Material Memories

Design and Evocation

Christopher Breward editor Jeremy Aynsley editor Marius Kwint editor

Format:Hardback

Publisher:Bloomsbury Publishing PLC

Published:1st Sep '99

Currently unavailable, and unfortunately no date known when it will be back

Material Memories cover

Also available in paperback, 9781859732526 GBP17.99 (September, 1999)

In order to take the concept of material culture seriously, its capacity to carry the past - which defines its status as culture - must be examined. Focusing on the relationship of objects with memory, this text is an attempt to understand the intersection of memory and material culture.This book examines the way that objects 'speak' to us through the memories that we associate with them. Instead of viewing the meaning of particular designs as fixed and given, by looking at the process of evocation it finds an open and continuing dialogue between things, their makers and their consumers. This is not, however, to diminish the role of design in shapinghuman consciousness. The contributors do not view objects as blank carriers onto which humans project prior psychic dramas, but rather, place crucial importance on the precise materials from which they are made, their social, economic and historic reasons for being, and the way that we interact with them through our senses. This book therefore studies the physical withinthe intellectual, directly testing the concept of material culture. With telling illustrations, and spanning the Renaissance to the present day, leading scholars converge across disciplines to explore the souvenir-value of jewellery, textiles, the home, the urban space, modernist design, photography, the museum and even the sunken wreck. Together they show howthe sense of the past and of history, far from being a 'radical illusion' as some post-modernists claim, has been a deeply felt reality.

'Deftly combines the study of memory with material culture, enhancing our understanding of both. The book opens up a new field of research. Its combination of history and theory, and its emphasis on the tactile and tangible components of memory clearly signal the future direction of scholarship about how we use objects to give continuity and meaning to human experience.'Professor John Brewer, University of Chicago'A triumph of intellectual choreography ... sets the mind spinning.' Design History Society Newsletter'All the chapters make excellent reading, well researched, always stimulating, often most entertaining, with relevant and moving photographic illustrations. The bibliographic references and the detailed index greatly facilitate its use.' 'Material Memories' will certainly occupy a central place in the growing literature on material culture, as it bridges history, anthropology and art studies.'Journal of Design History'Focusing on the concept of the souve

ISBN: 9781859732472

Dimensions: 216mm x 138mm x 18mm

Weight: unknown

256 pages