Cautionary Tales

A Three-Dimensional Design student visiting the Visual Resources Centre recently was intrigued by this slide of a table lamp from the Design Council Slide Collection.  Why is the label inscribed with the word 'cautionary'?  Does the lamp have dodgy wiring?  Do its surfaces get too hot?  Or perhaps there's some other health and safety issue for which caution is advised.  Well, actually, the perceived danger is aesthetic rather than physical.

To understand the presence of this slide within the collection, and the meaning of its label, one needs to consider the context in which it was created.  The slide dates from the 1950s, when the Council of Industrial Design was engaged in a long campaign to raise the standard of design of goods made by UK manufacturers.  Its strategy was to increase both the demand for, and supply of, good design. For the CoID, 'good' design meant the application of modernist principles, and it favoured products with a distinctly functional appearance.  The table lamp shown in the slide, in its mimicking of an ornate Victorian street lamp, was the antithesis of this utilitarian aesthetic and was seen as representing  the worst excesses of popular taste.  Whereas most of the slides acquired for the collection during this period (such as the one below) show examples of 'good design', the 'Olde Worlde Lantern' was, in the eyes of the CoID, an example of 'bad design'.

Table lamp designed by H.C. Hiscock, 1954

The Design Council Slide Collection contains a wealth of primary source material relating to the UK government's interventions in the field of design in the post-war period. To find out more read our online learning resource at: http://www.vads.ac.uk/learning/dcsc/.