borden, eds., City Cultures Reader, (New York: Routledge, 2000): 23 232––235. 24 9 The Ford Foundation funded the two-phase Ethnographic Survey of Egyptian Nubia 25 conducted by the Social Research Center of the American University in Cairo. Hussein 26 Fahim, one of the researchers, later published Egyptian Nubians: Resettlement and Years of coping (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1983) and Nubian Resettlement in the 27 Sudan, (Miami: Field Research Projects, 1972). See also Hasssan Dafalla, The Nubian 28 Exodus (London: C. Hurst/Universe Books, 1975). 29 10 UNESCO’s official account of the campaign is Torgny Säve-Söderbergh, ed., Temples 30 and Tombs of Ancient Nubia, (London: Thames & Hudson, & UNESCO, 1987). See also Rex Keating’s Nubian Rescue ( London: Robert Hale & Company, 1975). 31 11 William Y. Adams chronicled Nubia’s historiographic fate in “The Invention of Nubia,” 32 in Hommages à Jean Leclant (Le Caire : Institut Français d’Archéologie Orientale, 1994). 33 See also “Nubia and ‘Inner Africa’: the Ideological Uses of African State-Building,” in 34 Steven Howe, Afrocentrism: Mythical Pasts and Imagined Homes (New York: Verso, 1998), 138–155. As recently as 1999 Henry Louis Gates took a film crew to Nubia as part of his 35 documentary Wonders of the African World (PBS Home Video, c.1999). 36 12 Plans for an Anthropology Museum were first made in the 1960s by Nasser’s Egyptian 37 Cultural Ministry, who hired Hassan Fathy to develop a scheme, which was never 38 realized. The prize-winning building was designed by architect Mahmoud El-Hakim. The Aga Khan Prize for Islamic Architecture seeks to establish global criteria of 39 architectural judgment that compete with Western vangardism (although some of its 40 representatives are always featured on its steering committee) by rewarding projects that 41 engage directly with religious and symbolic politics. The jury’s statement praised the 42 scheme’s ability to “successfully adapt local architectural styles without imitating them.” See . “Aga Khan Award for 43 Architecture 2001.” In A + U 377 (Feb 2002) 102–129. See Nevine El-Aref, “Drowned 44 but Triumphant,” in Al-Ahram No. 564 (13–19 Dec 2001).

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13 A representative example is “Social and Cultural Destruction,” Chapter 3 of Edward 1 Goldsmith & Nicholas Hildyard, The Social and Environmental Effects of Large Dams: Volume 2 1. (Cornwall: Wadebridge Ecological Centre, 1984). See also Hussein Fahim, Dams People and Development (New York: Pergamon Press, c 1981). 3 14 See for instance Louis Werner & Michael Nelson, “The Decorated Houses of Nubia,” 4 in Saudi Aramco World (July–August 2006) 57/4, and Elisabeth Schneiter, “Ways-out ways 5 in: Nubian doorways,” in World of Interiors 28/10 (October 2008). The primary reference 6 is Marian Wenzel, House Decoration in Nubia (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1972). 7 15 Albena Yaneva, “Scaling Up and Down: Extraction Trials in Architectural Design,” in Social 8 Studies of Science 35 (2005): 867–894. Yaneva’s focus is on the act of modeling, but the 9 underlying internationalism is clear. As for the concept of a studio provenance, to take three 0 of Traganou’s interviewees: Markus Schaeffer is “from” OMA, Hiromi Hosoya “from” Toyo Ito’s office, and even David Adjaye can be seen as “from” David Chipperfield’s 11 London office. 12 16 See the collaboration between Urban China and the American/Dutch magazine Volume, 13 which published mutually bootlegged special issues: Urban China 31 – Post-Disaster 14 Reconstruction and Crisis Management and Crisis: Urban China Bootlegged by C-Lab for Volume in the Spring of 2009 to coincide with Urban China’s work being on display at the New 15 Museum in New York City. . 16 17 Three examples from an American context are Arindam Dutta, The Bureaucracy of Beauty 17 (New York: Routledge, 2007); Keller Easterling, Enduring Innocence (Cambridge: MIT 18 Press, 2005); Reinhold Martin & Kadambari Baxi, Multi-National Cities (Barcelona: Actar- D, 2007). 19 18 Francis Ching, Mark Jarzombek, & Vikramaditya Prakash, “Globalization Takes 20 Command,” in A Global History of Architecture (Hoboken: Wiley & Sons, 2006). 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44

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1 2 3 14 4 5 E-ARTISANS 6 7 8 Contemporary design for the global 9 market 0 11 12 Tom Barker and Ashley Hall 13 14 15 16 17 18 Touchdown in Ghana 19 The first thing you notice as you step out of the aeroplane in Accra – the capital of 20 Ghana – is the air. Thick and heavy with humidity, the air carries the ancient smell 21 of brown earth – reminiscent of baked bread and sewers – intermingled with the 22 sounds of wildlife and city chaos. Like any tropical country, Ghana is a slow place 23 that bides its time; thanks to the climate it has to. But like the African elephant, a 24 sluggish start is no indication of the speed that the country will attain when it 25 accelerates. When we last flew to Ghana we sat next to an oil prospector who was 26 flying out to greet the first barrel of oil from the vast new reserves just discovered 27 offshore. Perhaps now, the elephant is on the move. 28 In 2009, Ghana became a focal point for us as the latest in a series of annual 29 international design collaborations called GoGlobal. Initiated in 2005, each GoGlobal 30 collaboration has had a different theme, derived from preparatory visits and 31 discussions with host partners. We wanted the themes to have both local and global 32 relevance, and to avoid ‘design tourism’. In other words, the results needed to have 33 ongoing value that lasted beyond the project period. 34 The aim of GoGlobal Ghana was to consider whether the creative industries in 35 a developing country could be nurtured through design collaboration and an e- 36 commerce model to contribute significant economic growth through increasing the 37 level of international trade. The project was initiated with three phases planned for 38 execution: a creative studio with innovation design engineering1 students from the 39 Royal College of Art (RCA) in London and the Kwame Nkruma University of 40 Science and Technology (KNUST) in Ghana; an e-commerce process for supply, 41 distribution and marketing; and finally a ‘hub’ location to facilitate project delivery 42 and dissemination to other African regions. 43 We wanted to establish an evolved model for contemporary design collaboration, 44 based on analysis of the previous GoGlobal annual project collaboration parameters

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and results. Our aims were to develop skills of working in other cultures; develop 1 a global perspective on design; understand differences and similarities between design 2 cultures in developed (industrialized) and developing countries; evolve an under- 3 standing of wellbeing and satisfaction through work beyond wealth accumulation; 4 develop relationships and networks for global collaborations in design and pro- 5 duction; evolve social and cultural elements with respect to design, exploration of 6 personal goals and opportunities in life; gain an understanding of skills through 7 knowledge transfer; transcend the limitations of monocultural working; and most 8 generally, to encourage curiosity and creativity. 9 0 11 GoGlobal history 12 GoGlobal began with a relatively spontaneous visit to China by Tom Barker and 13 18 postgraduate design students from the RCA in 2005, and has now developed 14 into a collaborative design research and networking activity. Participating institutions 15 are the Royal College of Art, the University of Technology Sydney (UTS), the 16 London School of Economics (LSE), the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology 17 (RMIT), and a number of other global partnering organizations. Past GoGlobal 18 projects have included: ‘Products for Beijing’ and subsequently ‘Design to mitigate 19 the effects of consumerism’ in Beijing, China with Tsinghua University (2005, 20 2007); ‘Massclusivity’2 in Bangkok and Chiang Mai, Thailand with Thai Creative 21 Design Centre (TCDC) (2006); and ‘The future of food’ with Tsukuba University 22 in Japan (2008). 23 All of the previous GoGlobal projects have focused on international design 24 collaborations with industry and academia at a postgraduate masters design level. 25 Our research into formats for successful collaboration was conducted through an 26 empirical evolution of working models, a better understanding of collaborative 27 partnerships, and integration of product innovation, production, social and eco- 28 nomic factors. The selection of countries aimed to explore design collaboration in 29 a range of both developing and developed countries in distinct cultures, allowing a 30 comparative assessment of the results. Each of the GoGlobal exercises tried to answer 31 the question: what are the most effective ways in which designers from different 32 countries can collaborate to tackle a complex regional brief of the host country, 33 creating better and more appropriate designs than each could as an individual? 34 GoGlobal projects have helped the participants gain an understanding of diverse 35 cultures by learning to design in collaboration, and to gain a global perspective on 36 their creative outlook. Designs from the projects in 2005, 2006 and 2007 have been 37 exhibited and the designs from GoGlobal Thailand in 2006 have been commer- 38 cialized and manufactured for sale; the projects have also been featured in the 39 international design and lifestyle press, such as Blueprint3, Axis4 and Elle Decoration5. 40 After GoGlobal visited Japan in 2008, the protagonists (by then Tom Barker, 41 Ashley Hall and Garrick Jones of the LSE) were persuaded to set themselves a more 42 ambitious, risky and complex challenge: one that could potentially make a more 43 strategic difference to a country that could notably benefit from wealth creation 44

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1 through design. The previous GoGlobal Thailand project suggested that design 2 could deliver regional benefits by bridging the gap between policy and imple- 3 mentation. Our partnership with TCDC brought together RCA and Thai designers 4 to produce a range of products that acted as exemplars to promote Thai crafts, evolve 5 contemporary Thai design language and promote the use of design to maintain and 6 create new craft skills. 7 The team needed a welcoming host country that was politically and economically 8 stable. Ghana was selected as the location for the project after discussions with the 9 British Council, and following visits to the United Nations in Geneva, along with 0 a follow up visit to the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development 11 (UNCTAD) XII in Accra, Ghana, and meetings with potential Ghanaian collab- 12 orators. The enthusiasm of local collaborators, the country’s vibrant creative culture, 13 and the high profile of creatives there all had a strong influence on the decision to 14 be based in Ghana. There is also a rich cultural history of craft production in Ghana, 15 from the gold, clothing and textile designs of the Ashanti region, through to stools, 16 jewellery, carving, metalwork, and woven baskets. 17 GoGlobal Ghana was particularly influenced by the UN’s UNCTAD studies of 18 global creative industries. UNCTAD’s 2008 Creative Economy Report, ‘The 19 challenge of assessing the creative economy towards informed policy-making’, 20 highlighted the potential socio-economic and cultural value of creative industries: 21 22 ...the interface among creativity, culture, economics and technology, as expressed in 23 the ability to create and circulate intellectual capital, has the potential to generate income, 24 jobs and export earnings while at the same time promoting social inclusion, cultural 25 diversity and human development.6 26 27 In the UK for example, creative industries now contribute 7.3% to the national 28 economy, of which around 1% is artefact design, craft and fashion. But for devel- 29 oping countries, there is a question of how to leverage design creativity for social 30 and economic benefit using sustainable models given the context of low levels of 31 industrialization, poor transport and infrastructure, and weak financial systems. 32 33 Creative Africa and Ghana’s UK connection 34 35 Africa is a vast and diverse continent of 54 countries. It may be argued that this 36 diversity is greater than that of Europe; for example, Africa is estimated to have 37 2,000–3,000 spoken languages. Although many of the countries on the continent 38 are very poor, the last decade has seen economic growth and stability in an 39 increasingly large number of states. There is also no shortage of creativity: today’s 40 African writers, designers, architects, and film-makers are increasingly making their 41 mark globally. African-based contemporary creative industries are less well estab- 42 lished, however (though even here there are exceptions such as Nollywood, 43 Nigeria’s answer to Hollywood, which is the continent’s most prolific film-making 44 industry).

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The UK has a strong connection with Ghana, which was a British colony until 1 it achieved independence in 1957. The Ghanaian ethnic group in Britain is the 2 largest African presence after Nigerians, and there is a great deal of movement of 3 Ghanaians between the UK and the homeland. British Ghanaians are extremely well 4 represented among the UK’s top creatives, and include the architect David Adjaye; 5 the artist Chris Ofili; Ekow Eshun, Artistic Director of the ICA; Ozwald Boateng 6 OBE, bespoke couturier; the musician Sway; and John Akomfrah, the film director. 7 8 9 Ghanaian Economy and culture 0 Any international collaboration, design or otherwise, is vastly improved when there 11 is some mutual understanding of cultural differences. Our hosts from both 12 organizations gave us invaluable advice and guidance on Ghanaian culture and 13 society. This was vital, as there is little literature available, although we did track 14 down an invaluable book in Accra called Ghana: Understanding the People and Their 15 Culture by John Kuada and Yao Chachah7 – a fast introduction to the customs and 16 history of the country. 17 Our hosts referred many times to how happy people were in Ghana, and 18 although this seemed self-evident we decided to have a look at world rankings to 19 see just how happy Ghanians were compared with other nations. Ghana’s ranking 20 among the ‘happiest’ countries of the world is 51, ahead of China (54), Greece (58), 21 India (69) and Zimbabwe (99). (Source: 1995 - 2007 World Values Surveys)8. 22 Clearly this happiness doesn’t relate directly to personal wealth; Ghanaian GDP per 23 capita at $3,000 is a twelfth of the UK’s. On this measure from the World Economic 24 Outlook Database for October 2007, Ghana is ranked at number 18 out of the 53 25 African countries (Egypt is $5,600, South Africa is $14,500). However, Ghana’s 26 economy— with a focus on cocoa, gold, diamonds and lumber—has been growing 27 quickly since 2000 and has tripled its GDP in just over eight years. GDP (PPP 28 adjusted) in 2008 was $70 billion, with an economic growth rate of 6% in 2008. 29 Like most African countries, the global financial crisis in 2008 has had little effect, 30 since the banks in Ghana have negligible exposure to foreign debt.9 31 This growth was promising, and because of the nature of the GoGlobal project 32 we wanted to know if Ghanaians were particularly entrepreneurial, as is sometimes 33 claimed. (The International Entrepreneurship website, for example, notes that ‘. . . 34 the entrepreneurial environment is vibrant and growing in comparison to its other 35 West African counterparts’.10) Could local designers leverage any value created by 36 the design project? Anecdotally, we certainly met a lot of enterprising individuals 37 in Ghana, whether they were selling mobile phone top-up cards by the road, dried 38 bananas in traffic jams, or operating personal electronic money transfers with the 39 UK. But were we meeting typical Ghanaians? 40 41 42 43 44

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1 Leveraging design 2 We had three hosts and project collaborators in Ghana who included our academic 3 partners from the Kwame Nkruma University of Science and Technology’s 4 (KNUST) College of Art and Design, based in Ghana’s second city of Kumasi, and 5 the Aid to Artisans organization in Accra and Kumasi who provided the project with 6 national supply chain experience, market intelligence, and the viewpoints of 7 Ghanaian craftspeople. The project partners for the e-commerce delivery elements 8 were ShopAfrica53/BSL, based in Accra. The British Council Accra also provided 9 us with meeting space, information and a final launch venue to present the finished 0 products to artisans and potential investors. 11 Our selection of KNUST also had some useful entrepreneurial benefits. Kumasi 12 is surrounded by gold mines and is the ancient start of the historic Trans-Saharan 13 gold route that ends in North Africa where it connects by sea to Europe. Millennia 14 of trading have resulted in a rich enterprise culture of small businesses and the up- 15 front pitching of new business ideas that we were to grow accustomed to witnessing 16 on the city streets. Added to this is the impact of the British colonial era and 17 exposure to global trading ideas, initially by sea trading then later on by other routes. 18 The e-Artisan project looked at ways of leveraging design creativity in Ghana. 19 The innovative aspect of our focus was the use of two key elements designed to 20 work together in a syndetic (connective) manner: first, the use of collaboration to 21 develop designs; and second, marketing through e-commerce models. Our project 22 method of contemporary design collaboration has evolved iteratively, based on 23 feedback and observation. Over time, the quality of the work produced by 24 GoGlobal indicates that it could be successfully extended into a commercial– 25 academic joint venture. Industrial design and production in a developing country 26 must be able to address the issues of reduced levels of industrialisation, poor transport 27 and infrastructure and lack of access to finance. The reduced levels of industrial- 28 ization restrict the choice of materials and production processes, as well as impacting 29 on quality control and packaging. Poor transport and infrastructure makes the supply 30 chain more complex and costly, as well as affecting reliability. Damage to mer- 31 chandise is also a problem. A further issue to contend with in developing countries 32 relates to financial transactions at every level relating to the payment for goods and 33 materials, as well as shipping. Banking can be rudimentary; not all of the stakeholders 34 involved in a project may have access to financial institutions, interest rates can be 35 very high. Ghana itself is heavily cash based and most people do not have bank 36 accounts; however, the use of cash, while it may simplify the process and ensure the 37 flow of capital, invites fraud. Furthermore, returns’ policies are problematic when 38 goods have been shipped overseas. E-commerce helps to mitigate these difficulties. 39 An online customer interface and ordering system can meet a wide variety of 40 demands: marketing and branding, processing all financial transactions throughout 41 the supply chain, tracking and delivery, and supply chain management. E-commerce 42 also has the advantage of being able to operate without traditional infrastructure. 43 BSL, the project e-commerce partners in Ghana, established ShopAfrica53.com 44 in 2008/9. ShopAfrica53 is a web system for browsing and purchasing merchandise

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from around Africa. The system currently operates only in Ghana, but will expand 1 to cover other African countries over time. BSL have also developed a scratch-card 2 system for purchases, which ensures that the commercial supply chain is always cash- 3 flow positive. This is an important point when selling artefacts long-distance, since 4 non-payment could present great financial difficulties for an artisan if they have paid 5 for materials in advance and started their work. Through courier relationships, BSL 6 facilitate the transport of artefacts within Ghana and internationally. Additionally, 7 BSL have an alternative banking method in development that allows artisans to be 8 paid via their mobile phones, access their balance, and make payments to others. 9 Mobile phones are in widespread use in Ghana, and BSL have an automated mes- 0 saging service to communicate orders and information from the website to artisans 11 around the country. Although GoGlobal Ghana will eventually have its own web 12 portal which will link to ShopAfrica53 for all transactions. 13 14 Project collaboration 15 To develop designs, Ghanaian students and the RCA students were randomly paired 16 up: one Ghanaian and one RCA student per team. The RCA students were a 17 diverse international mix, coming from over 14 different countries. Of the 30 18 pairings, the majority said they worked extremely well or well together. It was clear 19 that three teams had some problems collaborating, and that these issues revolved 20 around communication rather than method or creative differences. In terms of 21 method, the Ghanaian students’ approach tended to be more spontaneous and less 22 research-based than the RCA students. Although this contrasted with a slightly more 23 theoretical stance among RCA students, the Ghanaians had very practical experience 24 of making and were able to identify processes and means of assistance very quickly 25 to facilitate prototyping. Both groups had a comprehensive understanding of the 26 technologies for e-commerce. 27 One of the main project challenges revolved around the idea of cultural transfer. 28 If an object presents too much embedded culture then its function and oppor- 29 tunity to fit into a reasonable number of diverse environments is compromised. 30 Conversely, too little cultural transfer results in a more neutral design, which will 31 be seen as a commodity indistinguishable from competitors, and thus unable to 32 leverage its source potential. With the help of the project advisors the RCA and 33 KNUST students were able to balance each other, the former offering advice on 34 the appeal of Western markets and the latter providing rich local sources of inspira- 35 tion. The final products – 26 in all – were designed and prototyped in the 36 surprisingly short time of ten days, highlighting the speed, quality and energy of the 37 dispersed craft and making networks around Kumasi. Students often communicated 38 designs verbally; using templates and sketch models enabled wider craft inter- 39 pretation, allowing the artisans room to develop the objects according to their skills 40 and resources. The designs were innovative and provocative, but also referenced 41 local materials and creative influences. These results illustrated how collaborative 42 interdisciplinary projects have the potential to overcome some of the hurdles for 43 generating new export products for developing economies. 44

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1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 FIGURE 14.1 Examples of project collaboration – the final products 23 24 Source: Photo courtesy of the Royal College of Art and KNUST 25 26 Discussion of outcomes 27 28 The very international nature of the students helped the group to embrace the idea 29 of developing products with a global appeal. It was noticed that the Ghanaian 30 students had the same ability to ‘jam’ creatively at the concept design stage as the 31 RCA students, much like musicians performing together in an improvised mode. 32 The ability to ‘jam’ tends to require a relaxed, responsive and inclusive attitude to 33 a fellow collaborator, characteristics considered very typical of Ghanaian society, so 34 this may have been a factor in working style. Creatively, the Ghanaian students 35 readily embraced the benefits of designing and prototyping concepts at high speed, 36 and were prepared to experiment with relatively little concern about design risk. 37 This also may be a cultural trait and is an advantage, as the RCA students were 38 primarily from developed countries and tended to be more risk averse, which can 39 be a significant barrier to innovation in design. 40 The impact of the ‘e-commerce-ready’ design constraint was notable. The 41 artefacts were generally small, and the larger ones (such as a side table) could be flat- 42 packed for transportation. About a third of the designs had an embedded or related 43 web component for users and feature-enhancement, customization or post-sales 44 support and servicing. This feature is unique in allowing a mix of artisanal inter-

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pretation and user-requested customization. The work was considered in the 1 context of an international distribution of potential customers. 2 It is interesting to observe that the global belt between the tropic of Capricorn 3 and the tropic of Cancer has few successful industrialization models. This is true 4 across the African continent. There are many reasons for this, but one of the 5 common themes revolves around culture and inclusion. Historical attempts at 6 modernizing African manufacturing have failed because they have tried to ‘teleport’ 7 Westernized industrial models based on mechanization, homogenization and labour 8 reduction. Sub-Saharan Africa needs more inclusive labour models, with cultural 9 and social tie-ins that connect large numbers of people to the rest of the globe. Our 0 approach sought to use design to refocus the large networks of craft makers spread 11 throughout the towns, cities and countryside who currently supply basic artefacts 12 and repair and recycle mechanical products towards export markets. The inven- 13 tiveness and speed of makers in this region, for example the Kumasi mechanic who 14 rebuilt three buses into one using an angle grinder and a welding torch, are 15 legendary. The economic imperative for this approach is corroborated by recent 16 developments in the theory of microeconomic structures, which emphasize the 17 importance of urban trade and its role in creating mega-cities in developing 18 economies. Part of this research proposes that craft and small-scale industrial 19 production can be one of the catalysts for agglomeration into dense urban trading 20 zones. At a time when large urban structures in developing economies are rapidly 21 increasing in size, facilitating the creative interface between craft and design with 22 economics can help develop more effective strategies. 23 24 25 Conclusions 26 KNUST have kindly offered to host a GoGlobal design research centre in their 27 newly built university campus museum to focus the research and commercial future 28 of the project, while the UN/UNDP have expressed an interest in supporting and 29 disseminating a successful future enterprise model to other African regions. 30 Although currently only focused on Ghana, the research indicates that con- 31 temporary design collaboration used in conjunction with e-commerce models may 32 have the potential to grow the creative industries in developing countries. The scale 33 and rate of this growth has not yet been ascertained and the e-commerce imple- 34 mentation is still underway. This work differs from other similar endeavours, in that 35 it combines the dual elements of design collaboration and e-commerce in a 36 developing country, effectively providing a process for design, production, customer 37 reach and delivery into the markets of developed countries. The e-commerce aspect 38 also had a significant impact on how the design participants responded to the design 39 briefs. At a higher level the ability of educational design projects to operate in new 40 spaces between regional or national policy and on-the-ground implementation 41 promises new opportunities and reflects the historical trajectory of design thinking 42 into ever wider circles. 43 44

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1 Acknowledgments 2 The authors wish to acknowledge and thank the participating and supporting 3 organizations for their enthusiastic support in GoGlobal Africa. All our academic 4 participants at KNUST. Bridget Kyerematen-Darko, executive director of Aid to 5 Artisans, and Professor Glenn Lewis for their wisdom and knowledge of Ghana and 6 design, as well as the participating artisans. ShopAfrica53/BSL for e-commerce 7 aspects. Our long-term GoGlobal co-developer: Garrick Jones (LSE). Advice and 8 hosting of events: Edna Dos Santos and her colleagues at UNCTAD; the British 9 Council in the UK and Accra, Ghana. Founding co-partners for GoGlobal research: 0 RMIT University Melbourne, Australia. Background research information: 11 Department of Trade and Industry, Accra, Ghana. Project funding: Engineering and 12 Physical Science Research Council (EPSRC), UK. Project equipment: Tools for 13 Self Reliance. Special independent researchers and tutors: Genna Wilkinson, Sally 14 Haworth, Elisa Hudson, Nanice El Gammel. 15 16 17 Notes 18 1 Hall, A. and Childs, P. (2009) Innovation Design Engineering: Non-Linear Progressive 19 Education for Diverse Intakes, Proceedings, E&PDE09: the 11th International Conference 20 on Engineering and Product Design Education, Brighton, 2009, pp. 1–6 21 2 Jones, G. (2008) ‘Approaching a Massclusive Future, Innovative Mass Products for Niche Markets’, Creativities Unfold. Retrieved December 21, 2009, from . 23 3 Kuzyk, R. (2005) ‘Online with China’, Blueprint, No. 234 pp. 22–27 24 4 Nakajma, N. (2006) ‘GoGlobal, A Joint Project Between the RCA and TCDC: “The 25 Pursuit of Thai-ness”’, Axis, Vol. 123 pp. 136–140. 5 ‘The way we . . .’, Elle Decoration, February 2007. 26 6 Dos Santos, E. (2008) ‘The Challenge of Assessing the Creative Economy Towards 27 Informed Policy-Making’, Creative Economy Report, available at . 28 7 Kuada, J. and Chachah, Y. (1999) Ghana: Understanding the People and their Culture, Accra: 29 Woeli Publishing Services. 8 Veenhoven, R. (2009) World Database of Happiness, available at . 31 9 World Economic Outlook Database for October 2007, available at . 33 10 World Entrepreneur Comparator. Retrieved November 13, 2010, from . 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44

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1 RESPONSE 2 3 Shannon May 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 Barker and Hall’s GoGlobal initiative to create e-Artisans in Ghana as a model for 18 other developing countries in Africa has more local and global relevance to long- 19 standing debates in economic development and emerging considerations in design 20 than they may yet realize. Inherent in the premise and structure of GoGlobal Ghana 21 is adherence to an export-led growth model, and a vision of creative design as inte- 22 gral to the creation of value. Barker and Hall’s work should stimulate provocative 23 questions for both practitioners and historians of design alike concerning the effects 24 of networking and trade amongst ideas and goods, as well as the selection of 25 distribution models—or the entrepreneurship of design. 26 As laid out by Barker and Hall, the goal of GoGlobal Ghana “was to consider 27 whether the creative industries in a developing country could be nurtured through 28 design collaborations and an e-commerce model to contribute significant economic 29 growth through increasing the level of international trade.” Their work in fostering 30 design collaboration that seeks to be more than “design tourism” is to be com- 31 mended, and there is much that this project and analysis of it will continue to 32 contribute to the understandings of how networks affect design production across 33 the globe. In this short response, however, I will focus on the second aim of 34 GoGlobal Ghana: generating wealth through design in developing countries. 35 From the outset of their program, Barker and Hall have made a curious choice 36 for generating significant wealth creation through design in Ghana. They have 37 selected e-commerce as their platform, and the international consumer as their 38 target. Why was the domestic market never considered as a consumer of design and 39 part of the engine of economic growth? In the case of Ghana, was there “a complex 40 regional brief” from the host country to tackle, or was the decision to focus on 41 e-commerce set by Barker and Hall before the collaboration began? Wealth creation 42 in developing countries is, as Barker and Hall, write, more “ambitious, risky, and 43 complex” than craft design itself. Yet this is the task GoGlobal set for itself in Ghana. 44

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1 What follows is a discussion of the additional risks GoGlobal took on by focusing 2 on an international consumer of Ghanaian crafts as a source of wealth generation in 3 a developing country. I also raise questions as to how GoGlobal will distribute the 4 value it hopes to create, a critical organizational decision of design entrepreneurs. 5 Like all export-driven growth models, GoGlobal’s focus on “Western markets” 6 for Ghanaian crafts makes the business model vulnerable to both currency exchange 7 fluctuations and economic downturns in the target market. From the time that the 8 costs of production in Ghanaian Cedis are converted into British Pounds, or US 9 Dollars, the producer is exposed to the risk of the value of payment falling in relation 0 to the cost of production. Production for the export market also makes Ghanaian 11 producers vulnerable to sudden foreign economic downturns that lead to the collapse 12 of consumption in the target markets. In preparing for GoGlobal Ghana 2009 this 13 should have been an obvious risk of design production for Western markets. 14 Contrary to Barker and Hall’s assertion, many countries—and their artisans, pro- 15 ducers, and families—throughout Africa were severely affected by the economic down- 16 turn that swept the globe in 2008, and continues to dampen economic growth. This 17 was even noted by KNUST Pro Vice Chancellor William Ellis in his speech opening 18 the two-week GoGlobal Ghana conference.1 Collapse of consumer spending hits 19 exactly the types of products that GoGlobal was creating: lifestyle accessories such as 20 audio speakers enclosed in calabashes and laptop bags made from recycled bicycle tires. 21 What if GoGlobal had leveraged Barker and Hall’s extensive design and 22 entrepreneurship experience to lead the collaboration amongst RCA and Ghanaian 23 designers for products that solved problems for customers in Ghana? GoGlobal 24 Ghana would not face a currency exchange risk, and would be insulated from 25 sudden foreign demand free fall. GoGlobal would also be able to leverage design 26 innovation to address their development aim in two ways: creating wealth through 27 the profits of value-added production, and reducing poverty by making goods that 28 improve the quality of life of Ghanaians at a price they can afford. 29 Outside oil-rich Angola and Nigeria, it is domestic demand that has supported 30 continued economic growth in Sub-Saharan Africa,2 making design for domestic 31 consumption a smart development strategy. The vagaries of fashion fads in 32 international markets are much harder to successfully target than the needs and 33 desires of the almost 50 percent of, or more than 5 million, Ghanaians involved in 34 subsistence agriculture.3 35 Incongruously for a project with a goal of generating economic growth, and a 36 commitment to producing “ongoing value that lasted beyond the project period,” 37 there is no discussion of how value created would be distributed. There is no 38 discussion of any of the products designed through the collaboration, their produc- 39 tion costs, or price-point. There is no discussion of how profits generated would be 40 distributed between the UK and Ghanaian designers involved, the artisans who 41 manufacture the products, domestic transportation providers, international shippers, 42 the e-commerce site host, or the universities and other support organizations involved. 43 Design can generate wealth, but for whom? In the case of GoGlobal Ghana this 44 remains unclear despite the stated goal of nurturing developing countries through

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economic growth. Design is not just the product created; it is the system through 1 which that product produces value. For a project with integral development goals, 2 whether the project leads to equitable distribution of wealth according to labor 3 contributed and risk taken, or whether it encourages wealth hording at the expense 4 of the artisan is not a question external to design: it is the result of design. To take 5 design as a development enterprise seriously, the enterprise itself—and the economic 6 burdens and rewards it distributes—must be included. 7 ShopAfrica53, the e-commerce site named as the host for the GoGlobal Ghana 8 project, has stated that GoGlobal is not one of its merchants, as none of its products 9 ever went into production. No financing or investment capital was provided to the 0 artisans who were asked to produce the designers’ designs for sale to Western 11 markets. The artisans’ unwillingness to take on the production risk of GoGlobal’s 12 designs is a signal that in the eyes of the Ghanaian craftsmen, this design collaboration 13 was not as successful for them, or for the Ghanaian economy, as Barker and Hall 14 imply. Future GoGlobal initiatives in developing economies may want to reconsider 15 the risks implicit in the export-led growth hypothesis, and not only the potential 16 creation of, but also the distribution of, wealth. How was the decision made to invest 17 in the two weeks of international collaboration between RCA, KNUST and other 18 partners, but not in production of the designs themselves? 19 The lessons that should be taken from GoGlobal are not only from what it did 20 do, but also from what it did not do. Probing the assumptions on which the project 21 was based demonstrates how intimately Barker and Hall’s specific case is intertwined 22 with broader questions in the history and political economy of design. For whom 23 does an increase of international networking create value? How are the profits from 24 collaborative design distributed amongst all partners and producers? Does the 25 distribution of value reflect investment risk, or pre-existing prestige? Why are 26 Western (foreign) markets taken as the given target of “designed” goods? Why is an 27 increase of exports—any export—taken as synonymous with sustained economic 28 development? 29 Future GoGlobal initiatives in developing economies—and other designers 30 pursuing similar development projects and the historians who trace the effects of 31 collaboration and production globally—may want to reconsider the risks implicit in 32 the export-led growth hypothesis and what is lost when the domestic market is 33 ignored. Nor should we forget that the story of design and its effects does not end 34 with the creation of a product, and its promise of wealth creation; it continues 35 through the distribution of both. 36 37 38 Notes 39 1 Frimpong, Enoch Darfah, “Explore New Ways of Doing Things,” in Graphic Nsempa 40 (Brong Ahafo and Ashanti Regions) Monday June 8–14, 2009, p. 10. 41 2 International Monetary Fund, “Country and Regional Perspectives” in World Economic 42 Outlook 2008, p. 95. 3 US Department of State, Bureau of African Affairs, “Background: Ghana,” October 2009. 43 http://www.state.gov/r/pa/ei/bgn/2860.htm 44

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1 2 RESOURCE GUIDE 3 4 Compiled by Elizabeth Bisley 5 6 7 8 9 0 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 AIGA Center for Cross-Cultural Design 19 The Center was established to foster greater communication between designers 20 across cultures. It is based on the belief that it is imperative for designers to think 21 beyond their national and cultural borders in order to create visual communication 22 that is responsive to the diversity of audiences today. 23 24 www.xcd.aiga.org 25 26 Asian Civilisations Museum 27 28 The ACM presents a broad yet integrated perspective of pan-Asian cultures and 29 civilizations. One of the National Museums of Singapore, it seeks to promote a 30 better appreciation of the rich cultures that make up Singapore’s multi-ethnic 31 society. 32 www.acm.org.sg 33 34 35 Baltic Connections: Uncovering the Common Past of Countries 36 around the Baltic Sea (1450–1800) 37 The Baltic Connections project is an international effort to uncover the archives of 38 the common past of the countries around the Baltic Sea during the period 39 1450–1800. The project aims at the compilation of an archival guide focused on 40 themes such as trade, shipping, merchants, commodities, diplomacy, finances and 41 migration. 42 43 www.balticconnections.net 44

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BBC History: The Workshop of the World 1 2 Authored by Professor Pat Hudson of Cardiff University, this web page explores 3 the domination over world trade attained by British manufactured goods over a few 4 decades during the 19th century. 5 www.bbc.co.uk/history/british/victorians/workshop_of_the_world_01.shtml 6 7 8 The Black Sea Trade Project 9 An interdisciplinary study of trade systems in the Black Sea over the past 5,000 years 0 and their effects on local cultures and economies. 11 12 www.museum.upenn.edu/Sinop/SinopIntro.htm 13 14 Bodleian Library 15 16 The main research library of the University of Oxford. It is a copyright deposit 17 library and is related to nine other libraries in Oxford, including: the Bodleian 18 Japanese Library, the Indian Institute Library, and the Bodleian Library of 19 Commonwealth and African Studies at Rhodes House. 20 www.bodley.oc.ac.uk 21 22 23 The Fernand Braudel Center 24 The Fernand Braudel Center at SUNY-Binghamton University was founded in 25 September 1976 to engage in the analysis of large-scale social change over long 26 periods of historical time. It supports a range of scholarly activities including 27 fellowships, conferences, and a scholarly journal. 28 29 http://fbc.binghamton.edu 30 31 The British Council 32 33 The British Council is the United Kingdom’s public diplomacy and cultural 34 organization. It works in 110 countries and its aim is to connect people with learning 35 opportunities and creative ideas from the United Kingdom to build lasting 36 relationships around the world. 37 www.britishcouncil.org 38 39 40 The British Empire and Commonwealth Museum 41 This museum is the first major institution in the United Kingdom to present the 42 500-year history and legacy of Britain’s overseas empire. As well as 16 permanent 43 galleries, it offers a changing series of special exhibitions, lectures and seminars. A 44

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1 commercial archive uniquely illustrates Britain’s colonial past through film, photo- 2 graphs, objects, documents and sound recordings. 3 www.empiremuseum.co.uk 4 5 6 British Library 7 The national library of the United Kingdom, the British Library receives a copy of 8 every publication produced in the UK and Ireland. Its collection includes 150 9 million items, in most known languages. Online catalogues, information and 0 exhibitions can be found on the website. 11 12 www.bl.uk 13 14 British Museum 15 16 The British Museum collection includes artefacts from across the world. They 17 represent the people and places of the past two million years. 18 www.britishmuseum.org 19 20 21 Bulletin of Portuguese–Japanese Studies 22 The Bulletin of Portuguese–Japanese Studies is an English-language academic journal 23 covering Japanese studies in Portugal and Portuguese links with Japan and other East 24 and South-East Asian countries. 25 26 http://cham.fcsh.unl.pt/pages/Publicacoes_BPJS.htm 27 28 Caravane Maritime 29 30 Caravane Maritime is the term designating the use of Western European/’Christian’ 31 shipping to carry Muslim goods and passengers between ports in the Ottoman 32 Empire, including North Africa. By extension, it can include the inter-port carrying 33 trade in the whole Mediterranean, whether by English, Dutch, French, Venetian/ 34 Italian or ‘Greek’ vessels. This project brings together an international workshop 35 comprising researchers working on the various aspects of the traffic. 36 www.hull.ac.uk/caravane 37 38 39 Caribbean Studies Centre 40 The Caribbean Studies Centre was established in 2002. The Centre’s website is a 41 useful resource for all those interested in the Caribbean, its history, society, culture 42 and everyday reality. 43 44 www.londonmet.ac.uk/csc

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Central Eurasian Studies World Wide 1 2 CESWW provides a global perspective on Central Asia studies, and is a key point 3 of access to highly dispersed resources in this field. It encompasses all fields of the 4 social sciences and humanities. 5 http://cesww.fas.harvard.edu 6 7 8 Centre for Cross-Cultural Research, Australian National University 9 The CCR undertakes collaborative, interdisciplinary, cross-cultural research. In 0 particular the Centre aims to develop new modes of research as well as to use 11 traditional scholarly methods to provide innovative insights into the different ways 12 that cross-cultural relations and histories are constructed and represented. 13 14 www.anu.edu.au/culture 15 16 Centre for the Study of Globalization and Cultures, University of 17 Hong Kong 18 19 The focus of the centre’s work is on issues of culture and globalization with special 20 reference to Asia, China and Hong Kong. Major research themes include: the 21 cultures of capitalism; culture, media and technology; cities and globalization; new 22 communities, new publics. 23 www.hku.hk/complit/csgc 24 25 26 Center for South Asian and Indian Ocean Studies 27 With an emphasis on history, culture, literature, religion, politics, economics and 28 diplomacy, the Center is committed to promoting interdisciplinary approaches to 29 the study of India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka , Nepal, Bhutan and the 30 Maldives. The Center fosters comparisons and links across the Indian Ocean which 31 connect the people of South Asia with those of South-East Asia and the Middle East. 32 33 http://ase.tufts.edu/southasian 34 35 Centre for Mobilities Research, Lancaster University 36 37 An interdisciplinary research centre based at Lancaster University, the Centre for 38 Mobilities Research addresses a concept of ‘mobilities’ encompassing both the large- 39 scale movements of people, objects, capital, and information across the world, as 40 well as the more local processes of daily transportation, movement through public 41 space, and the travel of material things within everyday life. 42 www.lancs.ac.uk/fass/centres/cemore 43 44

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1 Cook’s Pacific Encounters 2 This website explores the collection of more than 300 Pacific artefacts held by the 3 Georg-August University of Göttingen in Germany. Collected during the three 4 Pacific voyages taken by James Cook between 1768 and 1780, these artefacts provide 5 6 a rare insight into the Pacific island cultures James Cook encountered. The site also 7 has research essays, an extensive bibliography and links to other online resources. 8 www.nma.gov.au/cook 9 0 11 Design History Workshop Japan 12 The Design History Workshop Japan is a nationwide network of researchers, 13 historians, postgraduate students, designers, craftspeople, curators, promoters, 14 collectors and journalists. Its goals are to build a broad network for mutual inter- 15 action and intellectual exchange between members in Japan and overseas. 16 17 wwwsoc.nii.ac.jp/dhwj/index-e.html 18 19 Design in Britain 20 21 Online archive of British designers, architects and design movements that have 22 influenced the development of modern and contemporary design all over the world. 23 www.designmuseum.org/designinbritain 24 25 26 Diaspora, Migration and Identities 27 A trans-disciplinary research programme whose aim is to research, discuss and 28 present issues related to diasporas and migration, and their past and present impact 29 on subjectivity and identity, culture and the imagination, place and space, emotion, 30 politics and spatiality. 31 32 www.diasporas.ac.uk 33 34 35 Digital Library for the Decorative Arts and Material Culture 36 Facsimilies and an image database of the Chipstone Foundation, and a list of 37 American decorative arts organizations and resources. 38 39 http:/decorativearts.library.wisc.edu 40 41 Digital South Asia Library 42 43 The Digital South Asia Library provides digital materials for reference and research 44 on South Asia. Material is searchable under the following categories: images, maps,

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statistics, bibliographies, indexes, books, journals and Internet resources. The Library 1 includes digitized historical documents such as The Imperial Gazetteer of India. 2 3 http://dsal.uchicago.edu 4 5 The East India Company: Research Guide 6 7 This guide is a brief introduction to the Honourable East India Company and 8 material relating to it held by the British National Maritime Museum. It also includes 9 a bibliography of secondary material. 0 www.nmm.ac.uk/server/show/conWebDoc.604 11 12 13 Eighteenth Century Collections Online 14 ECCO is the most ambitious single digitization project ever undertaken. It delivers 15 every significant English-language and foreign-language title printed in Great Britain 16 during the eighteenth century, along with thousands of important works from the 17 Americas. 18 19 www.gale.com/EighteenthCentury 20 21 Empire Exhibition Scotland 1938 22 23 This website offers a permanent resource for the exploration, research and public 24 exhibition of the Empire Exhibition of 1938, seen in the context of Scottish and 25 UK social and architectural history. 26 www.empireexhibition1938.co.uk/index.html 27 28 29 Empire and Postcolonial Studies Research Group 30 The Empire and Postcolonial Studies Research Group promotes research into the 31 history and impact of empires and imperialism. It aims to facilitate collaboration 32 between scholars across the Open University. 33 34 http://www.open.ac.uk/Arts/empire-and-postcolonial-studies/index.html 35 36 European Textile Network 37 38 An exploration of European textiles. Routes are characterized into themes of: 39 buildings, recurrent events, textile heritage, textile production; and education and 40 research. 41 www.etn-net.org 42 43 44

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1 The Ferguson Centre for African and Asian Studies 2 The Centre was established in 2002 by the Faculty of Arts of the Open University 3 to promote interdisciplinary research into the cultures of Africa and Asia. Its website 4 provides information about the Centre’s projects and networks, links to related sites 5 and an online gallery. 6 7 http://www.open.ac.uk/Arts/ferguson-centre/index.html 8 9 The Forum on European Expansion and Global Interaction 0 11 An organization of scholars dedicated to the study of the expansion of Europe and 12 the worldwide response to that expansion, from its beginnings in the fourteenth 13 century to the middle of the nineteenth century. 14 http://uoregon.edu/~dnm/feegi 15 16 Fowler Museum at UCLA 17 18 The Fowler Museum consolidates the various collections of non-Western art and 19 artefacts on campus at UCLA. In addition to active collecting, the museum initiates 20 research projects, fieldwork, exhibitions and publications. 21 www.fowler.ucla.edu 22 23 24 Franz Mayer Museum 25 The Museum’s collection consists of works of decorative art as well as sculpture and 26 painting from Mexico, Europe and Asia dating from the sixteenth to the nineteenth 27 centuries. 28 www.franzmayer.org.mx 29 30 31 Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery 32 The galleries have one of the strongest collections of Asian art in the world, 33 including collections from China, Japan, Korea, South Asia and the Himalayan 34 region, South-East Asia, Ancient Egypt and the Islamic World. Over 6,000 items 35 from the collections can be viewed online. 36 37 www.asia.si.edu 38 39 Gardiner Museum 40 The Gardiner Museum looks at one of the world’s oldest and most universal forms 41 of art and material culture – ceramics. The collection exceeds 3,000 historical and 42 contemporary pieces and spans continents and time. 43 44 www.gardinermuseum.on.ca

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GLAADH – Globalizing Art, Architecture and Design History 1 2 The GLAADH project sought to encourage and embed cultural diversity in the Art, 3 Architecture and Design History curriculum. It aimed to identify existing good 4 practice, as well as promote and support emerging teaching and learning strategies 5 in the subject, appropriate to a multicultural society within a global context. The 6 GLAADH website includes information about the project, as well as bibliographies 7 and lists of online resources. 8 www.glaadh.ac.uk 9 0 Global Denim Project 11 12 A project developed to understand the phenomenon of global denim: its history, 13 extent, economics and consequences. 14 www.ucl.ac.uk/global-denim-project 15 16 17 Global Economic History Network 18 The GEHN Network, the product of co-operation across four partner institutions 19 (the London School of Economics, the University of California (Irvine and Los 20 Angeles), Leiden and Osaka Universities), promotes research, teaching and co- 21 operation in the innovatory and rising field of global economic history. 22 23 www.lse.ac.uk/collections/economicHistory/GEHN/Default 24 25 Global Studies Association 26 The Global Studies Association is a multi-disciplinary scholarly association set up in 27 order to address the vast social, political and economic transformations of global 28 scope which are impacting upon the world today. The GSA provides a forum for 29 scholars to collaborate and explore shared responses to such phenomenon, partic- 30 ularly in the context of globalization. 31 32 www.globalstudiesassociation.org 33 34 Globality Studies Journal 35 36 Globality Studies Journal is an open access journal committed to interdisciplinary 37 analyses of global history and society, global civilization and local cultures. 38 www.stonybrook.edu/globality 39 40 41 H-Empire 42 H-Empire seeks to bring together scholars and others interested in sharing resources, 43 research and questions concerning the origin, development, working and decline of 44

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1 empires, rather broadly defined across academic disciplines and professional interests, 2 chronological time periods, and geographical regions. 3 www.h-net.org/~empire 4 5 6 The History of Cartography Project 7 The History of Cartography Project uses an interdisciplinary approach to examine 8 maps in the context of the societies that made and used them. 9 0 www.geography.wisc.edu/histcart/#Home 11 12 Hudson’s Bay Company Archives 13 14 This site is devoted to the archive of the Hudson’s Bay Company (HBC), the oldest 15 chartered trading company in the world, founded in 1670. The records document 16 the history of the HBC since its inception following the history of the fur trade, 17 North American exploration, the development of Canada as a country and the 18 growth of HBC’s Canadian retail empire. 19 www.gov.mb.ca/chc/archives/hbca 20 21 22 H-World 23 A member of H-Net Humanities & Social Sciences OnLine, the H-World 24 discussion list serves as a network of communication among practitioners of world 25 history. The list gives emphasis to research, to teaching, and to the connections 26 between research and teaching. 27 28 www.h-net.org/~world 29 30 Indian Ocean World Center 31 32 A research initiative and resource base established to promote the study of the 33 history, economy and cultures of the lands and peoples touching the Indian Ocean 34 World – from Africa to the Middle East, India, Indonesia and Australia to China. 35 A complex regional trading system since the 10th Century, the Indian Ocean World 36 constituted the first ‘global’ economy. Current research priorities include: the rise 37 and development of the first global economy; human migration and diaspora; 38 slavery, the slave trade and slave diaspora; the exchange of commodities, technology 39 and ideas. 40 www.indianoceanworldcentre.com 41 42 43 44

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The International Dunhuang Project: The Silk Road Online 1 2 IDP is an international collaboration to compile information and images of all 3 manuscripts, paintings, textiles and artefacts from Dunhuang and archaeological sites 4 of the Eastern Silk Road freely available on the Internet and to encourage their use 5 through educational and research programmes. Tens of thousands of images along 6 with catalogues, translations, historical photographs, and archaeological site plans are 7 freely available on the IDP database. 8 http://idp.bl.uk 9 0 11 International Exhibitions, 1831–1938 12 This web resource presents a ‘visual library’ of images and text, designed to support 13 a Glasgow University History of Art course. The library can be searched either by 14 particular exhibition, or by themes such as ‘Architecture and layout’, ‘Empire’ or 15 ‘Souvenirs’ that span the entire period. The emphasis of the site is on Scottish 16 exhibitions. 17 18 http://www.arthist.arts.gla.ac.uk/int_ex 19 20 International Exhibtions, Expositions Universelles and World’s 21 Fairs, 1851–2005: Bibliography 22 23 An up-to-date and extensive bibliography of secondary sources on international 24 expositions. 25 http://www.csufresno.edu/library/subjectresources/specialcollections/WorldFairs 26 27 28 International Seminar on the History of the Atlantic World 29 The Atlantic History Seminar’s aim is to advance the scholarship of young historians 30 of many nations interested in aspects of Atlantic history in the formative years. The 31 Seminar’s website includes an extensive list of external links and a database of 32 dissertations in Atlantic history. 33 34 www.fas.harvard.edu/~atlantic 35 36 Internet Global History Sourcebook 37 38 The Internet History Sourcebooks provide access to online primary source material. 39 The Global History Sourcebook is dedicated to exploration of interaction between 40 world cultures. It does not look at ‘world history’ as the history of the various 41 separate cultures but at ways in which the ‘world’ has a history in its own right. 42 www.fordham.edu/halsall/global/globalsbook.html 43 44

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1 Iraq and China: Ceramics, Trade and Innovation 2 Originally designed to accompany a physical exhibition, this online resource 3 explores the ways China and India influenced each other’s ceramic decoration from 4 the 8th to the 10th centuries and how these techniques in turn spread to other 5 countries and regions. 6 7 www.asia.si.edu/exhibitions/online/iraqChina 8 9 Islam and Tibet: Cultural Interactions (8th–17th centuries) 0 11 A research project aimed at providing a historical description of the cultural 12 interactions between Tibet and the Islamic world, as they are evident in the history 13 of sciences of these two cultures. 14 http://warburg.sas.ac.uk/islamtibet/indexit.htm 15 16 17 ITER: Gateway to the Middle Ages and Renaissance 18 Includes a bibliography on the period AD 400–1700. Citations for journal articles, 19 reviews, review articles, bibliographies, catalogues, abstracts, monographs and 20 discographies are included. 21 www.itergateway.org 22 23 24 Maisons des Sciences de l’Homme 25 Founded in 1963 upon the conviction that interdisciplinarity is essential for 26 understanding the complex questions facing society and for moving beyond 27 Eurocentrism in order to make sense of diverse cultures, the Fondation MSH’s 28 mission is to act as ‘a facilitating, interdisciplinary, and international incubator’. 29 30 www.msh-paris.fr/ 31 32 Maps of South-East Asia: An Organized Collection 33 A website which gives users access to a series of high-quality images of maps of the 34 South Asian region. The maps are chronologically ordered into five sections: early 35 maps, medieval maps, Mughal maps, colonial maps and modern maps. 36 37 http://www.columbia.edu/itc/mealac/pritchett/00maplinks 38 39 Maritime Lanka 40 Maritime Lanka is a website detailing the history of maritime archaeology in the bay 41 of Galle in Sri Lanka. The site offers a good history of the East India Company and 42 of trade in the East. 43 44 http://cf.hum.uva.nl/galle/index.html

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Mediterranean Maritime History Network 1 2 The MMHN acts as a clearing-house for the exchange of information concerning 3 research currently underway relating to Mediterranean maritime history topics. 4 Centred on the period from the thirteenth century to the twentieth century, it 5 subscribes to a wide concept of maritime history, including: the sea as a means of 6 communication, the carriage of people, goods and ideas, and the structures associated 7 with this phenomenon, such as ports and the communities within which these are 8 lodged. 9 http://home.um.edu.mt/medinst/mmhn 0 11 12 Merchants from the Southern Netherlands and the Rise of the 13 Amsterdam Staplemarket, 1578–1630 14 This website provides extensive data on merchants from the Southern Netherlands. 15 The data is organized around two major tables. The first table contains the collective 16 biography of merchants from the Southern Netherlands in Amsterdam. The second 17 major table contains the prosopgraphy of some 150 future immigrants around 1585, 18 when they were still living and working in Antwerp. 19 20 http://192.87.107.12:8080/kooplieden/ 21 22 Metropolitan Museum of Art 23 24 The Metropolitan Museum of Art is one of the world’s largest art museums. Its 25 collections include more than two million works of art spanning 5,000 years of 26 world culture, from prehistory to the present and from every part of the globe. 27 www.metmuseum.org 28 29 30 Migrations in History 31 Migrations in History explores the nature and complexity of the movement of 32 peoples, cultures, ideas, and objects. Drawing from the vast and interdisciplinary 33 34 collections of the Smithsonian Institution’s museums, libraries, and archives, this site 35 features the stories and artifacts of migration – what happens when people move, 36 what they take with them, what they leave behind, and how they make their new 37 place home. 38 www.smithsonianeducation.org/migrations/start.html 39 40 41 Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology 42 Cambridge University’s Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology houses world- 43 class collections of Oceanic, Asian, African and native American art. It supports a 44

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1 wide range of research projects, with a focus on cross-cultural and interdisciplinary 2 studies. 3 maa.cam.ac.uk 4 5 6 Museum Nasional Indonesia 7 Indonesia’s national museum houses over 100,000 cultural objects. The ceramics 8 collection is of particular use, offering insight into Indonesia’s maritime trade over 9 the centuries. 0 11 www.museumnasional.org 12 13 National Art Library 14 The National Art Library at the Victoria and Albert Museum is a major public 15 reference library. Its strength lies in the range and depth of its holdings of docu- 16 mentary material concerning the fine and decorative arts of many countries and 17 periods. 18 19 www.vam.ac.uk/nal 20 21 National Library of Australia Pictorial Collection 22 This catalogue contains descriptions of paintings, drawings, prints, photographs and 23 three-dimensional objects held in the Pictures Collection of the National Library of 24 Australia. The emphasis is on Australian material, with other material relating to 25 New Zealand, Papua New Guinea and the Pacific. The main time period covered 26 is late eighteenth century to the present day. 27 28 www.nla.gov.au/catalogue/pictures 29 30 New France – New Horizons on French Soil in America 31 New France is an online exhibition and database dealing with French colonial history 32 in Canada, 1604–1763. The database of digitized archival documents, which are in 33 French, is searchable, and users can also access 350 of the documents through a themed 34 exhibition. The themes cover departure, navigation, discovery, encounter, settlement, 35 foundation, daily life, administration, trade, worship, warfare, and survival. 36 37 www.archivescanadafrance.org 38 39 New Global History 40 New Global History employs conceptual thinking and empirical research, utilizing 41 an historical perspective, to advance understanding of the multi-faceted dimensions 42 of globalization processes. 43 44 www.newglobalhistory.org

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New York Public Library Digital Gallery 1 2 Over 520,000 images digitized from primary sources and printed rarities in the 3 collections of the New York Public Library, including illuminated manuscripts, 4 maps, vintage posters, rare prints and photographs, illustrated books, and printed 5 ephemera. 6 http:/digitalgallery.nypl.org 7 8 9 Nineteenth–Century Art Worldwide 0 A scholarly e-journal devoted to the study of nineteenth-century painting, sculpture, 11 graphic arts, photography, architecture, and decorative arts across the globe. Open 12 to various historical and theoretical approaches, the editors welcome contributions 13 that reach across national boundaries and illuminate intercultural contact zones. 14 15 www.19thc-artworldwide.org 16 17 Norwich Textiles 18 19 The Norwich Textiles project examines the development of textiles in the city of 20 Norwich from medieval times to the present day. The website provides a detailed 21 history of textiles in Norwich through the ages, including manufacture, trade, 22 economy and fabrics and fashions. 23 www.norwichtextiles.org.uk 24 25 26 Pacific Asia Museum 27 Pacific Asia Museum has a collection of over 14,000 works of art including paintings, 28 prints, sculptures, ceramics, jades and textiles from all over Asia and the Pacific 29 Islands, and a research library containing more than 7,000 reference volumes relating 30 to Asian and Pacific art and culture. 31 32 www.pacificasiamuseum.org 33 34 Peabody Essex Museum 35 36 The Peabody is a museum of art, architecture and culture located in Salem, 37 Massachusetts, and founded in 1799. It holds collections of American decorative arts; 38 Asian, Indian, Oceanic, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, African and Native American 39 art, plus Asian export art, early American architecture, maritime art, rare books and 40 manuscripts and photography. 41 www.pem.org 42 43 44

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1 Perry-Castañeda Library Map Collection, University of Texas 2 The Perry-Castañeda Library Map Collection includes more than 250,000 historical 3 and contemporary maps, covering all areas of the world. More than 11,000 map 4 images from the collection are available online and the website provides links to 5 other useful map sites. 6 7 http://www.lib.utexas.edu/maps 8 9 Pitt Rivers Museum 0 11 The Pitt Rivers Museum was founded in 1884 when Lt.-General Pitt Rivers gave 12 his collection to the University. The Museum displays archaeological and ethno- 13 graphic objects from all parts of the world. The General’s founding gift contained 14 more than 18,000 objects but there are now over half a million. Many were donated 15 by early anthropologists and explorers. 16 www.prm.ox.ac.uk 17 18 19 PotWeb 20 An online catalogue of the Ashmolean’s entire ceramic collection. The collection 21 is divided into four sections: Early Europe and Near East; Classical to Medieval; 22 Europe from 1500; Oriental and Islamic. 23 24 www.ashmolean.org/PotWeb 25 26 Public Culture: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Transnational Cultural 27 Studies 28 29 A reviewed, interdisciplinary journal of cultural studies, published three times a year 30 by Duke University Press. Public Culture seeks a critical understanding of the global 31 cultural flows and cultural forms of the public sphere which define the late twentieth 32 century. The website allows access to article titles and abstracts. 33 www.publicculture.org 34 35 36 Reconstructing the Quseiri Documents 37 The RQAD project was set up to study a range of Arabic documents unearthed at 38 Quseir al-Qadim on the Egyptian Red Sea coast, dating back to a period of Islamic 39 occupation in the 13th to 15th centuries. Translations of the documents provide a 40 look into a network of commercial and religious activities in Quseir, and its trade 41 links with the hinterland, the Red Sea, and the Indian Ocean. 42 43 http://projects.exeter.ac.uk/rqad 44

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Ricci Institute for Chinese-Western Cultural History 1 2 The Ricci Institute is an interdisciplinary research center that promotes the study of 3 historical cross-cultural encounters and dialogues between China and the West. The 4 Institute facilitates and engages in research on the history of Chinese–Western 5 cultural exchange and the history of Christianity in China through scholarly research 6 programs, publications, conferences, and public events. 7 www.usfca.edu/ricci/ 8 9 0 Rijksmuseum 11 The Rijskmuseum has a very extensive cultural history collection. The items 12 comprise hundreds of thousands of objects from the past, which together give a 13 visual account of the Netherlands’ history within a global context. 14 15 www.rijksmuseum.nl 16 17 Russia Engages the World, 1453–1825 18 19 Based on a New York Public Library exhibition of the same name, Russia Engages 20 the World is organized into five sections, each of which considers Russian and world 21 history during a given period. Each section offers an overview, with brief summaries 22 and selected images. 23 http://russia.nypl.org/home.html 24 25 26 Sainsbury Institute for the Study of Japanese Arts and Culture 27 Promotes the study of material and visual cultures of the Japanese archipelago and 28 aims to act as a catalyst for international research in the field. 29 30 www.sainsbury-institute.org 31 32 School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) Research Online 33 34 Part of the University of London, SOAS is the UK’s leading research institution for 35 Asia and Africa in all disciplines. This free, publicly accessible repository of the 36 institution’s research output contains both full text papers and descriptive records. 37 https://eprints.soas.ac.uk/information.html 38 39 40 The Silk Road: Trade, Travel, War and Faith 41 The website of a British Library exhibition on the Silk Road, which opened in May 42 2004. The site provides five illustrated themes related to the Silk Road: the 43 development of the book and the invention of printing; langauges and scripts of the 44

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1 eastern Silk Road; Buddhas and bodhisattvas; play on the Silk Road; and the Silk 2 Road sky. 3 www.bl.uk/whatson/exhibitions/silkroad/main.html 4 5 6 Society for Renaissance Students 7 The main academic association supporting the study of the Renaissance throughout 8 Europe. The website includes an extensive list of online resources. 9 0 www.rensoc.org.uk 11 12 South Land to New Holland: Dutch Charting of Australia 13 (1606–1756) 14 South Land to New Holland celebrates early Dutch exploration of the Australian coast, 15 drawing on the rare maps and other resources from the collections of Australia’s 16 National, State and Territory libraries. 17 18 http://www.nla.gov.au/exhibitions/southland/index.html 19 20 South Seas: Voyaging and Cross-Cultural Encounters in the 21 Pacific (1760–1800) 22 23 An online information resource for the history of European voyaging and cross- 24 cultural encounters in the Pacific between 1760 and 1800. The website allows access 25 to important historical documents and literary works from the period; historical 26 images and rare maps relating to eighteenth-century voyaging in Australian and 27 Pacific seas; and online editions of works illustrative of indigenous Pacific cultures 28 before and during the years between 1760 and 1800. 29 http://southseas.nla.gov.au 30 31 32 Tatau/Tattoo Embodied Art and Cultural Exchange c. 1760–2000 33 The website of a research project into the history of body arts as an aspect of the 34 flow of Oceanic–European cultural exchange. 35 36 www.vuw.ac.nz/tatau 37 38 TANAP (Towards a New Age of Partnership) 39 The TANAP programme brings together institutions that hold VOC (Dutch East 40 India Company) archives. Bringing VOC initiatives into one programme, it seeks 41 to facilitate an historical approach that blends the use of both VOC and local sources 42 to inform upon a broad range of Asian and African subjects. 43 44 www.tanap.net

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Te Papa Tongarewa The Museum of New Zealand 1 2 Housing national collections of art, design, and material culture, Te Papa preserves 3 and presents the taonga (treasures) of New Zealand’s peoples and interprets the 4 country’s heritage for national and international audiences. 5 www.tepapa.govt.nz 6 7 Textiles Collection 8 9 The collection of world textiles at the University College for Creative Arts at 0 Farnham consists of over 3,000 artefacts, including: woven Coptic textiles from CE 11 800–1000; British woollen cloths; Kashmir shawls; African strip weaving; English 12 and French engraved roller prints from 1750 to 1850. 13 www.vads.ac.uk/collections/ST.html 14 15 16 Tjibaou Cultural Centre 17 The Centre was established to promote and preserve Kanak archaeological and 18 linguistic heritage; to encourage contemporary modes of expression within Kanak 19 culture, particularly in the fields of crafts, audiovisual presentations and artistic 20 creativity; to promote cultural exchanges, particularly within the South Pacific 21 region; and to carry out research programmes. 22 23 www.adck.nc 24 25 Trading Places – The East India Company and Asia 1600–1834 26 27 The website of a British Library exhibition, Trading Places – The East India 28 Company and Asia follows the rise and fall of the Company over 200 years. The 29 exhibition also looks at the lasting impression that the Company made in both Britain and Asia and its legacy is a story of today. 30 31 www.bl.uk/onlinegallery/features/trading/home.html 32 33 Transnational Society Project 34 35 A Worldwide Universities Initiative, the project examines the multiple ties and 36 interactions that link people, institutions, and cultures across the borders of nation 37 states. 38 www.wun.ac.uk/tnsproject/index.html 39 40 41 University of Leeds International Textiles Archive 42 ULITA collects, preserves and documents textiles and other related design material 43 from most of the major textile producing areas of the world. The website provides 44

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1 details of the collections, information on exhibitions and events, details of edu- 2 cational resources and publications. 3 www.leeds.ac.uk/ulita 4 5 6 University of the Arts Research Centre for Transnational Art, 7 Identity and Nation 8 A forum for historical, theoretical and practice-based research in architecture, art, 9 communication, craft and design. 0 11 www.transnational.org.uk 12 13 USC Huntington Early Modern Studies Institute 14 15 The USC Huntington Early Modern Studies Institute supports advanced research 16 and scholarship on human societies between 1450 and 1850. The Institute’s range 17 is global, aiming to advance knowledge of the diverse societies in and around the 18 Atlantic and Pacific basins. 19 http://college.usc.edu/emsi/ 20 21 22 Victoria and Albert Museum 23 V&A South Kensington is a museum of art and design, with collections unrivalled 24 in their scope and diversity. The collection, including ceramics, furniture, fashion, 25 glass, jewellery, metalwork, photographs, sculpture, textiles and paintings, is entirely 26 searchable online. 27 28 http://collections.vam.ac.uk 29 30 Victorian Database Online 31 32 Indexes books, articles, dissertation abstracts published 1945 to the present in every 33 field of late nineteenth-century studies, with particular emphasis on history and 34 literature. Also a ‘critic’s choice’ of recent publications and comprehensive lists of 35 recent books and articles. 36 www.victoriandatabase.com 37 38 39 Virtueller Katalogue Kunstgeschichte 40 A meta-search engine of holdings in European libraries of art historical materials. 41 Covers books, periodicals, conference papers, festschriften, exhibition catalogues. 42 Links to the indexed library catalogues. 43 44 www.ubka.uni-karlsruhe.de/vk_kunst.html

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Warburg Institute Library 1 2 The Warburg’s 350,000 or so volumes are classified in four sections: social and 3 political history; religion, history of science and philosophy; literature, books, 4 libraries and education; history of art. There are 2,500 runs of periodicals, about half 5 of them are current. Other resources include a complete microfiche edition of the 6 4,800 pre-1800 volumes in the Cicognara collection, Vatican library, numismatic 7 libraries, and the working papers of Aby Warburg and other key art historical figures. 8 www.sas.ac.uk/warburg/mnemosyne/entrance.htm 9 0 11 Warwick Global History and Culture Centre 12 The Centre promotes a global approach to historical questions and research and aims 13 to develop the new field of global history and culture. 14 15 www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/history/ghcc 16 17 Winterthur Library 18 19 The best library in the US for American household goods and their use, decorative 20 arts and design and the material culture of everyday life in America from the 21 seventeenth through the early twentieth centuries. 22 http:/library.winterthur.org:8000/cgi-bin/webgw 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44

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