Material History Virtual World Publication

Index Introduction Sarah Cheang and James Ryan 4 Workplaces Research Spaces 8 & Spaces Workplaces A visualization of where the 12 Across Places cohort is based Research Profiles 19 Collecting Practices 24 Features Dressing the Body 34 Designing Cities and Nations 42 Credits Everyday Objects and Consumption 50 Photography and Digital Media 60 Knowledge Exchange 70 Artefacts of Performance 74 Eve MacNeill 76 Deepika Srivastava 78 Jordan Mitchell-King 82 Freya Purcell 84 Genevieve Drinkwater 88 Anna Talley and Fleur Elkerton 92 Denise Lai 96 Abigail Barthee and Alyssa Myers 98 Denise Lai, Freya Purcell, and Emma O’Regan-Reidy 102

Sarah Cheang & James Ryan Material History Virtual World 4

Introduction 2019 -2021 The students from the V&A/RCA MA History of De- sign programme 2019-20, whose hard work is mani- fest here in Material History/Virtual World, have had to weather many storms and navigate many altered terrains in the course of their studies. This year we were unable to host our usual History of Design sym- posium in the magnificent Lydia and Manfred Gorvy Lecture Theatre at the V&A Museum in South Kens- ington, London. Instead, the graduating cohort of V&A/RCA MA History of Design students chose to de- sign and produce an online space that could combine live, web-based symposia with an online publication that celebrates and showcases their work. Their en- ergy, ideas and resilience not only shows us what is still possible during a global pandemic, but also how design history as a discipline may go forward in these new times. 5

Sarah Cheang & James Ryan This online format has not only opened up students’ amazing post- graduate work to new audiences around the world. It has also challenged students to work together to explore some truly innovative ways to repre- sent and share their ideas and research. We would like to congratulate the whole team from the V&A/RCA History of Design 2019-2021 graduating cohort, for the great achievement of putting together their graduation website: https://www.materialhistoryvirtualworld.com/, the virtual archi- tecture that housed their live symposium events, as well as this publica- tion. They have been amazing trailblazers in using digital resources and spaces in the History of Design. In so doing they have set down some important markers for future generations of students in terms of experi- mental ways to make and share design history knowledge. On the History of Design Programme, we think about history and we do history through the study of both everyday and extraordinary material culture, in the widest possible sense. Our focus often goes way beyond the museum object, to include food, plants and animals, the human body, the built environment, designed systems and the digital, and even pushes discussions of materiality to include sound and movement. We think about the materials and processes that were used to make things, the people, and the skills. We explore the cultural dynamics that have moved objects from one owner, or one place to another, caused new styles or technolo- gies to come into being, or that made certain aspects of the natural world economically, symbolically or emotionally important. We consider how the past is being dealt with in the present through preservation or renewal, and how are we planning for the future at an individual or national level through the material culture that surrounds us. We examine how design solves problems and how social problems shape our material world. And how, in our everyday lives, we interact with the immaterial using our sensing bodies and the technologies that surround us. This is all the stuff of design history. Covid-19, together with the urgency of climate change and social jus- tice campaigns, means that we are living through times that have changed forever our perceptions of what it means to be globally interconnected, and even what it means to simply be at home. This publication and the on- line platform that supports it is all the more impressive when we remem- ber that it has been achieved by students reaching out with generosity to each other from the confines of their personal study spaces – creatively captured and visualised in this publication – rather than their usual shared spaces at the RCA and V&A. The maps and visualisations presented here of dispersed student workplaces, present another reminder of how much we have missed working together in our usual spaces of interaction. They remind us of how much we value the atmospheres of the art college and the museum, of the noisy, populated corridors, with people in galleries and studios, working, sharing and enjoying being with objects of great 6

Introduction power and beauty. This online platform employs an elegantly simple de- sign, taking the interior floor-print of the Museum as the framework onto which are placed individual and collective research enquiries. Visitors to the website can thus navigate conceptually and spatially across these virtual-material spaces. In this way, this publication confirms how material history resides not just in objects and places, but in memory. As many thinkers have noted, memory can be likened to a sort of space, full of collections of objects, people and events. Cicero – the Roman scholar, statesman and sceptic - advised classical narrators who wished to learn the art of memory, to disperse parts of a story through a real or imagined building: the building thus becomes a repository of memory and we can remember the story by walking around the building. The last year has had a range of disconcert- ing effects, including on memory. The lockdowns have brutally curtailed usual social lives and cultural activities; our museums and universities have been closed, and many of their usual inhabitants are confined to home, communicating through screens. This publication is centrally concerned with questions of materiality and its connection to virtual and imagined worlds. It reminds us how imag- ined and designed worlds also come to shape our material worlds, and that virtual worlds, like material worlds, have design histories that deserve critical attention. The work of the students behind this publication has by necessity been highly innovative methodologically, employing novel means to access online historical sources and connect meaningfully and critically with material objects and spaces. Many of the projects that the students have undertaken, which they showcase on these pages, give new insights into how virtual worlds are designed and connected to ma- terial worlds in complex, historically nuanced and socially mediated ways. That design history and design historians can also move effectively and meaningfully between virtual and material worlds could not have been more elegantly demonstrated. 7

Wo-rskpaces 8

& Places As we moved from libraries and archives to bedrooms and sofas – here is a selection of the cohort’s workspaces from across the world. From these desks we have explored objects and stories from across time and geographies, all without leaving the house. (1/2) 9

Work -spaces 10

& Places (2/2) 11

Workspaces A visualization United Kingdom United States China of where the of America cohort is based 11 2 3 12

Across Places Austria Ireland Poland Italy India Israel Canada 111 1 1 11 13

Research Profiles

Dissertation Titles & Areas of Interes15t

Collecting

Practice17s

Genevieve Drinkwater Forgotten Grand Tourists: Reconstructing the Archives of the Women Who Collected and Curated the Natural World Where Europe, North America, South America When 1763-1845 What women collectors, collecting nature, curiosity, cabinets, gender, British country houses, postcolonialism, empire, material culture As someone who has always been fas- them as elite cultural capital, replete with cinated in practices of collection, the ornamental and apparently ‘exotic’ mate- programme has helped me refine my re- rials. search questions: what compels people to design collections? For what purpose Utterly absorbed (and appalled) by do they accumulate ‘things’? And, when the ways collectors subjected materials they’re displayed, who does and doesn’t to new narrativisations, my historiography get to see them? Focussing on aristo- essay detailed the collecting practises cratic eighteenth-century collectors who of Sir Hans Sloane Sir Hans Sloane. As a travelled the world in search of natural Grand Tour collector of global proportions, and man-made ‘curiosities’, my research his efforts were instrumental in the birth attempts to deprivilege Eurocentric per- of the British Museum in 1753. Mapping spectives. Revealing the exploitative the divergent ways scholars have brought practices entailed in the production, con- their opinions to bear on the genesis of sumption, and mediation of their collec- the collection he ‘bequeathed to the na- tions, it has been my aim to unravel the tion’, I concluded by considering the ways material controversies of the past that museums overlook the violent extraction continue to inhabit the present. of ethnographic objects they continue to archive and exhibit today. Interested by the materials Enlighten- ment collectors accumulated, my object Interested in the power individual’s essay dissected the mystery of the V&A’s wield with archives – and increasingly rare ivory manikin (c.1750-1800). Encased alarmed by the predominance of male nar- in a box that resembles a funeral bier, the ratives in collecting scholarship – I began 18 cm-long manikin can be disassembled to wonder: where were all the women? Re- to reveal a miniature foetus. Carved out of covering elite eighteenth-century women prohibitively expensive African elephant collectors from the archives and rearticu- ivory which offered limited anatomical ac- lating them as designers of global natural curacy, it failed as a didactic tool. Divested history collections, my dissertation traced of its practical, educational utility, I con- their travel routes and examined their il- cluded that, over time, such objects were lustrated journals to show how they pro- coveted by curiosity collectors who prized cured specimens such as fossils, feathers, taxidermy, and minerals. Categorising and 18

Research Profile Collecting Practices displaying them in purpose-built cabinets 1. Ivory anatomical figure of a woman and boxes in their English country houses, (c.1700-1750), V&A Museum I argued that their actions contributed to https://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/ the British empire’s colonial expansion. O310798/anatomical-figure-of-a- woman-statuette-unknown Today, I continue to nurture a rap- 2. Sir Ashton Lever's Museum id-response digital archive I co-founded in Leicester Square, 1785. called ‘WORD ON THE STREET’. The proj- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leve ect collects and maps crowd-sourced rian_collection#/media/File:Per street photography found in the wake of spective_interior_view_of_Sir_Ash COVID-19. As a rich repository of material ton_Lever's_Museum_in_Leices expressions, it is my hope that it will serve ter_Square,_London_March_30 future historians from a range of different _1785._Watercolour_by_Sarah_ disciplines. Stone.jpg 3. The destruction of Holland House, Kensington where Lady Holland’s natural history was exhibited. https://commons.wikimedia.org/ wiki/File:Holland_House_library_ after_an_air_raid.jpg 19

Eve MacNeill Fandom as ‘Design-History in Praxis’: Fan-led Practices of Pop Music Memorabilia Collection and Curation Where UK, USA When 1950-Today What pop culture, pop music, ephemera, social history, subcultures My research throughout the duration of fans who collect pop music memorabilia of my time on the History of Design MA from the 1960s to 1980s, and continue to course has focused on the material prod- collect up until the present day. Drawing ucts of 20th-Century popular music cul- on oral history interviews and material tures in the UK. As a member of the Per- from fan websites and magazines, my find- formance pathway, this focus on popular ings concluded that pop music fan collec- music has engaged with my questions tors are sophisticated in their practice, and surrounding the ephemeral nature of constitute rich resources of material and performance fragments and the tension lived knowledge surrounding pop music. this has with ideas of preservation. Addi- My second chapter went on to weigh up tionally, my research has interacted with how museum institutions working on pop wider questions surrounding the place of music projects might benefit from various popular cultures within history-making, types of collaboration or co-curation with and the museum setting. these fans and their private collections. Completing this dissertation research For my first, object orientated, essay has left me with a keen interest in the way I examined a 1908 phonograph cylinder in which popular culture, more generally, and box housed in the V&A’s Prints and can be represented in museum spaces in Drawings Department. This essay dealt a way which encourages inclusivity and with the relationship between a physical, goes against cultural gatekeeping. designed object, and the experiences and sensations that it evoked. Following this, my second historiographic essay exam- ined interactive record cover designs from the 1970s, exploring various historical ex- planations that academics have presented as an explanation for this brief period of a specifically multi-sensory sleeve design. My dissertation project continued the emphasis on consumers of popular music and its associated material cultures. In this sustained research, I traced the practices 20

Research Profile Collecting Practices 1. Example of an Edison Phonograph Cylinder (Creative Commons) 2. The Rolling Stone’s interactive design for their Sticky Fingers LP (Creative Commons) 3. Pink Floyd Collector Bob Follen’s collection, who I interviewed as part of my dissertation (Follen’s own photograph, which he sent to me and gave me permission to use) 21

Dressing

the Bod23y

Jordan Mitchell-King Women’s Jumps and Quilted Waistcoats in the Eighteenth-Century: Production, Consumption and Mediation Where Britain When 1700-1800 What dress and undress, reconstruction, makers, wearing practices I am a historian of dress and textiles, with having connotations of sexual looseness a particular interest in makers, making and immorality. This research not only practices, and embodied experiences of deepens our understanding of dress in dress. My dissertation research looks at the eighteenth-century, but also informs eighteenth-century quilted waistcoats, significant themes of research on this pe- examining their production and con- riod, including ideas of privacy, comfort, sumption in the first dedicated study health, and morality. on these garments. Quilted waistcoats and jumps have been broadly equated My research methods make use of in an existing literature that often refer- innovative experimental methodologies. ences them only briefly. My research I make use of practice-based reconstruc- demonstrates that the two could be dis- tions and experimental embodied wearing tinguished in the period depending on practices in order to provide alternative their material qualities and their makers. means of accessing the unwritten, and Jumps are more generally associated often gendered knowledge surrounding with containing some boning and are dress and textiles histories. This included made by staymakers, whereas quilted reconstructing a seventeenth-century waistcoats were unboned and sold by embroidery technique to better under- haberdashers and linen drapers who stand the labour and skill required for employed seamstresses to make them. the making of a young girl’s embroidered The findings of this research provide a box. This extended in my dissertation re- more nuanced understanding of quilted search during which I reconstructed an waistcoats and jumps in this period, as a extant quilted waistcoat and then used garment which straddled the boundary the reconstructed garment to experiment between under- and outerwear, challeng- with combining it with other eighteenth ing our twenty-first century assumptions century garments. Practice-based ap- about how dress and dressing functioned proach to dress and textile histories is a in the past. The cultural connotations of vibrant means to access the materiality these garments fluctuated depending of the past, and developing methodology on when and how they were worn, run- and theory surrounding these practices is ning the spectrum of respectable wear to one way I intend to expand my research. Handling, making, using, and wearing re- 24

Research Profile Dressing the Body production textiles can enable a tactile en- gagement with the past which can rarely be achieved with historic items due to their fragility and the needs of conservation. Through developing guided workshops, I aim to further encourage this alternative perspective of the past for academic and popular audiences. 25

Xiaoyu Chen The Desire for Light: Diamond Cutting in the Eighteenth-Century Where Europe When 18th Century What jewellery I studied jewellery design in some of Between the 1600 and 1750, diamond the most traditional jewellery schools in cutting techniques improved enormously Paris before starting the MA in History than any other previous era. In my disser- of Design. I have a keen interest in jew- tation, I examine the reasons that led to ellery history and its making techniques. development of diamond cutting and the Goldsmiths use their hands to register different factors that might have influenced history by the things they made. Jewel- this trend. Diamond cutting can be seen lery can be considered one of the most as one of the embodiments of the social, important archives we have today, since cultural, political state of the period. I am they can record changes in taste, politics currently working on exploring further this and consumer habits. They can also re- material relationship. Besides explaining cord the shift in material and techniques. the development of diamond cutting tech- Technique is the most direct method to niques and analysing diamond pieces from change the look of jewellery. My view is a number of museums, my objective is to that technique is a way to understand uncover what led to a ‘desire for light’ in history which can be applied to many re- the eighteenth century. search areas. To some extent, jewellery is a comprehensive embodiment of a par- ticular era. My dissertation focuses on the changs of diamond-cutting techniques as the desire for light considerably increased during the baroque period. Scholars often place the ‘seventeenth century’, ‘eighteenth century’, ‘baroque period’ and diamonds together. However, diamond consumption had also grown sig- nificantly since the second half of the sev- enteenth century which coincided with the development of new cutting techniques. 26

Research Profile Dressing the Body 1. Enamelled gold and silver dia monds ring with hair. 1730. Credit: Royal Collection Trust, RCIN 9020 2. Plate 4 of the suite of 12 designs for jewellery entitled ‘Livres des Ouvrages d’Orfevrerie’. Paris, 1663. Gilles Légaré. Credit: Victoria and Albert Museum, 12810:4 27

Krystyna Spark Barbara Hoff’s Fashion Column: Exam- ining the Connection Between Fashion in Communist Poland and the West Where Britain When 1954 –1974 What fashion, 1960’s, communism, Poland, magazines, transfer of trends Throughout my time on the History of De- throughout the 1960s. Using contempo- sign MA course my research focused on rary printed magazines as main primary the study of a mid-eighteenth century silk sources and Polish designer, Barbara case with removable mirror, held in the Hoff’s, fashion column written for “Prze- V&A collection. What drew me to this ob- krój” magazine as a case study, I hope to ject was its unknown purpose and, in my illustrate the way in which public desire essay, I attempted to identify its possible for Western fashion trends was swayed uses. Studying an object held within the and manipulated by the Communist gov- museum’s Furniture, Textiles and Fashion ernment. department put me on the path towards the exploration of these design fields. My My research also draws attention to second essay about the changing per- similarities between the clothing designed ceptions of the economy car was an un- in Poland and that outside of the confines expected deviation from these subjects. of a centrally steered economy. Noticing However, exploring a different topic reaf- these connections raises the question of firmed my interest in fashion history and I design innovation and brings to the fore- decided to focus on it for my dissertation. front Polish designers whose work was not previously placed on an equal level to In the 1960s London was undeniably those from the West. My research looks setting the tone for what was culturally at the limitations of the surroundings in deemed as cool. In 1962 fashion designer which fashion designers working in Poland Mary Quant signed a contract with lead- during the 1960s operated not as factors ing American department store chain, necessarily hindering their creative out- J.C. Penney. Less than five years later The put, but rather, as circumstances which Rolling Stones played a concert in Com- allowed for a different kind of creativity. munist-ruled Poland. The influence of En- My dissertation research has led me to gland’s capital was felt across the globe, discover not only the connective qualities yet behind the Iron Curtain admitting this of fashion, but also, revealed to me the was problematic. Through my chosen lens power and importance of print media and of fashion I attempt to portray how infor- how relevant its past designs are still to- mation about current trends in dress was day. I hope to carry forward this approach transmitted between Poland and the West of questioning the labels given to objects 28

Research Profile Dressing the Body perceived as less valuable, which I myself 1. “Przekrój” magazine no. 1024, 22 was called to notice while being on this November 1964, p.12 course. These are tools that I am extremely 2. Wojciech Plewinski, Grazyna Hase grateful for and make use of everyday. and Krzysztof Litwin in designs by Barbara Hoff, Warsaw, 1964 3. Jean Shrimpton in a Mary Quant dress, photograph by John French, 1964. Victoria and Albert Museum, London 29

Shawkay Ottmann ‘Made in England France’: Dress and Disguise of the Special Operations Executive Where UK, France When 1940-1944 What dress, disguise, identity, uniform, camouflage, footwear, World War II During this programme I have been able chemise has numerous names, including to focus specifically on dress history, robes à la Creole, chemise à la reine, che- examining the ways in which identity mise à la grecque, empire style, or simply, and society interact within dress. I have white muslin gowns. Regardless of who or expanded my research to include the why it was created, it is generally agreed making and manufacturing of dress and the chemise was important because of continually delved deeper into the rela- how it reflected the shift in society at a tu- tionship between wear and the body to multuous period in history. The chemise further understand how people use cloth- represented a canvas for politics and a ing. means of redefining gender. In my object based essay, I re- Finally, my dissertation was about searched a typical Victorian mourning how the French section (F Section) of ensemble from the 1880s created by Jay’s the Special Operations Executive (SOE) General Mourning Warehouse in London. utilised dress. The SOE was a highly re- The ensemble, a silk bodice and skirt, garded British intelligence organisation along with archival documents such as that operated during World War II, with advice columns and patent papers, re- sections around the world. F Section used vealed a ‘cult of mourning’ in the middle dress as camouflage to aid integrating into and upper classes; people that strived for the maquis (French Resistors) and French social acceptance. The mourning ware- society with the aim to escape the notice houses built to service excessive mourn- of the Nazi occupiers and other enemies ing regulations aided in popularising inno- while building up sabotage networks. The vations in textile and dress manufacturing agents’ experiences were explored by as well as contributing to the rise of de- reading memoirs written by former agents partment stores and catalogues. and reports in the SOE archives. Dress was contextualised through the lens of wartime My historiography examined the uniforms and the creation of French-styled chemise gown, popular from the late dress in Britain for disguise. This allowed eighteenth century until 1815 in France. for an investigation of how dress was Numerous historians have written about used by agents, how they adapted to re- the style with various theories of its incep- gional dress styles in wartime France, how tion and spread, to the point where the 30

Research Profile Dressing the Body agents’ clothing worked or failed, and how 1. Jacqueline Nearne in Battledress. clothing was traded, gifted, and obtained. PublicResourceOrg, School for The research finding was that in war, dress Danger, online video recording, was a system built on relationships and YouTube, 26 December 2010, connection. https://www.youtube.com/watch ?v=b0BH0F-hrCA [accessed 4 September 2020]. 2. List of agents equipment and operational stores Technical Review – Section V: Operational Equipment p 21. TNA, HS 7/48 3. Differences in Continental and English Shirts. TNA, HS7/49. 31

Designing Cities

Nations & 33

Deepika Srivastava Reassessing Architectural Practice in Liberalised (post-1991) India: A case of Mumbai-based SJK Architects Where India When 1990-Today What architecture, architectural practice, women entrepreneurs, gender, design practice As a design historian, my professional ative businesses. India’s liberalisation in interest lies in working towards the main- 1991, by opening the country’s doors to stream representation of contemporary new economic and market reforms, is key design and architecture. It took shape to their success. Liberalisation not only during my undergraduate studies in an allowed them to expand their businesses architecture school in India. My MA dis- to global markets, and in the case of Kadri, sertation titled, ‘Reassessing architectur- deal with clients who came to India from al practice in post-liberalised (1991) India: abroad, but also expanded the boundaries A Case of Mumbai-based SJK Architects’, of what being a woman practitioner meant is a step towards this goal. Through my in a changing India. My insights are drawn research, I present an alternative meth- from an interview with the studio’s design odology to approach contemporary ar- directors focusing on how these factors chitectural practice in India. I do this by overlap with the stage of client brief de- focussing on a Mumbai-based studio, SJK velopment. Architects, founded in 1990, and led by a female practitioner, Shimul Javeri Kadri. This study is a first-of-its kind, as Factors which influence practice, such as it moves away from the usual format of location, organisational structure, media the monograph, that is, the focus on the coverage, external collaborators such as architect’s life and ideology, and focuses project-specific consultants, and nature on situating contemporary architectural of commissioning clients, are profiled practice in India, within the societal land- through published academic and media scape it exists in. Moreover, with its focus works, and serve as a device to under- on gender and its impact, it also presents stand SJK Architects. a way to understand how the dynamics of gender play out in the day-to-day op- These factors are then contextual- erations of women-led architecture prac- ised within the practice’s response to tices in liberalised India. Going forth, I am gender and development of architect-cli- keen to do further work on the tensions ent relations, by focussing on two of their between global capitalism, so-called soft women clients, Sunita Namjoshi and power of the creative industries, and the Sneha Iype. Kadri, Namjoshi, and Iype, ‘on the ground’ realities of design practice all are women entrepreneurs owning cre- and production in the Global South. 34

Research Profile Designing Cities and Nations 1. Team of SJK Architects (image source accessed on 16 November 2020). Website of SJK Architects: https://www. sjkarchitect.com/ team-sjk 2. Diagram representing the hierarchy in the organisational structure of SJK Architects. Author, Deepika Srivastava. 3. Private residence in Alibaug done by SJK Architects. SJK Architects. 4. Interior of the corporate office of Synergy Lifestyles in an industrial complex of Mumbai, first built in 1997, and then renovated and com pleted in 2016. Source: Rajesh Vora, for SJK Architects. 35

Denise Lai Visualising Wawasan 2020: Aspirations for a Modern Malaysia Where Malaysia When 1991-2018 What malaysian design history, national development programmes, popular culture, performance, print, postcolonial design, alternative modernities This year was an opportunity for me, as shown, and what does not. In particular, a Malaysian design student educated in I was struck by the absence of Malay- the West, to undo all the assumptions sian design. This absence inspired my about ‘good design’ that I had carried dissertation which looked at the design into the course. This involved reflecting of Malaysia’s flagship development pro- on museum acquisition practices, how gramme, Wawasan 2020 (‘Vision 2020’). these institutions share and construct Launched in 1991, Wawasan 2020 pro- histories, and addressing the narratives posed to make Malaysia a ‘developed’ na- and communities which are neglected in tion by the year 2020. Whereas previous the process. research looked at the programme as a political-economic project, my research My first essay explored the textured analyses the programme as a collection history of a shipwreck artefact in the V&A’s of designed alternative modernities. These ceramics collection. The piece, known as included the grand vision of a distinctively thw Sea Sculpture, is composed of three Malaysian modernity constructed by rul- separate pieces of 18th-century porcelain ing politicians as well as the responses of fragments fused together with barnacles Malaysian citizens, who manifested their as it sat under the seabed for over two own visions of modernity, both celebratory hundred and eighty years. Over its history, and critical. My dissertation argues that it the Sea Sculpture transformed from a was predominately through art, popular group of utilitarian objects used in China, culture, and performances that these mo- Batavia and Europe, to a valuable sculp- dernities were articulated, circulated and ture mythologised by the V&A as a rich debated in the public sphere. Understand- and curious product of nature-as-artist. ing Wawasan 2020 as a modern design I demonstrated how the meaning of the phenomenon shows how, in the context sculpture continuously evolved accord- of a postcolonial nation, design was used ing to the values of the institutions which as a tool to reject the image of (un)moder- claimed ownership of it. nity imposed by Western colonial powers. In turn, the act of constructing a futuristic, Pursuing this sculpture’s history in utopian Malaysian allowed for individual the V&A’s acquisition records and galler- citizens to craft an image of modernity in ies gave an uncomfortable demonstration their own terms. of how museum displays still belie tradi- tional standards of what deserves to be 36

Research Profile Designing Cities and Nations 1. Sea Sculpture, Underglaze of 2. Formation of a ‘Wawasan 2020’ cobalt blue decorated porcelain banner with human participants at pieces fused together by fire the 1991 Independence Day and encrusted with shell and coral parade. Photograph. Five Arts growths, Jingdezhen (made), ca. Centre Archive 1725 (made), 17 cm (h) x 22 cm (w), 3. Drawing of aerial view of Kuala FE.7-2007, © Victoria and Albert Lumpur in 2020, ‘2020’, Rileks!, Museum, London. Issue #1, 1997. Comic splash page. Tatsun Publishing Sdn. Bhd. 37

Xingyuan Han Chinese Museums and their Massification Innovations Where China When 2008-2021 What museums, architecture, exhibitions, professional training system, universities, reform, opening-up This map is very important in terms of time, there were 2000 rowing boats plying historical value; it gives a glimpse of the up and down the Thames and dozens of authentic sixteenth-century London, them are shown on the Braun and Hogen- unlike maps from earlier periods which berg maps. The map also provides many were neither physically accurate nor in- clues as to how Londoners spent their tended to be physically accurate, it allows time. Archery was extremely popular, and the viewer to clearly see each architec- on the Finsbury field, a group of men in tural form in the early modern period. As short cassocks armed with bows and ar- an exemplar of the outstanding cultural rows were seen, who strolled around the value of Braun and Hogenberg’s work, it field as though on a modern golf course. offers very strong representation. Some On the Southwark side, people are walk- small details are a little fuzzy, however, ing alongside the river with their dogs, and while the large structural images allow to the east of the Thames are some bars, a certain level of precision, the division thereby indicating some of the Londoners’ of functional blocks, reflecting the state entertainment activities. of urban economic development at that time, is more appropriate for the medium Before I started my MA course at RCA, in the case of smaller structures. I studied Museum Studies at the Univer- sity of Leicester. I also interned at the Polar Visitors to Elizabethan London may Museum in Cambridge. I have also worked have experienced difficulty in finding their at the ICOMOS for several months. All of way around the city, as no horses could those experiences inspired me a lot from be hired, and it was also impossible to buy the museum perspective. My research a pocket map as a guide to find the way interests are mainly focused on museum around the crossing and twisting streets. interpretation, exhibition and visitor en- The most convenient way from one side gagement. of London was by boat, the River Thames acting as an ‘urban motorway’. Instead of finding the nearest bus stop or under- ground station, it was easier to walk down some steps and find a waterman waiting to take guests to their destinations. At that 38

Research Profile Designing Cities and Nations A printed map of sixteenth-century London 39

Everday Objects

& Consumptio41n

Dorotea Petrucci The Credenza at the Intersection of Artisanal and Industrial Production in Italy’s Interwar Period (1923 – 1940) Where Italy When 1923-1940 What furniture, artisanal production, craft I am a Design Historian with an interest and polemics that originated from what in 20th-century design, furniture and tex- Ettore Sottsass Jr. described in 1947 as tiles across Italy and the UK. My work on a ‘deep rift’, emerging between craft and the MA focused mainly on furniture, and industry. The objective of this thesis is I have also completed extensive work in to gain, through a series of documentary public and private archives. sources, an understanding of how Italy’s longstanding and treasured craft tradition For my object study, I selected a had become a secondary element to the 16th-century ‘hat rack’ purchased by the post-Second World War iconic design pro- V&A in 1891 from the Florentine antique ductions. dealer Stefano Bardini. This study allowed me to closely scrutinize Italian Renais- The research process follows an sance domestic artefacts and culture. In object-based narrative by examining the addition, the history of the V&A’s collec- credenza; the domestic item of furniture tion became a key element of my research used in Italy since the Renaissance for process. Prior to the pandemic, I travelled food serving, storage and the display of to the Bardini archives in Florence to re- plates and vases. Its British equivalent is construct the correspondence covering the sideboard or dresser. Until the turn of the relationship between the South Kens- the 20th century credenze were intrinsi- ington Museum and the antique dealer cally regional productions, and this study with the intention of making my findings shows how considerable challenges were available to the public through the V&A posed to craft with the onset of industrial archives. production, and the search for a national design language. Artisanal manufacturing My MA dissertation The Taste of Craft: lies at the core of Italian applied arts and The Credenza at the Intersection of Arti- during the early and mid-part of the 20th sanal and Industrial Production in Italy’s century ways had to be found for craft to Interwar Period (1923 – 1940), sets out to co-exist alongside industrial production. unpack the complex and intertwined is- sues of artisanal and industrial production that dominated Italy’s design scene in the interwar period. Few studies have been dedicated solely to retracing the events 42

Research Profile Everyday Objects and Consumption 1. Craftsmen working in Ferragamo’s workshop, Palazzo Feroni, Florence c.1937. Courtesy of Fondazione Alinari per la Fotografia 2. ‘Casablanca' Sideboard designed by Ettore Sottsass (Memphis), Milan 1981 Victoria & Albert Museum 43

Freya Purcell The Ephemeral Saloop Stall: Examining the Stall, the Seller and Space in Georgian London (1700-1820) Where London When 1700-1820 What urban, class, consumption, empire, material history, food and drink Freya Purcell is a design historian who fo- portance lies in how it deviates from the cuses on the Eighteenth and Nineteenth norm. Although introduced in a similar centuries. Her work frequently examines way to other exotic drinks, saloop has a everyday life and urban living, a fact which unique “life-cycle” flourishing on London has been reflected in her research during streets in the late Georgian era, where it her MA at the V&A/RCA. Freya’s interest was consumed by the labouring-class, but in design history stemmed originally from then fading into obscurity by the mid nine- seeking to investigate histories of those teenth-century. less represented in textual sources. This work takes a microhistorical Having previously worked at Leighton approach; setting saloop and the saloop House Museum, Freya is keen to develop stall as its focus. For the first time in eigh- as a public historian; widening knowledge teenth-century studies, it examines saloop and interest in history and deconstructing the drink and the material components popular myths. In response to the pan- of the saloop stall, seller, consumer, and demic and events of 2020 she and two space. Through this research Freya looks of her classmates founded the Word On to add to the broader discussions of the The Street Archive; the UK’s first mapped eighteenth-century, for example labour- archive collecting crowd-sourced photog- ing-class engagement with new consum- raphy created in the wake of COVID-19. ing cultures, the construction of space and ideas of exoticism are considered. Freya’s dissertation topic was an in- vestigation into the drink saloop, a popular Through examining a wide variety of street drink in eighteenth century London sources, from court records to visual ev- that derived from an Arabic drink sahlep. idence, Freya explores the saloop stall, This work is the first critical engagement the material culture and the people that with saloop as a drink in the long eigh- constructed these spaces within the long teenth century, here considered to be eighteenth-century. She asks how did the 1700-1820s. saloop stall fit within London life and why did it lose its cultural capital? Her dissertation examines not only the drink itself but also offers an explora- tion of the designed space and materiality of the saloop stall in London. Saloop’s im- 44

Research Profile Everyday Objects and Consumption 1. Rattle, England, 1840-1870, Victoria and Albert, 1657-1901 2. Thomas Rowlandson, Row- landson’s Characteristic Sketches of the Lower Orders, Intended as a Companion to the New Picture of London: Consisting of Fifty-Four Plates…Coloured. (London, 1820). 45

Alyssa Meyers ‘My First and Last Thought is, How it Will Look’: Dining in the Eighteenth Century British Country House Where England When 1750-1820 What dining, the British country house, material culture, ceramics, space, display, genteel society, servants The eighteenth-century British country ing, as well as the dining material culture house dining room as a unique, spe- present in the eighteenth-century British cialized and ideological space, where country house and villa. This dissertation both formality and theatricality were in- seeks to use a material culture perspective tertwined, has largely been unexplored. to understand the way in which dining-re- The dining room as a space solely for the lated objects could perpetuate elite behav- purpose of eating, was a relatively new ior, namely notions of etiquette, politeness, concept. Previously, dining in state took taste, sociability and identity. This study place in the ceremonial great hall. The will also look at the domestic servants by inception of the state dining room fol- questioning the significance they had in lowed on the increasing sociability and the formation of the formal dinner and the informality of the country house in the role they played within the elite ideologies. eighteenth-century; however, dinner it- The interdependent relationship between self remained exclusively formal. This dis- the host, guest and servants further under- sertation will focus on the great dinners lines this research. held in these houses. Positioned around the relationship between the host, guest and later servant, it analyzes the uniquely formal space designed and maintained through ritual, hierarchy and Taste. The consumption of material cul- ture is a principal framework based on the sheer variety of commodities present within the dining sphere. From glass to sil- ver to porcelain, on and off the table, these specially designed objects were ever pres- ent. Due to the materiality of the formal dinner, a material culture perspective to design history underpins this research which asks how the upper echelons of so- ciety engaged with the experience of din- 46

Research Profile Everyday Objects and Consumption 1. Tureen, ca. 1756, Chelsea Porcelain Factory, London, soft-paste porce lain, painted in enamels, © Victoria and Albert Museum, London 2. Salt Cellar, ca. 1752 -1756, Chelsea Porcelain Factory, London, soft- paste porcelain, painted in enam- els, © Victoria and Albert Museum, London 3. Cup, ca. 1620-1625, Fontainebleau, lead-glazed earthenware, moulded, © Victoria and Albert Museum, London 47

Photography &

Digital Media 49

Abigail Barthee ‘VR or V-nah’, an Exploration of How Virtual Reality Has Been Deployed Within London Heritage Sites Where London When 2010-2020 What VR, heritage design, empathy in heritage, sound in heritage, education vs. entertainment, experience design My dissertation was a response to the empathy is a strong emotion which can need for research into the different ways be harnessed to create a connection, its that VR is being deployed within the her- practical introduction sparks questions itage sector. This question of how virtual about whether its inclusion is worth the heritage is shaping the sector is an in- risk. Involving empathy within heritage dis- creasingly important part of the heritage play design is a risk as, regardless of the experience design, particularly with the inclusion of VR technology, it increases the long-term effect of Coronavirus. My pa- chance of miscommunication and fabrica- per explored whether its use has a posi- tion. The Lost Palace experience’s audio tive or negative effect on design, through VR exposed how the removal of digital vi- three case studies: The Space Decent suals does not remove heritage’s proclivity VR experience at the Science Museum, to miscommunication or desire for show- the Modigliani VR Experience at the Tate manship. However, it does suggest that Modern, and the Lost Palace exhibit at audio VR could be used as an important Historic Royal Palaces. Each of these stepping stone for the permanent position were successful exhibits that put VR to of virtual heritage, particularly in the cur- use in a different way and for different rea- rent climate. sons. These case studies uncovered how VR impacted the key forms of communi- As such, my thesis uncovered that cation and relationship between the insti- VR has been deployed experimentally but tution and the visitor: including empathy, that it has not always been successfully ‘edutainment’, and sound. in meeting the aims of the heritage site. The technology has proven to be a benefit My research uncovered the ways in to the industry as an inspiring and flexible which VR has been used to re-write the form of communication. However, VR also balance between education and enter- magnifies the problems already plaguing tainment. Space Decent revealed how it heritage, such as miscommunication and harnesses the power of entertainment and fabrication. While it seems that the root of fiction to inspire and educate their visitors. the problem is with heritage rather than The position of empathy within the indus- VR, the technology does not make it easier try was examined through the Modigliani to combat it. experience. Although it would seem that 50