Further Information for Symposium

Christopher Dresser 1834 – 1904: Designer of Genius
Centenary Symposium
16 October 2004
10.30 – 17.00
Lecture Theatre
Jointly organised by the V&A and the Decorative Arts Society

Christopher Dresser is widely regarded as the first designer for industry who is credited with inventing the profession of product designer. A master of pattern and ornament, he also possessed an acute sense of the potential of materials and techniques: he could adapt shapes and forms from the ancient or Far Eastern worlds to suit modern commercial taste. His reputation extended far beyond Britain to the USA and Japan.

This symposium celebrates the first major UK exhibition of his work (9 September – 5 December 2004) encompassing all his activities, including his writings on design as well as the objects themselves – from wallpaper and textiles to ceramics, glass, metalwork and furniture. Each of the seven speakers will look beyond the essays in the exhibition book to place Dresser in the context of wider issues surrounding Victorian design innovation and marketing. They will discuss his precursors, in particular Owen Jones, alongside other figures in his circle, and will reveal his lasting legacy.

The symposium will be of special interest to art historians, design historians, museum curators and collectors, as well as scholars studying the history of British design.

10:00	Museum opens
10:10	Coffee and registration
10:30	Welcome
10:35	Introduction
10:45	Christopher Dresser and the Victorian Art Establishment Charlotte Gere, author and specialist in the decorative arts
11:15	Dresser and Owen Jones Charles Newton, Curator, Paintings, Department of Word and Image, V&A
11:45	Dresser and his Use of Contemporary Science in his Design Stuart Durant, author, independent scholar and former Reader, History of Architecture and Design, Kingston University
12:15	Panel discussion and audience questions
12:45	Lunch (not provided) and opportunity to see the Christopher Dresser exhibition
14:15	Dresser and his Evolution of his 'Art Botanical' Depiction of Nature Ken Tadashi Oshima, architect and historian, Fellow, Sainsbury Institute for the Study of Japanese Arts and Cultures
14:45	'We May Borrow What is Good From all Peoples': Christopher Dresser and Islamic Arts Francesca Vanke Altman, Curator of Decorative Arts, Norwich Castle Museum
15:15	Tea
15:35	Design and Manufacture: Evidence from the Dixon & Sons Costing Book Judy Rudoe, Curator 19th and 20th Century Collections, Department of Prehistory and Europe, British Museum
16:05	Retailing Design: Innovatory Techniques in Marketing Good Design Used by Dresser and his Contemporaries Peter Rose, writer, lecturer and collector
16:35	Panel discussion and audience questions
17:00	Close

Tickets
Ticket price includes morning coffee, afternoon tea and free admission tothe Christopher Dresser exhibition. The exhibition book, Christopher Dresser: A Design Revolution, can be obtained for a 10% discount by those attending the conference.

Full rate: £36
Concessions:V&A Patron, V&A Member, Decorative Arts Society member, Senior Citizen: £30
Student: £10
Disabled: £5
ES40–holder: £5

Book now +44 (0)20 7942 2211 or email bookings@vam.ac.uk

Speakers' Biographies

Charlotte Gere is a 19th–century decorative arts specialist. Publications include Nineteenth–century Design from Pugin to Mackintosh, with Michael Whiteway (1993); An Album of 19th–Century Interiors, for the Frick Collection in New York, (1992). Exhibition catalogues: Morris & Company, Fine Art Society (1978); Architect Designers, Fine Art Society (1982); Gothic Revival: architecture et arts décoratifs de l'Angleterre victorienne, Musée d'Orsay, Paris (1999); The House Beautiful, Geffrye Museum, London, on Oscar Wilde and aesthetic movement interior decoration (2000); Home and Garden, Geffrye Museum (2003–4). Contributed the essay on the life and career of Christopher Dresser to the exhibition catalogue.

Charles Newton has worked in various departments in the V&A and is currently curator, paintings section, Department of Word & Image. He has published books and articles, and lectured on a variety of subjects, including Victorian genre painting, the Searight Collection, John Frederick Lewis, photography in printmaking, 19th–century design, British textile designs. He has also contributed to many exhibition catalogues. He has recently published Victorian Designs for the Home (1999) and a book on Orientalism is in progress.

Stuart Durant studied at the Architectural Association and the Royal College of Art. He is a former Reader in the History of Architecture and Design at Kingston University. He has also worked as an antiquarian bookseller and as a designer for television. His widely translated publications include studies on Voysey and on Ferdinand Dutert's Palais des Machines, the first great steel structure. His Ornament, A survey of decoration since 1830 (1986), is a standard work on the subject, with a revised and enlarged edition in preparation. He is contributing the entry on Dresser to Thoemmes Press Dictionary of Nineteenth Century British Scientists (forthcoming) and is the founder of the International Design Yearbook. Has written an authoritative survey of Dresser's work Christopher Dresser (1993) and interviewed Dresser's last surviving pupil.

Ken Tadashi Oshima, architect and historian, is currently Fellow at the Sainsbury Institute for the Study of Japanese Arts and Cultures in London. His Ph.D. at Columbia University was on 'Constructed Natures of Modern Architecture in Japan: 1920–40'. Current research interests include the examination of late 19th Century British–Japanese relations in design through the work of Christopher Dresser. His numerous publications on modern architecture and urbanism include: The Modern House in the Post–war Period (a nine–part series) and 'Visions of the Real: Modern Houses in the 20th Century I: 1900–1949' and ' II: 1950–1975', both in Architecture and Urbanism (Special Issue 2000), 'Manfredo Tafuri and Japan: An Incomplete Project', Architectural Theory Review, (2003) and 'Micro/Macro Natures of the Karuizawa House', House in Karuizawa (2003).

Francesca Vanke Altman is Curator of Decorative Arts at the Castle Museum, Norwich. She previously taught the history and theory of the applied arts at Camberwell College of Arts. She has made a particular study of the relationship with the Islamic Orient in the British decorative arts, 1851–1914, with special reference to ceramics. Her publications include an essay on 'Arabesques: Islam and Art Nouveau' to the catalogue of the Art Nouveau exhibition at the V&A, and an article on CDE Fortnum and collecting Islamic ceramics in the special number of the Journal of the History of Collections devoted to Fortnum (Vol. 11, No. 2, 1999).

Judy Rudoe has worked at the British Museum since 1974. Her publications include the Catalogue of the Hull Grundy Gift of Jewellery to the British Museum (as joint author, 1984), Decorative Arts 1850–1950, A catalogue of the British Museum Collection (1991, revised 1994) and Cartier 1900–1939 (British Museum 1997). She has written on many aspects of nineteenth century decorative arts and collecting, including the glass of James Powell & Sons, and the activities of Layard, Castellani and Salviati, and has contributed an essay on 'Dresser and his sources' to the exhibition catalogue.

Peter Rose is a writer, lecturer and collector: the author of many books and articles on aspects of art and design in the late nineteenth century. He is currently working as part author on a comprehensive study of W.A.S. Benson to be published early in 2005.

Abstracts

Charlotte Gere
Christopher Dresser and the Victorian Art Establishment
To place Dresser in the context of the development of Victorian design and education during his long career, this paper looks at contacts he made from his time at the Government School, through his involvement with international exhibitions bureaucracy from 1862 and his expanding design practice, up to his death in 1904. As a result of research for the current exhibition, much new information has emerged on Dresser's trip to the USA and Japan. Work on identifying the persons involved with his own retail business, the Art Furnishers' Alliance in Bond Street and the debacle of its collapse with many creditors, has enabled a more accurate assessment of his place in the Victorian art world. The loyalty of people like Arthur Liberty and Charles Holme is an indication of Dresser's character and standing.

Charles Newton
Dresser and Owen Jones
This paper will discuss the influence of the designer Owen Jones on Christopher Dresser, who shared Jones's scientific outlook, and continued his development of the idea of flat pattern, often inspired by Islamic examples. The talk will also show how both men sought to educate the public, striving to establish a synthesis of ornament from many cultures, in order to achieve an appropriate repertoire of design for the modern age.

Stuart Durant
Dresser and his use of contemporary science in his design
Ornament was an art form which could incorporate the lessons of science: botany, colour theory, geology, the movements of viscous materials, even glaciers – the whole gamut of popular nineteenth century scientific knowledge, in fact. He even enthused about the colours which could be seen in what we now call neon tubes – then called 'Geissler tubes' after their inventor Heinrich Geissler. One can see clear evidence of the influence of these early neon tubes in some of Dresser's designs in his Studies in Design, 1874–76. This talk will also bring in scientists and botanists like Tyndall and Lindley and the role played by the School of Mines in Dresser's education.

Ken Tadashi Oshima
Christopher Dresser and the Evolution of his 'Art Botanical' Depiction of Nature
Japanese art's asymmetry was the greatest challenge to Christopher Dresser's theory of symmetry of vegetation. This did not result in the abandonment of botanical studies, but rather a reconsideration of its fundamental tenets. Moreover, this challenge preceded his most productive period, when he would go on to become 'perhaps the greatest of commercial designers' according to The Studio in 1899. This study examines the evolution of Christopher Dresser's early platonic conception of nature as an expression of geometric perfection, into a grudging acceptance of asymmetry as a vital element of design composition via his experience with Japan.

Francesca Vanke Altman
'We May Borrow What is Good From all Peoples': Christopher Dresser and Islamic Arts
Dresser use of Islamic art was different from any other British designer of the time. His liking for Islamic styles of design was influenced by Owen Jones and will be contrasted with the opinions of John Ruskin and William Morris, which were coloured by their views on what art should be, just as much as by views on Islam. The lecture will look at how Islamic influence made itself known in Dresser's work – mostly in ceramics and glass, though also in some textile and wallpaper design – and the way in which Islamic art informed his theories and lectures, as well as his connections with South Kensington and the educative value of Islamic arts for designers. The V&A Islamic pots will be compared with Dresser's to show that he was almost certainly influenced by them directly.

Judy Rudoe
Design and manufacture: evidence from the Dixon & Sons costing book
In 1936 Nicolaus Pevsner praised Dresser's metalwork designs for their 'simplicity and creative daring'; every detail, he wrote, is reduced to fundamentals, with straight lines and hardly any mouldings. But what did this mean for the manufacturer? How practical were they to make? And what of Dresser's 'prototype ' teapots that never went into production? Many have assumed this was because they were too avant–garde. The discovery in 1994 of the costing book of the firm that made them reveals the true reason to be the huge costs of labour and materials. This talk will examine some of the issues involved in manufacturing modern design and the enormous risks that were taken.

Peter Rose
Retailing Design: Innovatory techniques in marketing good design used by Christopher Dresser and his contemporaries
The Art Furnishers' Alliance (1880–1883) was an ambitious but short–lived attempt by Dresser to sell the concept of good design directly to the public. During the last quarter of the nineteenth century there were many other attempts to do so. A number of these will be examined, and compared with Dresser in terms of their innovatory techniques and success or failure.