Re: Re: culture to the masses

["Ann Li" <annzl@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

The point relevant to the earlier question of a consumer culture in this
case is the broad application of improvements (and scale economies with the
19 C. background often used to explain 20 C. post-fordist flexible
production) in printing technology to produce patterns that could be applied
in a wide variety of consumer goods areas ranging from the use of decals in
ceramic pottery production to mass printing including wallpaper and
serialized fiction and of course the production of cheap cloth goods
(printed chintz to cover furniture and printed yardage being less costly
than woven fabric etc). This predated Morris as Eric points out, and is
notable relative to Morris because of his socialistic view not unlike others
during the period that improved designs might also have moral implications
for all involved in the process, whether producers, distributors or
consumers. Forty argues for the class divisions created by differentiated
lower-class designs imitating upper-class ones. However, it might be said
that Morris and his buddies ( However beautiful the products of the
Pre-Raphaelites and Morris' own political writings etc) were what we might
now call Bohos, bringing us back to where the thread started with the
japanese version of "baby boys".

Ann

----- Original Message -----
From: <enilsson@xxxxxxxxx>
To: <pen-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Saturday, July 07, 2001 5:47 PM
>Subject: [PEN-L:14801] Re: culture to the masses


> Jim D wrote,
> > I'm told that William Morris . . .invented wallpaper
> >as part of his wider effort to bring art to the proletariat.
>
> >From Encyl Britannica:
>
> "Wallpaper developed soon after the introduction of papermaking to Europe
> during the latter part of the 15th century. . ."
>
> "Machine-printed wallpaper first appeared in 1840 at a firm of printers in
> Lancashire and, with the work of William Morris and the Arts and Crafts
> Movement, created a revolution in wallpaper design. Morris' designs for
the
> medium, which first appeared in 1862, were characterized by flat,
stylized,
> naturalistic patterns and rich, subdued colours. His work and the
progressive
> designs of Walter Crane coexisted, however, with the more traditional
taste
> expressed in the work of A.W.N. Pugin, Owen Jones, and James Huntington,
who
> designed wallpaper in the Gothic and Rococo styles as late as the 1860s."
>
> Eric
>
>
>
>