Revolution and Progress

A highly original study of design that looks at its beginning through the labor, materials, and the techniques that produce it.

Revolution and Progress radically reorients the study of design, revealing its decisive origins within social histories of production. Stripping design history of the linear formalism, subjective biographies, or the reading of objects through rituals of consumption in material culture, Ulrich Lehmann instead explores design through the unique and complex conditions of labor, materials, and the techniques that produce it. Its chapters encompass the long nineteenth century: the period bounded by the epoch defining French and Russian Revolutions of 1789 and 1917.

Lehmann argues that design is inseparable from the social history of its making, evidenced by the material changes brought about by market capitalism as much as the social forces that were battling for equality and emancipation. He defines design as having been created in a crucible of connections relating to progress and revolution—between objects, services, and systems that advance production methods and develop new uses for materials amid radical ruptures.

The book travels across countries as well as historical time, moving between Europe, the Caribbean, North Africa, Asia and North America to demonstrate how revolution and the progress it kickstarted were generated from outside and within. Originally designed illustrations demonstrate how histories are activated for the present.