Design history, connoisseurship and sustainability: Object lessons and collecting as learning tools for designers

The academic discipline of Design History is sometimes accused of having a connoisseurial approach, something which arguably fosters the creation of false hierarchies and subsequently leads design students and the design community to create products which are environmentally, socially and economically unsustainable. The first part of this paper takes the work of sustainable design theorist Tony Fry (2009) as a starting point by which to evaluate this proposition. Fry has been critical of design history, claiming that a focus on style and the icons of design to has resulted in a lack of student interest in the real issues of the day. Simultaneously he has attested that that the key to any new formulation of design practice is "redirection" of existing design practice. Redirection, simply put, seeks to collapse the boundaries between the disciplines and to foster new knowledge by which to address the pressing issues around sustainability. With new knowledge and new practice, designers become better placed to mitigate the "defuturing" tendencies which characterise contemporary design disciplines. As a counterpoint to Fry, a particular focus of this paper focuses on the work of an author whose work is at the heart of connoisseurial practice. Charles F. Montgomery's "Science and Practice of Connoisseurship", published in 1961, (cited in Schlereth, T.J., 1982) describes a series of methods by which to consider the study of artefacts and collections. The incorporation here of Montgomery's work is an attempt to re-evaluate (redirect) connoisseurship, object lessons and collecting towards more acceptable academic aims and principles. In particular, the proposal within this paper is that connoisseurship may serve to engage students of design in more realistic understandings of objects, materials and impacts. Thus, part two of this study thus proposes a meeting of Fry's redirection strategy and elements of Montgomery's Fourteen Steps of connoisseurship. In this part, a series of experimental interventional exercises are carried out with a group of 15 product design students in a UK university. The exercises are set against the ideas of Stuart Walker (2006) and others theorists, who assert that designers need to reconnect with objects to counter the dematerialised practices of modern industrial design practice. The aim of the exercises is therefore to relocate objects as the central motifs of design historical practice. The interventions with students incorporate questionnaires about collecting, the curation of collections, design historical writing and creative writing about objects. Findings establish the potential for a reconsideration of a modified connoisseurial approach and the further evaluation of the role of Design History at the service of sustainability.