folly cove

Tomorrow (15 April) we trek to the Cape Ann Museum in Gloucester, to see displays and materials from the archives of the Folly Cove Designers, including samples of their printed textiles and paper, items made from their fabrics and examples of the linoleum blocks they carved. The group was established in 1938 and lasted until 1969. We are grateful to Jim Falck for the suggestion. Information on the Folly Cove designers here.

in retrospect (21 April) —
I was struck by discussion of the internal "jurying" system by which group members would critique each other's work and presumably decide what could be issued under the name "Folly Cove." Many of the Folly Cove people were accomplished professionals — art educators, an architect, editors, art directors, illustrators. Among them were graduates of Vassar, the Boston Museum School, Salem Normal School, and Massachusetts College of Art. This was a diverse collection of women and men. I don't imagine their respective personal aesthetics always meshed, and wonder about the internal dynamics of the group.

The Folly Cove Designers were not an art colony, as such. It had no guiding ideology or social cause, such as motivated Myles Horton's founding of the Highlander Folk School in Tennessee, in 1932. This group centered around or grew out of the design classes offered by Virginia Lee Burton, and ended with her death. Still, the designs shown in thumbnail in Folly Cove Designers, a brochure published by the Cape Ann Historical Association in 1996 (?), evidences a variety of styles, some abstract, some folkish, none naive. Some of the work holds up to the present-day eye, some less so. One detects a hint of W. A. Dwiggins visual waggery, here and there. My favorite are some stunning designs by Elizabeth Iarrabino (died March 9, 2009), with their confident abstraction of botanical, animal and insect forms. All of the work attains a consistently high standard of craft and formal abstraction, presumably owing to (1) jurying, (2) the maturity of all of the artists, (3) Virginia Lee Burton's oversight and (4) her foundational homework assignments, emphasizing design principles like figure/ground relationships, tonalities, scale.

We were invited to look through the fascinating homework notebooks of Eleanor Curtis, mimeographed from carefully laid-out typescript originals. These, and a video that we watched, demonstrated methodical variations of single motifs.

sources —
Several online resources on the Folly Cove Designers are bookmarked at the design stories delicious page.

The Folly Cove Designers were not an "artists' colony, and yet existed in the Gloucester/Rockport area that is (or was?) known as one. There exist studies of specific art colonies in North America and Europe, including Kristian Davies, his Artists of Cape Ann : A 150 Year Tradition (2001), but few on artists' colonies in general. Exceptions include Michael Jacobs, The Good and Simple Life: Artist Colonies in Europe and America (Phaidon/Oxford, 1985), and Nina Lübbren, Rural Artists' Colonies in Europe 1870-1910 (Manchester University Press, 2001). Books on the Folly Cove Designers include Barbara Elleman, Virginia Lee Burton, A Life in Art (Houghton Mifflin, 2002); the aforementioned brochure published by the Cape Ann Historical Association (1996?); and Folly Cove Designers: A Retrospective, June 27 through September 7, 1982, published by the same association in 1982.

An exhibition of Virginia Lee Burton's work, curated by Barbara Elleman, is currently running at the Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art in Amherst (March 24 – June 21, 2008), more information here.

what shall we do with our walls ?

title of book by Clarence Cook, published in 1880


Yellow Keys pattern, Courtney Cooney; more here

We design wallpaper patterns as an opportunity to think about design verities, and the function and status of decoration in the light of readings of

Adolf Loos. “Ornament and Crime” (1908), in Adolf Loos, Ornament and Crime: Selected Essays (Riverside CA: Ariadne Press, 1998); and
Hal Foster. “Design and Crime,” in Design and Crime and other Diatribes (Verso) First published in the London Review of Books, 2000

Several of us were struck by the emergence of limited-edition or “bespoke” wallcoverings, afforded by digital design and production technologies. These include hand or machine-printed patterns, to which transfers and vinyl stickers can be added in free deployments. An example is Rachel Kelly's “Long Flower,” which can be seen here. See Mary Schoeser's “Limited Editions: 1995 to Today,” in the second edition of Lesley Hopkins, ed., The Papered Wall : The History, Patterns and Techniques of Wallpaper, Thames & Hudson, 2005. (Schoeser is Senior Research Fellow at the Textiles Future Research Group, and prolific author on silk, wallpaper, etc. See her bio here.)

leads > delicious

Earlier in the semester, we began to identify, annotate and organize good resources on, within and around design. The work was — Find a minimum of five quality further discussions of, or images relating to, themes in either one of these two readings.

Armin Vit : Glide'08: The Infrastructure of the Web as Design Education —
However, there is a certain activity that I engage in that perhaps puts me in a position to talk about the subject of using technology, the web in particular, in favor of design education: I poke around the web. A lot. at speakup (October 2008), on the occasion of Glide ’08 — Global Interaction in Design Education / Biennial Design Web Conference (October 2008); and

Steven Heller : A History of Aggressive Design Magazines —
Graphic design evolved during the late nineteenth century from a sideline of the printing industry into an autonomous field with its own lore, icons and personalities. The missing link in this evolutionary process is trade magazines. at designobserver (December 2008).

I have taken vetted, edited and and assigned tags to linked received, and moved them directly to the design stories links at delicious. Not all of the links at this location have been generated in this course, but those that are are tagged "216" (course designation) and the first and last initials of the students who submitted them.

I see this delicious project as a long-term one, in which annotations and tags will be all-important means to make the tool useful. Here and there are sprinkled links to flickr photosets — typically of individual designers' works, or design magazine covers; these colorful 72 pixel-square thumbnails help to enliven the otherwise blue/gray bibliographic array, but also provide clues into what may lie behind these names and titles. More or larger visuals, however, would be distracting and subvert the indexical (pointing) function of these bookmarks.

On the practice of bookmarks, I liked this essay-in-progress from a paper toward coagulating ideas — an effort to compare historical and contemporary material and digital practices for remembering and sharing what has been read: annotation, especially bookmarks — by Britta Gustafson at UC Santa Barbara. Other discussions of indexing one's reading are listed at one of my index rerum pages.

condordance

design, designate, designated, designates, designating, designation, designations, designed, designs



from Guttman, Samuel A. The concordance to The Standard edition of the complete psychological works of Sigmund Freud / Samuel A. Guttman, with the collaboration of Stephen M. Parrish and Randall L. Jones. New York, N.Y. : International Universities Press, c1984.

combinations, dictionary, emblems

We have taken entries in the Oxford English Dictionary for "design" as noun and verb — both definitions and historical instances of usage — and combined these with imagery of our choosing to explore the senses of design. We also considered Vilém Flusser (1920-1991), his essay "About the Word Design," in The Shape of Things: A Philosophy of Design (1999). Our emblematic results are viewable here.

In our discussion of the combinatorial nature of design, we stumbled onto the idea of juggling as an art. Michael Moschen came up, and we looked at some of a presentation at TED in 2002 Juggling rhythm and motion. Also see his beautiful video on juggling one crystal ball.

design preis schweiz

On 4 February, we trekked to Cambridge for a visit to Design Preis Schweiz 2007, at swissnex Boston. Heidi Wegener, curator and head of the Design Award Switzerland, walked and talked us through the exhibit. Selected work needed to meet these criteria : top quality design, aesthetic consistency, social relevance, innovative vision, economic importance and sustainability. It had to be practical; it had to be designed by a Swiss person, or at least someone who has lived and worked in Switzerland. Much of the work was years in gestation; all of it was interesting. We spent the most time considering GECKO Adhesive Textiles (for direct application to glass surfaces — very interesting); the Ribcap combination cap and protective helmet; the Raptor avalanche shovel; Ruckstuhl's stripes carpet collection (incorporating wood strips, felt and rubber); Schoeller Textil's "Organic Tech" fabrics; and Martin Woodtli's five exhibition posters (2005) for the Museum fur Gestaltung Zurich (that won the "market" prize).

opening
reviews of nominees
San Francisco panel on the prize (via fora.tv)

We talked about the range of designs, the importance of marketing, "slow" gestation. The conversation briefly touched on how the higher prices associated with well crafted and longer-lasting goods can put them out reach of the normal person's wallet. In this context, mention was made of the aesthetics associated with the magazine (and website) Monocle.

We are grateful to Anina Koeppli-Hitz for reaching out and bringing us in.

Students are encouraged to share their thoughts/afterthoughts on this adventure, including works seen only in the printed catalog.

sprezzatura, the art that hides its art

Sprezzatura refers to the art that hides its art, as opposed to the disclosure of “intent effort.” It relates to design and to rhetoric.

The expression comes from Baldesar Castiglione, The Book of the Courtier (published in Venice, 1528). This was an age of texts and handbooks, and new needs to learn new skills (e.g., calligraphy). Texts proliferated, language being an important tool of self fashioning. Yet artifice needed to be made seem natural.

Here is the key passage on sprezzatura, from the translation by Sir Thomas Hoby (1561)—

...He therfore that wil be a good scolar, beside the practysing of good thinges, must evermore set al his diligence to bee lyke his mayster, and (if it were possible) chaunge himself into him. And when he hath had some entrey, it profiteth hym much to behould sondrye men of that profession: and governing hymselfe with that good judgement that must alwayes be hys guyde, go about to pyke out, sometyme of one and sometyme of an other, sundry matters. And even as the bee in the greene medowes fleeth alwayes aboute the grasse chousynge out flowres: so shall our Courtyer steale thys grace from them that to hys seming have it, and from ech one that percell that shal be most worthy praise. And not do, as a frende of ours, whom you al know, that thought he resembled much kyng Ferdinande the yonger of Aragon, and regarded not to resemble hym in anye other poynt but in the often lyftyng up hys head, wrying therewythall a part of hys mouth, the whych custome the king had gotten by infyrmitye. And manye such there are that thynke they doe much, so they resemble a great man in somewhat, and take many tymes the thynge in hym that woorst becommeth hym. But I, imagynyng with my self oftentymes how this grace commeth, leaving a part such as have it from above, fynd one rule that is most general whych in thys part (me thynk) taketh place in all thynges belongyng to man in worde or deede above all other. And that is to eschew as much as a man may, and as a sharp and dangerous rock, Affectation or curiousity and (to speak a new word) to use in every thyng a certain Reckelessness, to cover art withall, and seeme whatsoever he doth and sayeth to do it wythout pain, and (as it were) not myndyng it. And of thys do I beleve grace is muche deryved, for in rare matters and wel brought to passe every man knoweth the hardnes of them, so that a redines therin maketh great wonder. And contrarywise to use force, and (as they say) to hale by the hear, geveth a great disgrace, and maketh every thing how great so ever it be, to be litle estemed. Therfore that may be said to be a very art that appeereth not to be art, neyther ought a man to put more dilgence in any thing then in covering it: for in case it be open, it loseth credit cleane, and maketh a man litle set by. And I remember that I have reade in my dayes, that there were some excellent Oratours, which among other their cares, enforced themselves to make every man beleve that they had no sight in letters, and dissemblinge their conning, made semblant their orations to be made very simply, and rather as nature and trueth lead them, then study and arte, the whiche if it had bene openly knowen, would have putte a doubte in the peoples minde for feare least he beguiled them. You may see then how howe to shewe arte and suche bent study taketh away the grace of every thing. Which of you is it that laugheth not whan our M. Peterpaul daunseth after his owne facion with such fine skippes and on tipto without moving his head, as though he were all of wood, so heedfullie, that truely a man would weene he counted his paces? What eye is so blind that perceiveth not in this disgrace of curiosity, and in many men and women here present the grace of that not regarded agylitie and slighte conveyaunce (for in the mocions of the bodye manye so terme it) with a kinde of speaking or smiling, or gesture, betokening not to passe upon it, and to minde anye other thinge more then that, to make him beleve that loketh on that he can not do amisse?

The full translation is provided here. In class, we read the same excerpt from the translation by Charles S. Singleton (Anchor, 1959).

The idea of sprezzatura can be used to explain the virtue (vertu) of both performer and inanimate object. Designed objects frequently hide the sophisticated engineering within, and to the degree they succeed in doing this, turn that object into an instance of magic.

Graphic (and other) design is, in some sense and at least partly, a performance art. We perform, phrase, frame other people's content, like a pianist might. The conservatory may be a better educational model than the art atelier. The degree to which we make it look easy, enhances our prestige by indirectly suggesting the miracles we could perform, if we were really trying.

An exercise was assigned, due Wednesday 27 February :

Develop a visual exploration of or comment on the ideas embodied in or suggested by the expression sprezzatura, taking care to link it to design. Poster or other format; if book-sized pages, please prepare copies for distribution to members of the class.