Study Day "National Designs: Intersections of Applied Arts and Polemic Discourse in the Long Nineteenth Century"

This study day will investigate the overlap between dynamics of national identity and the trajectory of the applied arts in the nineteenth century. It will address questions about the place of national design in relation to various discourses across Europe and the world that hammered out ideals of national belonging. Did creators in the applied arts subtly contribute their own ideas to the national debates? How did their work reflect the growing and changing consciousness of the nation? And how did they deal with its contradictions, contingencies and exclusions? “National Designs” will examine how the newly formalized artistic professions negotiated statements of national belonging in Switzerland, France, Germany and Austria-Hungary, and in what ways national polemics interacted with new creations of design.