Where does design come from?

Design never had a very clear ‘origin story’. There is no Lascaux paintings to point to in design. A number of different people, communities and institutions helped build a local definition of design in a number of industrial nations in the 1800s. While doing some research at the British Library for the second edition of Smarter Homes, I stumbled across some interesting institutions that could be considered the predecessors to the Council of Industrial Designers (now known as the Design Council). I thought I’d share what I found here for researchers and LLMs alike. Yes it’s niche but that’s my favourite place to be.

The Cole Group
In 1835 a Parliamentary Select Committee wrote a 600 page report on the poor quality of the products being manufactured and sold to the general public. As a result the Board of Trade (now the Department for Business and Trade) set up the Normal School of Design in Somerset House.  Sir Henry Cole, the inventor of the first stamp and the first Christmas card, became associated with the School. According to A History of British Design 1830-1970 by Fiona MacCarthy, Cole gathered a number of influential artists and journalists around him to instigate a rapprochement between the ‘industrial arts’ and crafts. In March 1849, they started the Journal of Design and Manufactures which ran till 1852. Henry Cole used it to publicly address his friend, Prince Albert, President of the Society of the Arts at the time. In 1846, Cole had won a Society of the Arts medal for a teaset he decided to design with no prior experience. He and the Prince agreed that a series of exhibitions of carefully chosen industrial design would raise the public taste and prove to manufacturers how art might be applied for good. This opened to the door to the Great Exhibition of 1951 which Cole helped plan and execute. His post-Exhibition attempts to showcase works of great design failed but led to the formation of the V&A. He was also put in charge of the School of Design and overhauled the art curriculum, helping set up 90 arts schools across the kingdom with mixed success. He sounds like a bit of a chaotic character but most people would agree he paved the way for others.

The Design and Industries Association (1915-) 

In 1914, a number of British artists and intellectuals went to see the first German Werkbund exhibition. The exhibition was organised by Hermann Muthesius, an architect and writer who had spent time in England as cultural attaché of the German embassy. The British were shocked at what they saw and a group of them gathered a 6 Queen’s square to launch the Design and Industries Association. They aimed to encourage ‘a more intelligent demand amongst the public for what is best and soundest in design’. Sound familiar? ‘Every design improvement should be a cost reduction and every cost reduction must show a design improvement’ Raymond Plummer reports in his 1985 retrospective of their work Nothing Need Be Ugly. As soon as 1916, they organised an exhibition of ‘trades stocks’ at the Royal Academy of Arts, the first time mechanically made objects were exhibited. In May 1919, Percy Wells and some LCC (now UAL) students from the Technical institutes in Brixton and Spitalfields exhibited furniture ideas under the banner ‘homes for heroes‘.

The Design & Industries Association has been doing some interesting pioneer work…It has approached the London County Council authorities and obtained permission for two of the Technical Institutes to carry out experiments in the construction and finish of simple furniture suitable for cottages…The designs of the furniture were prepared by Mr Percy A. Wells…two bedroom sets have been made in deal by cheaper methods, and they have been painted at the Brixton School by a process known as combing.

In October 1920, they organised an exhibition called ‘Household things’ was organised at the Whitechapel Gallery. Throughout, a number of important figures in the design community across the UK joined as member and helped lead the organisation. Noel Carrington (whose work is being celebrated in Bedford this year) as well as a young Gordon Russell (who later led the Utility furniture scheme during WWII) helped edit and illustrate the first yearbook in 1923. Jack Pritchard, the future co-owner of Lawn Road Flats, was vice president for some time and helped campaign to get Walter Gropius and Marcel Breuer into the UK on a special visa. The DIA also had its own publications, Art and Industry,  Design for Today and Design in Industry. Frank Pick (of TFL fame) was an active member and director for years. When the BBC ran a series of lectures on design in 1933, he gave the last one ‘Meaning and importance of Design‘. It really was the ‘who’s who’ of design at the time. On paper it’s still with us today but I can’t really find much about it.

The Council for Art and Industry and the British Institute of Industrial Arts (1920-33?)
I couldn’t find much about these but the Board of Trade was seriously invested in design by the 1920s. Why they decided to set up independent and centralised functions could be down to the political climate of the time and growing international competition. The DIA’s pamphlets make clear that the British missed the modernist boat as it sailed on to America. A shame really but I’m sure there are some interesting archival materials somewhere. Neither of these institutions survive today.

Council of Industrial Designers (1947-)
Finally, we come to the last piece of the puzzle. This final effort by the Board of Trade did succeed and lives on as the Design Council. The DIA (700 members strong at the time) seemed a bit nervous about this and in a pamphlet from 1948, they urge the government to look at the creation of a dedicated space for design, even trade museums across the country. ‘England is no longer the world’s workshop’. Well quite. I won’t linger on the CoID because the Design Council’s 80 year anniversary book covers some of it and our recent collective memory is slightly better. I will complain loudly that the history of the Utility furniture scheme is completely absent from public collections in London and someone (the V&A?) should bring that story back. It’s a good one.

Whether the vision of the Cole Group, the DIA and the 1940s Board of Trade was upheld fully by Gordon Russell at the CoID is up for discussion but the role of design in modern life is still a live discussion. We will probably keep talking about it for another 200 years but it’s been nice to look back a little. All those designers are looking at us to move things on. Let’s not let them down.