Research Diary. 8th October 2009

The following excerpts, quotes and images were compiled for a Graphics in Context lecture to 2nd year degree students.

It’s starting point was a mention of the ‘South Kensington system’ in the book Pioneers of Modern Graphic Design by Jeremy Aynsley in which he states that;

“this lead to the large scale production of books, magazines, posters and adverts on an unprecedented scale, for education, instruction and education. This led, for economic and practical reasons, to the concentration of large scale printing houses in cities.

The responsibility to train young workers for the graphic trades and industries had previously belonged to the guilds, but now trade schools and colleges of art and design took on the task. The model of design education was largely based on what was known as the ‘South Kensington system’, named after the area of London where the British government established the School of Design in 1837. A network of similar ‘branch schools’ was subsequently set up in manufacturing towns and cities throughout the country”
(Aynsley, J, 2004, p14-15)

I wanted to discover more about the South Kensington system, the Government School of Design the network of branch schools, as these seemed to be the first stirrings of a formalised commercial arts movement. I found an interesting article on the V&A website by Denis Rafael Cardoso which shed more light on the formation of these schools and the Governments growing realisation that art was being used on the continent to promote goods and services and that it had value as an industrial craft. HE states that;

‘The teaching of art and design changed dramatically throughout Europe during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Generally speaking, instruction in fine art and in crafts became increasingly separate, as academies of art sought to distance their members from the world of trades and to cast themselves in the role of guardians of a liberal profession. With the ultimate disintegration of the system of guild apprenticeships, the provision of practical instruction in applied arts and crafts slipped into a state of unprecedented neglect, aggravated by the widespread introduction of new manufacturing techniques and methods of production.

In Britain a point of crisis came shortly after 1824 when the lowering of tariffs allowed the market to be flooded by foreign imports, especially French luxury articles that for three decades before had been available only intermittently and at high prices. The somewhat disingenuous argument was made that the success of Continental goods could be attributed to the superiority of their design and, within a few years, the periodical press and other voices were emphasizing the commercial value of taste to manufactures. Out of the ensuing political commotion arose England’s first publicly funded system of Schools of Design in 1837, whose mission was to raise the standard of British manufactures by training good designers.’ (Rafael Cardoso n.d)

The two points of interest here are that even in the 1840’s there was still an academic suspicion of ‘art as a craft or trade, a debate that is still current today and the fact that the Government had clearly identified ‘commercial art’ as an essential profession if it was to continue to compete in an increasingly competitive international market.

The website British History Online casts even more light on the early leading lights in the essay, ‘South Kensington’ and the Science and Art Department.’

Despite the sometimes unpredictable development of the 1851 Exhibition Commissioners’ estate reviewed in the previous chapter the buildings raised on it expressed much of the creative attitude to art, science and industry formulated by Prince Albert and his helpers. Mediated especially through the men and methods of the Science and Art Department, particularly its secretary, Henry Cole, the ideas of the Prince’s circle issued in a ‘school’ of applied design that forms an element in Victorian artwork until recent years insufficiently appreciated. In this chapter it will be more closely considered socially and aesthetically.

The Prince brought with him from Germany in 1840 a strong sense not only of the unity of culture, but also of the public’s right to direct contact with it. In both respects, however, he had been preceded in England by the radical Members of Parliament led by William Ewart (later the pioneer of public libraries) who had set up the Select Committee of 1835. As a direct result of the Committee’s recommendations, the Government School of Design had been established at Somerset House in 1837 in premises vacated by the Royal Academy. (Sheppard F.H W. 1975)

Interestingly I came across this image from Punch magazine which alludes to the fact that not everyone thought that a Government School of Design was a good idea

©1997 The Baltimore Museum of Art and The board of Trustees of the V&A Museum

Art education in government-sponsored schools was overtly differentiated by class and claims about art educations value including both concerns for bourgeois cultural capital and arguments for public sponsorship of art education for artisanal and working-class people.

Questions about the investment of the state in art education raised arguments about art as economically useful-even curtail to the national economic development.

In the national network of twenty-three government schools of design, the dependence of the very definitions of work, education, design and art on fluctuating definitions of gender and class was spotlighted by institutional arrangements. Initially both the female and male schools we rigourously defined as industrially orientated.

Male students were forbidden to pursue careers in Fine Art while women were forbidden to enrol in order to acquire ‘accomplishment’.

The Government Female School of Design’s first report (1843) stressed that its mission was to encourage ‘commercial Art with reference to its use in industry’ not ‘accomplishments’. Traditions that positioned female aesthetic education and achievements as ‘accomplishments’ -furbelows of talent meant to attract sexual attention and success in ‘Society’.
(Kali Israel, 1999, p53-54)

Bibliography

Aynsley, J (2004). Pioneers of Modern Graphic Design. A Complete History. London: Mitchell Beazley.

Kali Israel (1999). Names and Stories: Emilia Dilke and Victorian Culture. New York: Oxford University Press..

Rafael Cardoso Denis. (n.d). Teaching by Example: Education and the Formation of South Kensington’s Museums.
Available: http://www.vam.ac.uk/vastatic/microsites/1159_grand_design/essay-teaching-by-example_new.html#2.
Last accessed 8th October 2009.

Sheppard F.H W. (1975). ‘South Kensington’ and the Science and Art Department.
Available: http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=47518.
Last accessed 8th October 2009.