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Penny Sparke

Related: applied arts - decorative arts - design - furniture - history - industrial design

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Professor Penny Sparke, Dean of Design, Kingston University, UK Prof Penny Sparke is the Dean of the Faculty of Art, Design & Music at Kingston University (UK) where she is Professor of Design History. Penny is one the best known design historians working today. Her 1986 book, An Introduction to Design and Culture in the Twentieth Century, is still widely read and used within design education. Still in print in revised form, this book helped to open up awareness of design as a multi-disciplined professional practice intricately linked into both economic and cultural production. Radical for its time, it helped also to widen the focus of design historians to include the consumer as well as the designer and design object.

Since 1975 she has taught the History of Design to undergraduate and postgraduate students at Brighton Polytechnic and, from 1981 to 1999, at the Royal College of Art. Other key publications by Penny include Design in Context (1987) Electrical Appliances (1988); Italian Design from 1860 to the Present (1989); Japanese Design (1989); The Plastic Age. From Modernity to Post-Modernity (ed) (1990); and As Long as it's Pink: The Sexual Politics of Taste (1995). As Long as it's Pink is particularly significant as a polemic on the taste and gender bias that informed the absence of women from the pages of modernist design texts and museum collections. Again, this book, like much of Penny's work, explored the nexus of design, production and consumption. --http://www.museum.vic.gov.au/design/exhibition/design_forum.asp#sparke [Feb 2006]

As Long As It's Pink : The Sexual Politics of Taste (1995) - Penny Sparke

As Long As It's Pink : The Sexual Politics of Taste (1995) - Penny Sparke [Amazon.com] [FR] [DE] [UK]

See also: pink - gender - taste

A Century of Design: Design Pioneers of the 20th Century () - Penny Sparke

A Century of Design: Design Pioneers of the 20th Century () - Penny Sparke [Amazon.com] [FR] [DE] [UK]

Focusing on the unique history of design during the 20th centur jy, this book is as beautiful to look at as it is exciting to read. It contains more than 580 color photographs covering a wide spectrum of objects -- from furniture, glass, ceramics, and metalware to industrial products and household appliances. Penny did a book on Sottsass too. --

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