Victorian Designs of Industrial Desire

The Victorian fascination with the world of manufacture—exemplified in the Great Exhibition of 1851—was concomitant with, and probably fuelled by, progress in technical drawing fluency and literacy. Periodicals such as The Mechanics’ Magazine (founded 1823) and The English Mechanic and World of Scie...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Béatrice Laurent
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Presses Universitaires de la Méditerranée 2018-06-01
Series:Cahiers Victoriens et Edouardiens
Subjects:
Online Access:https://journals.openedition.org/cve/3568
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
_version_ 1832581251730505728
author Béatrice Laurent
author_facet Béatrice Laurent
author_sort Béatrice Laurent
collection DOAJ
description The Victorian fascination with the world of manufacture—exemplified in the Great Exhibition of 1851—was concomitant with, and probably fuelled by, progress in technical drawing fluency and literacy. Periodicals such as The Mechanics’ Magazine (founded 1823) and The English Mechanic and World of Science (founded 1865) included increasingly sophisticated illustrations which taught their readers to look at objects and machines differently. The necessity to look beyond the surface and into the hidden mechanical devices demanded a level of abstraction that some philanthropists deemed essential to improve the condition of the artisans. Their self-appointed ‘mission’ to make ‘an ‘unlearned people’ learned in ‘common things’ contended that technical drawing ‘materially assists the understanding of machinery, not only by illustrations, but by teaching the mind to separate the parts of a whole and to note their relation’1. This form of industrial education resulted in a training of the eye and the mind to operate according to non-mimetic, purely conceptual codes. The cultural impact of this revolution in the act of seeing reached far beyond the field of technical drawing, as this paper proposes to demonstrate.
format Article
id doaj-art-9ba8df0b419649159861bf32925b3f3d
institution Kabale University
issn 0220-5610
2271-6149
language English
publishDate 2018-06-01
publisher Presses Universitaires de la Méditerranée
record_format Article
series Cahiers Victoriens et Edouardiens
spelling doaj-art-9ba8df0b419649159861bf32925b3f3d2025-01-30T10:22:33ZengPresses Universitaires de la MéditerranéeCahiers Victoriens et Edouardiens0220-56102271-61492018-06-018710.4000/cve.3568Victorian Designs of Industrial DesireBéatrice LaurentThe Victorian fascination with the world of manufacture—exemplified in the Great Exhibition of 1851—was concomitant with, and probably fuelled by, progress in technical drawing fluency and literacy. Periodicals such as The Mechanics’ Magazine (founded 1823) and The English Mechanic and World of Science (founded 1865) included increasingly sophisticated illustrations which taught their readers to look at objects and machines differently. The necessity to look beyond the surface and into the hidden mechanical devices demanded a level of abstraction that some philanthropists deemed essential to improve the condition of the artisans. Their self-appointed ‘mission’ to make ‘an ‘unlearned people’ learned in ‘common things’ contended that technical drawing ‘materially assists the understanding of machinery, not only by illustrations, but by teaching the mind to separate the parts of a whole and to note their relation’1. This form of industrial education resulted in a training of the eye and the mind to operate according to non-mimetic, purely conceptual codes. The cultural impact of this revolution in the act of seeing reached far beyond the field of technical drawing, as this paper proposes to demonstrate.https://journals.openedition.org/cve/3568illustrationartprintingindustrialisationGreat Exhibitiondraughtsmanship
spellingShingle Béatrice Laurent
Victorian Designs of Industrial Desire
Cahiers Victoriens et Edouardiens
illustration
art
printing
industrialisation
Great Exhibition
draughtsmanship
title Victorian Designs of Industrial Desire
title_full Victorian Designs of Industrial Desire
title_fullStr Victorian Designs of Industrial Desire
title_full_unstemmed Victorian Designs of Industrial Desire
title_short Victorian Designs of Industrial Desire
title_sort victorian designs of industrial desire
topic illustration
art
printing
industrialisation
Great Exhibition
draughtsmanship
url https://journals.openedition.org/cve/3568
work_keys_str_mv AT beatricelaurent victoriandesignsofindustrialdesire