The new Twentieth and Twenty-first century design cycle’ s opening lecture will introduce the listeners with a framework of the most important inventions and innovations of the late 18th and early 19th centuries, which significantly influenced the evolution of design that followed.
Maria Savostyanova will trace in detail the history of the dramatic coexistence of, and the conflict between industrial production and handicraft techniques, and will explain the phenomenon of “national romanticism”. Featured in her lecture will be some of the main heroes and events of the era, such as the 1851 Great Exhibition and Joseph Paxton’s Crystal Palace, Napoleon III and the arrogant theatrical style distinctive of his epoch, as well as the Pre-Raphaelites, William Morris and the Arts and Crafts movement.
