The Professionalization of Window Display in Britain, 1919-1939

(Hardback)

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Description

This book provides the first comprehensive history of window display as a practice and profession in Britain during the dynamic period of 1919 to 1939. In recent decades, the disciplines of retail history, business history, design and cultural history have contributed to the study of department stores and other types of shops. However, these studies have only made passing references to window display and its role in retail, society and culture. Kerry Meakin investigates the conditions that enabled window display to become a professional practice during the interwar period, exploring the shift in display styles, developments within education and training, and the international influence on methods and techniques. Piecing together the evidence, visual and written, about people, events, organisations, exhibitions and debates, Meakin provides a critical examination of this vital period of design history, highlighting major display designers and artists. The book reveals the modernist aesthetic developments that influenced high street displays and how they introduced passers-by to modern art movements.

Reviews

A book that makes an important and original contribution to design history being, as the author accurately asserts, the first full-length account of the evolution of the profession of window display in Britain during the first half of the 20th century. The account draws on a fascinating collection of primary sources drawn from the trade press, contemporary manuals and accounts, carefully and painstakingly brought together, to expand knowledge of practices that have previously been overlooked or considered unworthy of serious and sustained attention * Harriet Atkinson, Senior Lecturer in History of Art and Design, University of Brighton, UK *

Author Bio

Kerry Meakin is Head of Retail and E-Commerce, School of Business Technology, Retail and Supply Chain at the Technological University Dublin, Ireland. She completed a PhD at the Modern Interiors Research Centre, Kingston University, UK, and has written contributions in books such as Bauhaus Effects in Art, Architecture and Design (2022) and articles for journals such as Journal of Design History and History of Retailing and Consumption.