Material Memories: Design and EvocationThis 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. |
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Contents
Susan Stewart | 17 |
The Material and The Mortal | 37 |
Memory Suicide and | 59 |
Copyright | |
11 other sections not shown
Other editions - View all
Material Memories: Design and Evocation Marius Kwint,Christopher Breward,Jeremy Aynsle No preview available - 1999 |
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appeared architectural artists associated authority banners become Benjamin body British buildings called century civic collection constructed course culture death described desire discussion display domestic early Empire England English essay evidence example exhibition experience Fascist female Figure George give Goldfinger hair hand household human imagination important included individual interest involved Italy John Lady Lascelles living London look Lord material means memory Museum nature never notes objects opened original Oxford painted past perhaps period photographs physical play political popular possible practice present recent references relation relationship remains Renaissance role senses Sibford significant signs social society sources souvenir space specific status suggest symbolic things Titanic touch tourist tradition University urban Victorian visual women writing written young