Glenn Adamson - From Sketch to Product 2009-11

Signs of the Times

This guest post has been contributed by RCA/V&A History of Design graduate Charlotte Austin. How would you describe your location in a world without house numbers? What if those looking for you couldn’t follow written aids, due to poor street lighting or their own illiteracy? Before the introduction of the numbering system in the eighteenth century, addresses were given like this:...
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Getting Plastered

This guest post has been contributed by Jenny Saunt. As a second-year student on the RCA/V&A History of Design MA course, I’m currently in the thick of dissertation research. My subject of study is stucco of the seventeenth and eighteenth century. If you are not yet acquainted with the glories of ‘stucco’ or ‘decorative plasterwork’, here is a fine eighteenth...
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Earning their Stripes

Stripes: the simplest design in the world, right? All you need to do is draw straight lines, over and over, and fill in the spaces between. In the below 18th century technical drawing for a Lyon silk, for example, the designer had to work hard to render the flowers and landscape  vignettes. The stripes came easy by comparison - in fact, they almost seem like they were generated...
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Glenn Adamson

Archive – this blog closed in 2011

Glenn Adamson - Head of Research at the V&A.