Pat Kirkham

Judy Attfield

This book examines design history from a feminist perspective. It exposes the socially constructed nature of design history, and the assumptions of male designers and architects about women's tastes, women's place and the way women live. And it illuminates women's relationship to design both as designers and those designed for. Women have gained a footholf in pottery and textile design, and predominate in the field of domestic design. Why are they still a minority in the areas of architecture and industrial design? What part does design education play in this exclusion? Contains: Part One: Images of difference ; Objectifying gender: the stiletto heel ; Representations of women and race in the Lancashire cotton trade ; Tarting up men: menswear and gender dynamics ; From Alcatraz to the OK Corral: images of class and gender ; Part Two: Women as designers ; Women textile designers in the 1920s and 1930s: Marion Dorn, a case study ; Pottery women: a comparitive study of Susan Vera Cooper and Millicent Jane Taplin ; Women architects ; Part three: Women in design production ; 'If you have no sons' : furniture-making in Britain ; Powerful women: electricity in the home, 1919-40, Sexual division of labour in the Arts and Crafts Movement ; The Arts and Crafts alternative ; The inter-war handicrafts revival ; Part four: A place of their own ; A view from the interior ; The designer housewife in the 1950s ; Inside Pram Town: a case study of Harlow House Interiors, 1951-61 ; Appendix: Women at the Archive of Art and Design.

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