Students from the Willem de Kooning Academy show off copies of the new book.
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Part 2 of the design anthology
Visies op Vormgeving
(‘Views on Design’) is now available in stores. The two-volume collection, compiled by Frederike Huygen on behalf of Premsela, brings together primary texts from the world of 20th-century Dutch design. Part 2 covers the period from 1945 to 2000, with its backdrop of dime stores and fancy furniture shops, bureaucracy and the squatters’ movement.
A presentation of the book took place in October 2008 at Rotterdam’s Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen. The launch followed Missing Link, a symposium on Dutch design history. Huygen spoke at the seminar, as did Mienke Simon Thomas, Marjan Groot, Timo de Rijk, Esther Cleven and Jan Middendorp.
Visies op Vormgeving Part II, author: Frederike Huygen, design: Caroline de Lint
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Dutch daily paper
Het Financieele Dagblad
said the first volume of
Visies op Vormgeving
, published in 2007, unlocked “a treasure trove of primary texts that will appeal to anyone interested in early-20th-century Dutch culture." Designers, clients, instructors and critics bring history to life in interviews, letters, articles and manifestos. The artefacts reproduced in the two-volume book go back to the days when applied artists first began making their own products in the hope of changing the world. We read of their sources of inspiration and the troubles they faced. And we witness the rise of the New Objectivity and listen in on the heated debates over what good design was. Outspoken figures like Theo van Doesburg, Piet Zwart, Mart Stam and Willem Gispen state their views with passion and humour.
An extensive set of biographies and profiles of periodicals and organisations by the collection's editor, design historian Frederike Huygen, accompany the primary source material. Her biographies and profiles are the result of years of research in archives and libraries. The anthology is set to become a standard reference work.
Visies op Vormgeving
is a Premsela initiative and a co-publication of Premsela and Architectura & Natura.
