Download or read book Britain Can Make it written by Diane Bilbey and published by . This book was released on 2019 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This publication is a highly visual celebration of the massively popular, but now largely forgotten, Britain Can Make It exhibition. Organized by the Council of Industrial Design, it was held in empty ground-floor galleries of the Victoria & Albert Museum, from September to December 1946. A groundbreaking, morale boosting exhibition, it showcased British design and manufacturing. Despite its short run, it boasted an incredible 1.5 million visitors, and remains one of the most visited exhibitions ever held at the V&A. Long before the end of the Second World War hostilities, the government's Post War Export Trade Committee recognized the importance of promoting the country's manufacturing capabilities. Plans for an exhibition of 'National Importance' were set in place in October 1942, for an event that would illuminate the gloom of austerity, educate the public in the value of good design, and most importantly, boost much needed foreign trade. Britain's need to promote, manufacture and export its goods was urgent. The job of organizing the exhibition was given to the Council of Industrial Design on behalf of the government's Board of Trade. From its early planning stages, there was a desire to create an exhibition that was full of color, light and airy, and far removed from the browns and greens of the inter-war years. The exhibition was also intended to work as a public morale boosting exercise and it did, attracting visitors from around the country. Mile-long queues constantly formed outside the V&A. Interviewed in 1984, James Gardner, the designer of the exhibition, commented on the motivation for it: 'We'd got to get British manufacturers to produce well-designed goods quickly and to cheer the British public up. They were so depressed. Give them something to look forward to. You know, this was the dream of the future, if you like.' BCMI was not a trade show. Manufacturers had to put forward their products and only those deemed the best examples were chosen by specialist committees. An accompanying catalog detailing the manufacturers of products (and significantly, wherever possible the names of the designers of each product), could be bought by visitors from one of the bookstalls dotted around the exhibition. The catalog explained when goods would be available for the home and trade markets: 'Now, ' 'Soon' or 'Later.' Most often they were 'Later' for the home market which led to negative comments in the press, such as: 'Britain Can't Have It, ' 'Britons can't buy it, ' and 'Britain Can't Get It.' Products representing key consumer groups, including clothing, leisure, and domestic products were displayed. These were diverse, from pottery and glass, to radios, women's and men's wear, furniture, fabrics, toys, jewelry, boilers, taps, and sporting equipment. The Furnished Rooms section showcased room sets that sought to show how a range of people from different professional groups might live. By taking its structure loosely from the exhibition itself and from the accompanying Design '46 catalog, Britain Can Make It will take the reader through an eclectic range of subject areas and consumer products. The book begins with a discussion of the political climate and economic motivations that led to this exhibition of 'National Importance' taking place, and an overview of the contemporary social context. Additional essays will cover specific aspects of the exhibition itself, including the surrealist design of the exhibition, the art and artists involved, the naming, and the 'Design Quiz.' Most chapters will be in the form of short illustrated essays.
Download or read book Britain Can Make It Exhibition Organised by the Council of Industrial Design at the Victoria and Albert Museum London Opening 24th September 1946 Catalogue Catalogue Supplement written by Council of Industrial Design (Great Britain) and published by . This book was released on 1946 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Britain Can Make it written by Council of Industrial Design (Great Britain) and published by . This book was released on 1946 with total page 24 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Britain Can Make it Exhibition written by Council of Industrial Design (Great Britain) and published by . This book was released on 1946 with total page 159 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Design and Cultural Politics in Postwar Britain written by Patrick Maguire and published by A&C Black. This book was released on 1997-01-01 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Nine essays and a collection of documents intended as a working tool for students of the post-war period and in particular of design within the period. They discuss the textiles, pottery, and furniture industries in terms of the shifts in meaning and location during the transition from highly controlled wartime production to the more market-based structure that would become characteristic after the immediate reconstruction. Among the specific topics are the place of the exhibition in the history of design; patriotism, politics, and production; adapting utility furniture to peace-time production; and aesthetic idealism and economic reality. Distributed in the US by Books International. The CiP data shows the main title as Popular Politics and Design in Post-War Britain. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR
Download or read book Britain Can Make it Exhibition written by Bernard B. Winston and published by . This book was released on 1946 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Britain Can Make it Exhibition Guide written by and published by . This book was released on 1946 with total page 6 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Topic Collection 26 written by and published by . This book was released on 1946 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An investigation into reactions to the design exhibition held at the Victoria and Albert Museum, September, 1946. Material comprises questionnaires, observations and ephemera.
Download or read book This Separated Isle written by Sng, Paul and published by Policy Press. This book was released on 2021-09-21 with total page 96 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This Separated Isle explores how concepts of ‘Britishness’ reveal an inclusive range of understandings about our national character. Featuring a diverse range of photographic portraits and narrative stories from across the UK, this landmark book examines the relationship between identity and nationhood, revealing the ties that bind us together.
Download or read book Britain Can Make it Exhibition written by Council of Industrial Design (Great Britain) and published by . This book was released on 1946 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Britain Can Make It Exhibition written by Council of Industrial Design (Great Britain) and published by . This book was released on 1946 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Programmed Inequality written by Mar Hicks and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2018-02-23 with total page 354 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This “sobering tale of the real consequences of gender bias” explores how Britain lost its early dominance in computing by systematically discriminating against its most qualified workers: women (Harvard Magazine) In 1944, Britain led the world in electronic computing. By 1974, the British computer industry was all but extinct. What happened in the intervening thirty years holds lessons for all postindustrial superpowers. As Britain struggled to use technology to retain its global power, the nation’s inability to manage its technical labor force hobbled its transition into the information age. In Programmed Inequality, Mar Hicks explores the story of labor feminization and gendered technocracy that undercut British efforts to computerize. That failure sprang from the government’s systematic neglect of its largest trained technical workforce simply because they were women. Women were a hidden engine of growth in high technology from World War II to the 1960s. As computing experienced a gender flip, becoming male-identified in the 1960s and 1970s, labor problems grew into structural ones and gender discrimination caused the nation’s largest computer user—the civil service and sprawling public sector—to make decisions that were disastrous for the British computer industry and the nation as a whole. Drawing on recently opened government files, personal interviews, and the archives of major British computer companies, Programmed Inequality takes aim at the fiction of technological meritocracy. Hicks explains why, even today, possessing technical skill is not enough to ensure that women will rise to the top in science and technology fields. Programmed Inequality shows how the disappearance of women from the field had grave macroeconomic consequences for Britain, and why the United States risks repeating those errors in the twenty-first century.
Download or read book Recording Britain written by Gill Saunders and published by Victoria & Albert Museum. This book was released on 2011-10-01 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Recording Britain was an artistic documentary project compiled as Britain was facing the potentially devastating impact of the Second World War. This book brings together highlights from the collection by artists such as John Piper, Michael Rothenstein, Barbara Jones and Stanley Badmin.
Download or read book Britain Can Make it written by and published by . This book was released on 1946 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Britain Can Make It Exhibition written by Council of Industrial Design (Great Britain) and published by . This book was released on 1946 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Council of Industrial Design Presents written by Great Britain. Council of Industrial Design and published by . This book was released on 1924 with total page 81 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book How to Do Things with Books in Victorian Britain written by Leah Price and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2012-04-09 with total page 361 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How to Do Things with Books in Victorian Britain asks how our culture came to frown on using books for any purpose other than reading. When did the coffee-table book become an object of scorn? Why did law courts forbid witnesses to kiss the Bible? What made Victorian cartoonists mock commuters who hid behind the newspaper, ladies who matched their books' binding to their dress, and servants who reduced newspapers to fish 'n' chips wrap? Shedding new light on novels by Thackeray, Dickens, the Brontës, Trollope, and Collins, as well as the urban sociology of Henry Mayhew, Leah Price also uncovers the lives and afterlives of anonymous religious tracts and household manuals. From knickknacks to wastepaper, books mattered to the Victorians in ways that cannot be explained by their printed content alone. And whether displayed, defaced, exchanged, or discarded, printed matter participated, and still participates, in a range of transactions that stretches far beyond reading. Supplementing close readings with a sensitive reconstruction of how Victorians thought and felt about books, Price offers a new model for integrating literary theory with cultural history. How to Do Things with Books in Victorian Britain reshapes our understanding of the interplay between words and objects in the nineteenth century and beyond.
