This book can be described as an 'oblique memoir'. The central underlying and repeated themes of the book are exile and displacement; lives (and deaths) during the Third Reich; mother-daughter and sibling relationships; the generational transmission of trauma and experience; transatlantic reflections; and the struggle for creative expression. Stories mobilised, and people encountered, in the course of the narrative include: the internment of aliens in Britain during the Second World War; cultural life in Rochester, New York, in the 1920s; the social and personal meanings of colour(s). It also includes the industrialist and philanthropist, Henry Simon of Manchester, including his relationship with the Norwegian explorer, Fridtjof Nansen; the liberal British campaigner and MP of the 1940s, Eleanor Rathbone; reflections on the lives and images of spinsters. The text is supplemented and interrupted throughout by images (photographs, paintings, facsimile documents), some of which serve to illustrate the story, others engaging indirectly with the written word. The book also explains how forced exile persists through generations through a family history. It showcases the differences between English and American cultures. The book focuses on the incidence of cancers caused by exposure to radioactivity in England, and the impact it had on Anglo-American relations.
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Ideal homes, 1918–39
Domestic design and suburban Modernism
Shortlisted for the Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain Alice Davis Hitchcock Medallion for an outstanding contribution to architectural history, 2018
Winner of the 2020 Historians of British Art Book Award for Exemplary Scholarship on the Period after 1800, 2020
‘A fascinating book, dealing with a range of themes, including class, gender, empire, taste, good design, efficiency and nostalgia, which are linked to the idea of 'suburban modernity' in Britain and its material manifestations in suburban houses and their interiors. Sugg Ryan succeeds in evoking the material culture of a past era which, in certain ways, resonates strongly with our own.'
Professor Penny Sparke, Kingston University
‘[Deborah Sugg Ryan’s] new book covers the type of content and arguments rarely seen in publications on modern design history: the invisibility of certain styles, their potential for inclusion and a commensurate re-evaluation of significance[.] Keeping ordinary people’s histories, rather than heroic architects’ and designers’, at the heart of her work distinguishes this book from others. The findings are shaped by primary sources, rather than locating examples to fit “predetermined theories of Modernism and modernity”, allowing the importance of home ownership, decoration and social standing to determine the outcomes. This book succeeds in contesting the exclusion zones design history has placed on what Kjetil Fallan, an academic leader in the discipline, calls “the vast masses of modern material culture not conforming to the modernist ethos”, with Sugg Ryan calling the field to account in its pursuit of the endorsement of the Modernist Movement alone, with the exceptions escaping these narrow parameters few and recent. When the author refers to multiple modernisms that are inclusive of interwar ‘medieval modernism’, ‘liveable modernism’ and ‘amusing styles’, you can be sure this book is going to open the reader to entirely new and unconstrained ways of thinking about suburban interior decoration.
Catriona Quinn
Parlour: Women, Equity, Architecture
‘Sugg Ryan’s deep knowledge of the history of inter-war domestic design brings us some fascinating detail on the genealogy of the key objects used by residents to signal their knowledge and appreciation of modernism.
English Historical Revew
February 2020
‘Deborah Sugg Ryan's book begins with the personal and then develops into a fascinating and detailed study of housing design and the meanings of home in interwar Britain. These interesting intersections between the subjective, design history and a social history of the home makes for a gratifyingly fresh take on the history of housing design and domesticity during the years 1918 to 1939. The book is well-written, convincingly argued and successfully merges design history, social and gender history in what is undoubtedly an important new contribution to twentieth-century British history.’
Caitríona Beaumont
Cercles
‘Deborah Sugg Ryan's book makes an important contribution to the history of design as it was experienced by lower-middle-class and middle-class consumers in Great Britain in between the two world wars. Weaving a narrative out of such varied sources as the Daily Mail's Ideal Home exhibitions, period advertisements for new housing developments, women's domestic advice literature and the individual histories captured in the Mass Observation Archive, she presents a history of the architectural style and interior design practices of new suburban developments in the 1920s and 1930s.’
Kristina Wilson
Journal of Design History
‘Grounding her discussion in the discipline of design history, Sugg Ryan explores the aspirations and tastes of new suburban communities in England during the interwar period. Four individual stories of home ownership and homemaking reveal different aspects of emotional investment in domestic design and the drive for individuality. The author investigates how the design and decoration of these domestic spaces forged gender identities and a new suburban class.’
R. P. Meden
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Comradely objects
Design and material culture in Soviet Russia, 1960s–80s
The major part of this book project was funded by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Sklodowska-Curie grant agreement No. 700913.
This book is about two distinct but related professional cultures in late Soviet
Russia that were concerned with material objects: industrial design and
decorative art. The Russian avant-garde of the 1920s is broadly recognised to
have been Russia’s first truly original contribution to world culture. In
contrast, Soviet design of the post-war period is often dismissed as hackwork
and plagiarism that resulted in a shabby world of commodities. This book
identifies the second historical attempt at creating a powerful alternative to
capitalist commodities in the Cold War era. It offers a new perspective on the
history of Soviet material culture by focusing on the notion of the ‘comradely
object’ as an agent of progressive social relations that state-sponsored Soviet
design inherited from the avant-garde. It introduces a shared history of
domestic objects, handmade as well as machine-made, mass-produced as well as
unique, utilitarian as well as challenging the conventional notion of utility.
Situated at the intersection of intellectual history, social history and
material culture studies, this book elucidates the complexities and
contradictions of Soviet design that echoed international tendencies of the late
twentieth century. The book is addressed to design historians, art historians,
scholars of material culture, historians of Russia and the USSR, as well as
museum and gallery curators, artists and designers, and the broader public
interested in modern aesthetics, art and design, and/or the legacy of socialist
regimes.
Soaking up the rays
Light therapy and visual culture in Britain, c. 1890–1940
Soaking up the rays forges a new path for exploring Britain’s fickle love of the light by investigating the beginnings of light therapy in the country from c.1890-1940. Despite rapidly becoming a leading treatment for tuberculosis, rickets and other infections and skin diseases, light therapy was a contentious medical practice. Bodily exposure to light, whether for therapeutic or aesthetic ends, persists as a contested subject to this day: recommended to counter psoriasis and other skin conditions as well as Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD) and depression; closely linked to notions of beauty, happiness and well-being, fuelling tourism to sunny locales abroad and the tanning industry at home; and yet with repeated health warnings that it is a dangerous carcinogen. By analysing archival photographs, illustrated medical texts, advertisements, lamps, and goggles and their visual representation of how light acted upon the body, Woloshyn assesses their complicated contribution to the founding of light therapy. Soaking up the rays will appeal to those intrigued by medicine’s visual culture, especially academics and students of the histories of art and visual culture, material cultures, medicine, science and technology, and popular culture.