Seductiwa Discourses: Design Adwice for the Home-An Introduction

摘要

This special issue of Interiors examines the role of design advice for the home from the 1870s to 1970, and recognizes its significance in shaping contemporary and historical perceptions and representations of the domestic sphere. Readers will find articles focusing on the late nineteenth century in Britain, and articles addressing the postwar period in Europe, Africa and the United States. Contributors based in the UK, USA and Germany include a range of scholars across institutions and disciplines: design, design history, gender and social history. There are common issues among the articles in the discussions of similar modes of advice and their purposes, but also interesting differences, such as the type of media used, matters of authorship and the audiences targeted. Perhaps contrary to some readers' expectations, none of the articles attempts to uncover real interiors and practice from the advice studied and they search instead for the ideological underpinnings and cultural significance of these discourses. It is possible this is in response to earlier publications by design historians Grace Lees-Maffei and Emma Ferry, in which both examined at length the problems of taking advice literature as direct evidence of practice. We would particularly want to highlight the special issue devoted to domestic advice, published by the Journal of Design History in 2003, where its editor Lees-Maffei and contributors Penny Sparke, Emma Ferry, Rachel Rich, and Frances Collard discussed the merits and efficacy of advice as a discourse on design and domesticity.