Förlagd form : Designkritik och designpraktik i Sverige 1860–1890

Sammanfattning: The overarching aim of this doctoral dissertation is to present an analysis of the design processes related to serial articles produced in Sweden between 1860 and 1890. In the dissertation, the interconnections between aesthetic theories, design languague, production processes, and the commercial market are explored. The starting-point is the notion of 'popular aesthetics', derived from a handbook of aesthetics by German Art Historian Carl Lemcke, published in 1865. His aesthetics, as well as other German scholars as Jakob von Falke and Gottfried Semper, and the Norwegian Lorentz Dietrichson (working in Sweden at the time), differs from the more well-known and well-cited aesthetics propounded by other writers, including John Ruskin. Falke et. al. realised they had to work together with manufacturing business instead of against them. However, their aesthetics relied on idealistic notions and have consequently been dealt with by most researchers as an aesthetics which is informed by a conservative attitude. In this dissertation, focus is directed towards their collaboration with manufacturing businesses and their aesthetics, as an endeavour within modernity, is investigated. The thesis follows two trajectories. The first engages in popular aesthetics that was disseminated by means of advice literature, engineering’s journals, and women's journals. Central to this trajectory lies an investigation into how illustrations were used as actors with regards to the aestheticism that is described. The first trajectory declares popular aesthetics to be a design critique, while the second interpret the design process as an ‘element design’. The object of study in this part of the thesis is the manufacturing and retailing of paraffin lamps, where two different manufacturers function as case studies, which elaborate how design processes within the production- and consumption businesses were performed.  The theoretical approach used in this investigation relies on the concepts of heterogeneity, actors, networks, agency, relations, and intra-action, as articulated by sociologists Bruno Latour and John Law, and by science theorist Karen Barad. The analysis discusses ornamental prints, pattern sheets, and design models as actors in the emerging field of design, due to their heterogenic constitution. Methodologically, the dissertation includes close readings of these actors. To trace how agency works, cultural theorist Mieke Bal's notion of ‘travelling concepts’ is elaborated on in the study; and is subsumed under the term migration. Further to this, 'design' is understood as an intermingling process between production–consumption–mediation, as suggested by design historian Grace Lees-Maffei.