: Finally recognized as the world's first professional industrial
designer, Christopher Dresser (1834-1904) spent his career in
England supplying good design ideas to dozens of firms for mass
production. Through July 29, the Smithsonian's Cooper-Hewitt,
National Design Museum will present the first full-scale
retrospective of his work, "Shock of the Old: Christopher
Dresser." The exhibition will commemorate the 100th anniversary
of the designer's passing.
More than 300 major works, drawn from the diverse media in which
he worked, will travel to the Victoria and Albert Museum in
London in September 2004. These venues are significant because
Dresser - who had visited the United States during the Centennial
of 1876 - had urged American industrialists to establish their
own museum of design similar to what was then called the South
Kensington Museum in London.
His designs were for teapots and toast racks, proof that Dresser
realized the permanence of the Industrial Revolution that was
taking place around him and the growing demand for innovative
designs to satisfy middle-class consumers. Unlike other reformers
of the period, he resolved to work with these trends, rather than
against them.
