Lecture #4 - The Emergence of the Australian Interior Designer: Craft, Commerce and Interdisciplinary Practices, 1920-1945 - Part of 3rd Narratives of Nations Symposium 2022
Speaker: Dr Catriona Quinn, Researcher and academic, UNSW Sydney.
Title: The Emergence of the Australian Interior Designer: Craft, Commerce and Interdisciplinary Practices, 1920-1945
Abstract: The 1920s and 1930s were a crucial time for the development of new design occupations, including interior decoration, which offered fresh opportunities in commerce and self-expression for women. The links between craft and design were crucial to this transitional phase of emergent occupations, when interdisciplinary practices flourished. This talk looks at individual designers such as Thea Proctor, Marion Hall Best, Margo Lewers and May Coulson through the lense of key themes: the gendering of craft and design practices, the global circulation of ideas and the implications of European diaspora. The fluidity between interwar craft and design practices, it is argued, connects this seminal era with contemporary tensions in design disciplines and the gendering of ‘female’ occupations which underpins biased historical narratives.
Speaker: Dr Catriona Quinn, Researcher and academic, UNSW Sydney.
Dr Catriona Quinn researches and teaches design history at UNSW Sydney. A former curator at Sydney Living Museums, she developed the first retrospective exhibition on an Australian interior designer, Marion Hall Best, in 1993. Catriona has published and lectured widely on interior design history, including recent chapters in The Other Moderns: Sydney’s Forgotten European Design Legacy (2017) and Margo Lewers: No Limits (2022) and was twice awarded bursaries by the Design History Society to present at their international conferences. Her 2021 PhD on the role of the client in postwar interior design won UNSW’s J.M. Freeland Prize for Significant Research Contribution. 3.