American Design in the 20th Century

During the twentieth century the most compelling and contradictory features of American design were its classless practicality and its shameless appeal to status and desire. The aggressive, sensuous contours and colours of a Corvette Stingray sports car or a Fender Stratocaster guitar are as typically American as the mechanistic visual austerity of a Kryptonite bicycle lock or a Zippo lighter. In this course we will examine many such objects, both familiar and obscure, mass manufactured or uniquely hand-made. But this is more than a catalogue of classic objects. We will also consider the intricate story of how design evolved as a professional practice in the service of commerce and as a leisure activity reflecting the national traditions of self-improvement and self-expression. These talks will show how design in the affluent culture of North America was as much about personalising the material world as it was about the performance and appearance of industrially manufactured goods. Investigating homes, clothing, transport vehicles and much more will reveal how design functioned in the everyday lives of the whole population during that period often called ‘the American century'.