Master or Market?: The Anglo-Japanese textile designs of Christopher Dresser

Kramer, Elizabeth (2006) Master or Market?: The Anglo-Japanese textile designs of Christopher Dresser. Journal of Design History, 19 (3). pp. 197-214. ISSN 0952-4649

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Abstract

Victorian designer Christopher Dresser's 1876-77 journey to Japan has been heralded as an experience that revolutionized his designs for a variety of mediums. His textile designs, however, are often dismissed in favour of the discussion of the corpus of works produced after his return to England that most strongly support the view of the designer as a proto-modernist, despite recent attempts to emphasize instead his role as the first properly so-called industrial designer. This article critically examines Dresser's Anglo-Japanese textile designs and observations of Japanese textile culture during his travels in order to contextualize him and his work with regard to nineteenth-century design reform, Victorian ideas of Japanese art and culture, and consumer taste. It abandons attempts at myth making to better show how the designer and his activities relate to cultural, social and economic history.

Item Type:	Article
Uncontrolled Keywords:	consumption, Dresser, Christopher, late nineteenth century, textile design, manufacture
Subjects:	W200 Design studies
Department:	Faculties > Arts, Design and Social Sciences > Design
Depositing User:	Ay Okpokam
Date Deposited:	06 May 2015 10:47
Last Modified:	12 Oct 2019 19:34
URI:	http://nrl.northumbria.ac.uk/id/eprint/22298

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