The Art History and Architecture Collection is a vital resource for academic libraries, offering extensive insights into various themes such as art movements, single-artist studies, decolonising art, gender and masculinity, citizenship, architecture and design. This collection aims to broaden the scope of art history, addressing a diverse range of visual cultural forms from the early modern period to the present.
The collection encompasses theories and histories of materiality, exploring the intricate relationship between making and thinking, fashion and culture, production and consumption, textiles and industry.
| Key series |
| Rethinking Art’s Histories |
| Studies in Design and Material Culture |
| Collection year | Titles |
| 2025 titles | 17 |
| 2023/4 titles | 28 |
| 2013-2022 titles | 74 |
| Total collection | 128 |
| Keywords |
| Singleartist studies |
| Subcultures |
| Design |
| Architecture |
| Citizenship |
| Surrealism |
| Art movements |
| Decolonising art |
| Queer art |
| Gender – masculinity |
| Modernism |
| Postmodernism |
| Thema subject categories |
| Architecture |
| Avant-garde |
| Ceramics, mosaics and glass: artworks |
| Colonialism and imperialism |
| History of art |
| Material culture |
| Performance art |
| Theory of art |
SDG coverage
Art history and architecture collection
This chapter compares the London daily newspapers known as ‘Clubland Evenings’ – such as the Pall Mall Gazette, St James’s Gazette and Westminster Gazette – and the impact on them of the arrival of the mass-circulation press with the first issue of the Daily Mail in 1896. It also looks at Gould’s editors, such as W.T. Stead and E.T. Cook, as well as J.A. Spender who took over from Cook as editor of the Westminster Gazette in 1896 and employed Gould as assistant editor on the paper as well as daily political cartoonist and journalist. The author then discusses the various reprints of Gould’s cartoon work, including his own monthly magazine Picture Politics, plus the two series of booklets entitled The Westminster Cartoons and The Westminster Populars, and the four large-format hardback anthologies of his cartoons published between 1903 and 1906.
After a brief account of Gould’s later years the author considers why Gould seems to have been overlooked in the history of graphic satire. He cites Punch as being ‘the best example of an afterlife’ as its contents have frequently been recycled, and adds: ‘If Gould had been a Punch contributor, he too would surely have been anthologized and have joined the company of those such as Sambourne and Raven-Hill for whose reputations Punch is a principal reference.’ In addition, ‘the First World War blew Gould’s world to bits’ and most of the publications for which he worked are now long gone. However, the author also argues that a cartoonist’s afterlife ‘includes a recognition by later generations first that he was an influence over his contemporaries – setting a style of draughtsmanship for his own times, perhaps; or defining the accepted cartoon version of a prime minister; or even stretching the frontiers of acceptable imagery. […] Second is the recognition, […] that he is a reliable guide to people’s priorities and what they thought at the time about the world around them: the enduring value of “getting to the nub of things”. In these matters of influence Gould’s importance is not in doubt. Not for long was he a major model for style […] But twentieth-century political cartoonists on daily papers were treading in Gould’s footsteps. What Gould lacks is a more widespread recognition and respect for his importance in the development of the modern political cartoon.’
This chapter covers Gould’s early life and career in Barnstaple, Devon (his schooldays and work at a bank), at the Stock Exchange, London, and the first publication of his drawings in Vanity Fair and Truth. There follows a discussion of his work for the weekly Pall Mall Budget and then his employment by the evening daily Pall Mall Gazette in 1890, thereby becoming the first full-time staff cartoonist employed on a daily paper in Britain. After explaining his move to the Liberal Westminster Gazette in 1892, the author discusses his popularity and influence, culminating in his knighthood in 1906.
The Italy at Work: Her Renaissance in Design Today exhibition played a crucial role in promoting Made in Italy imports to the United States and in reviving their modernity in foreign markets. The chapter contributes to this perspective by explaining how the exhibition was also a significant moment of fashion promotion during the postwar years, consolidating Italian originality and opening doors for a wider appreciation of Italian fashion in the United States. There are five sections analysing the exhibition in terms of its contribution to fashion history. These explain the selection of fashion merchandise on display and how it evolved as it travelled through twelve major American museums. In particular, the chapter presents a detailed analysis of the San Francisco and Brooklyn exhibitions’ legs, shedding light on previously unacknowledged accessories by Ferragamo and Roberta di Camerino exhibited there. The findings of this research provide a more comprehensive understanding of Italy at Work and the so far unrecognised impact of fashion trends in its constant redevelopment through the twelve steps of its three-year tour, between 1950 and 1953. Eventually, the chapter explores the intricate power dynamics between the organizers, the various intermediaries, and the US fashion market, along with the impact of Italy at Work on the career of commissionaire Giovanni Battista Giorgini and the genesis of the Italian High Fashion Shows in Florence.
The book discusses the transition that took place between 1944 and 1953, allowing Italian dressmaking to move from being considered a practice of copying Parisian models to achieving the status of ‘couture’, an attribution of value and recognition of individual originality. Building up from what has been researched so far on commissionaire Giovanni Battista Giorgini, the book sets out to demonstrate that the Italian High Fashion Shows were not so much an ingenious intuition of Giorgini but rather his clever attempt at consolidating trends and sentiments that invested several Italian and American fashion intermediaries of the time. The book contextualizes the earliest appearances of discourses on an ‘Italian fashion scene’ in US magazines and newspapers, mapping their descriptions of a collective identity of Italian fashion exports and highlighting the attention on simplicity and ingenuity. The same attributes are then examined in the promotions of Italian fashion merchandise operated in the United States and, with less success, in Italy until 1951. The six chapters document the gradual expansion of Italian fashion exports to the United States: from handcrafted accessories and textiles; to a small series of sportswear, knitwear, and the quintessentially Italian moda boutique; to the eventual inclusion in the early 1950s of high-end sartorie, finally recognised as original representatives of the new Italian couture.
The final chapter explains the methodological contribution of the book in its critical reassessment of the Giorgini archive. Here, the value of the archive is acknowledged as a complementary piece in the puzzle that is the international business history of fashion in its own right, but also as an example of how a fashion professional built the documentary foundation of his legacy. With this in mind, the conclusion suggests that while recent studies have identified Giorgini’s political intentions in his efforts to promote an idea of Italian fashion abroad as a form of ‘soft power’, these should instead be seen as ‘soft power ambitions’, in line with David W. Ellwood’s conceptualisation of the term coined by Joseph S. Nye. In addition, there had been similar attempts by other organisations before and after Giorgini, who sought the patronage of influential American citizens and members of the diplomatic community to promote their Italian fashion events. The final sections list the specific contributions of each chapter and conclude by contextualising the impact of the Italian High Fashion Shows on the subsequent emergence of the ‘Italian Look’ and the international relevance of the ready-to-wear industry in the late 1970s. The chapter concludes by explaining how the Shows laid the conceptual and discursive groundwork for the industry, which helped it later move away from equating Italian fashion with transatlantic tourism and an almost folkloristic gaze.
This chapter describes how the effectiveness of fashion promotion in Italy was undermined by the disjointed and disorganised fashion councils in Turin, Milan and Rome. Like Giorgini, the councils were indeed concerned with the development of foreign trade and, in particular, the establishment of permanent arrangements with the US fashion market. The chapter therefore provides evidence of a network of intermediaries and fashion professionals competing for the same goal: to make Italian fashion profitable as an export and to establish its permanence on the international market. The councils in Turin, Milan and Rome are thus presented as predecessors and competitors of Giorgini's private organisation, each characterised by a specific configuration of interests: the ‘American colony’ in Rome, linked to film stars and the cinema industry; the industrial scene of Milan and its skilled dressmakers; and the reconstitution of the remnants of a Fascist fashion council in Turin, the city that was once the only legitimised fashion capital of Italy. Despite the contrasts among the different fashion councils, the chapter eventually demonstrates the previously unnoticed first attempt to introduce an original Italian couture collection by the American department store J.L. Hudson’s in Detroit in 1949. Finally, the chapter presents the dressmakers and fashion firms that caught the attention of the American press before 1951, names who would in a few months take part in the early establishments of Giorgini’s Italian High Fashion Shows.
This chapter contextualizes the first five Italian High Fashion Shows organized by Giorgini within the cultural and commercial scenarios outlined in the previous chapters. The themes highlighted by the promotional activities that took place before 1951, including the recent Italy at Work, are here examined in the novel context of a systematized, biannual series of collective fashion showings. The Shows reinforced the definition of an ‘Italian Look’ in the early 1950s, legitimizing Italian couture further and focusing on moda boutique. This chapter provides an in-depth analysis of the rhetorical strategies utilized by Giorgini to promote the Shows. In particular, it demonstrates that the use of Renaissance was modelled against prior examples of Fascist propaganda and discourses that had recently been circulating in the American press. The chapter eventually discusses Giorgini’s difficulties in overseeing the Shows and the alleged rivalry with the Parisian fashion industry, deconstructing the traditional narrative of pure competitiveness and instead highlighting collaborative relationships with his French contenders. The analysis concludes with the fifth Show, held in January 1953, by which time the Florentine events had become a set appointment in the transatlantic fashion calendar of seasonal presentations, and Italian fashion and couture exports were firmly established on the American market. The acknowledgement of the international market was by then complete and Italian dressmaking was now effectively recognised with the new term ‘Italian couture’.
The chapter begins with an examination of the buying offices and commissionaires in Florence in the first half of the twentieth century, before turning to the Italian branch of Handicraft Development, Inc., CADMA. The latter, directed by the art historian Carlo Ludovico Ragghianti and technically managed by Mario Vannini Parenti, provided Handicraft Development, Inc. in New York with samples of handicrafts to be exhibited and promoted to American retailers and buyers. The aim was to advance the cause of Italian artisans and, as it turned out, Italian fashion artisans as well. The chapter then presents a case study of the reintroduction of Ferragamo shoes to the postwar American market, providing new insights into the relationship between the famous shoemaker and CADMA, and how the two intersected through Vannini Parenti personally. This and an additional case study shed light on how for-profit businesses in Florence, such as commissionaires and buying offices, coexisted with HDI and its associated agencies, which instead had non-commercial objectives. Finally, the chapter serves as an introduction to the main protagonist of the book’s analysis, the Tuscan commissionaire Giovanni Battista Giorgini, and to the events that marked his professional biography before the creation of the Italian High Fashion Shows in 1951. Eventually the chapters highlight the similarities between the objectives pursued by Giorgini, Handicraft Development, Inc., and CADMA, all of which aimed to provide Italian artisans with export-oriented production skills, enhanced reputation, and visibility.
The introduction explains the starting point of the book, a methodological reflection that assesses how the business vision of commissionaire Giovanni Battista Giorgini and his establishment of the Italian High Fashion Shows in Florence in 1951 have crystallised into a mythologised place in the history of Italian fashion. The text adopts the historical perspective of historian Marc Bloch’s preoccupation with origins to closely read the celebratory narrative that mythicized Giorgini in Italian fashion history until the early 2000s. It contextualises the research presented in the book with previous studies of fashion under Fascism, to highlight the continuity that exists between the regime and democracy in terms of business practices, fashion professionals and manufacturers. The chapter then presents the theoretical framework, grounded in the new business history of fashion studies and particularly on Regina Lee Blaszczyk’s work on fashion intermediaries. It outlines the need to understand the social realities of postwar Italian fashion through a detailed study of the activities situated between production and consumption, well represented by the main actors discussed in the book: the G.B. Giorgini firm, the non-profit agency Handicraft Development, Inc., its Italian branch CADMA, and other Italian fashion councils. Finally, after a critical evaluation of the primary sources discussed, especially those in the Giorgini archive in Florence, the chapter explains the book's contribution to the field of transnational history, as it rewrites a history of the cultural and commercial interactions of postwar Italy with North America within the larger configuration of the international fashion market.