Charlotte Ashby – författare

The Viennese café was a key site of urban modernity around 1900. In the rapidly growing city it functioned simultaneously as home and workplace, affording opportunities for both leisure and intellectual exchange. This volume explores the nature and function of the coffeehouse in the social, cultural, and political world of fin-de-siècle Vienna. Just as the café served as a creative meeting place within the city, so this volume initiates conversations between different disciplines focusing on Vienna at the beginning of the twentieth century. Contributions are drawn from the fields of social and cultural history, literary studies, Jewish studies and art, and architectural and design history. A fresh perspective is also provided by a selection of comparative articles exploring coffeehouse culture elsewhere in Eastern Europe.

Art Nouveau presents a new overview of the international Art Nouveau movement. Art Nouveau represented the search for a new style for a new age, a sense that the conditions of modernity called for fundamentally new means of expression. Art Nouveau emerged in a world transformed by industrialisation, urbanisation and increasingly rapid means of transnational exchange, bringing about new ways of living, working and creating.This book is structured around key themes for understanding the contexts behind Art Nouveau, including new materials and technologies, colonialism and imperialism, the rise of the 'modern woman', the rise of the professional designer and the role of the patron-collector. It also explores the new ideas that inspired Art Nouveau: nature and the natural sciences, world arts and world religions, psychology and new visions for the modern self. Ashby explores the movement through 41 case studies of artists and designers, buildings, interiors, paintings, graphic arts, glass, ceramics and jewellery, drawn from a wide range of countries.

Scandinavia is a region associated with modernity: modern design, modern living and a modern welfare state. This new history of modernism in Scandinavia offers a picture of the complex reality that lies behind the label: a modernism made up of many different figures, impulses and visions. It places the individuals who have achieved international fame, such as Edvard Munch and Alvar Aalto in a wider context, and through a series of case studies, provides a rich analysis of the art, architecture and design history of the Nordic region, and of modernism as a concept and mode of practice.Modernism in Scandinavia addresses the decades between 1890 and 1970 and presents an intertwined history of modernism across the region. Charlotte Ashby gives a rationale for her focus on those countries which share an interrelated history and colonial past, but also stresses influences from outside the region, such as the English Arts and Crafts movement and the impact of emergent American modernism. Her richly illustrated account guides the reader through key historical periods and cultural movements, with case studies illuminating key art works, buildings, designed products and exhibitions.

Building/Object addresses the space in between the conventional objects of design and the conventional objects of architecture, probing and reassessing the differences between the disciplines of design history and architectural historyEach of the 13 chapters in this book examine things which are neither object-like nor building-like, but somewhere in between – air conditioning; bookshelves; partition walls; table-monuments; TVs; convenience stores; cars – exposing particular political configurations and resonances that otherwise might be occluded. In doing so, they reveal that the definitions we make of objects in opposition to buildings, and of architecture in opposition to design, are not as fundamental as they seem.This book brings new aspects of the creative and experiential into our understanding of the human environment.

The Viennese cafe was a key site of urban modernity around 1900. In the rapidly growing city it functioned simultaneously as home and workplace, affording opportunities for both leisure and intellectual exchange. This volume explores the nature and function of the coffeehouse in the social, cultural and political world of fin-de-siecle Vienna. Just as the cafe served as a creative meeting place within the city, so this volume initiates conversations between different disciplines focusing on Vienna 1900. Contributions are drawn from the fields of social and cultural history, literary studies, Jewish studies and art, and architectural and design history. A fresh perspective is also provided by a selection of comparative articles exploring coffeehouse culture elsewhere in Eastern Europe.

«Nordic Design in Translation: The Circulation of Objects, Ideas and Practices is an exciting and necessary addition to the discourse on material culture, bringing together fresh approaches to the transnational character of Nordic design. The contributors take the reader outside the established frameworks of national, institutional and disciplinary boundaries and offer us a way to think about the circulation of objects, ideas and practices and their interconnection with wider influences and cultural contexts.»(Professor Juliette MacDonald, Chair of Craft History and Theory, Edinburgh College of Art, University of Edinburgh)«With the ambition to go underneath the veneer of "Scandinavian Design", this volume offers original perspectives on artistic and cultural transfer. Case studies spanning the twentieth century challenge canonical trajectories of unidirectional influence and demonstrate how design and its ideas translate across nations. It is a vital contribution to contemporary scholarship and an inspiring read for everyone interested in design history in the Nordic region and beyond.»(Christina Pech, Senior Lecturer, History of Art, University of Oslo)«Scandinavian Design» as a myth, a brand and a shorthand for a range of design ideas has proved an enduring and adaptable construct. Its export around the world has ensured that it has touched and transformed design cultures from Europe to Australia. At the same time, the Nordic design it draws on has been shaped and reshaped by influences from beyond the Nordic countries and by reflection on its own global success. This collection of essays considers Nordic design from the mid-nineteenth century to the present day within transnational dynamics of cultural interaction, circulations and cross-border flows that highlight exchange and reciprocity. Engaging with a range of Nordic and Nordic-inspired material objects, techniques, practices and concepts, the essays assess both the impact they have had on new cultural contexts and the ways they themselves have been fashioned and refashioned in response to foreign influences. Open Access Chapter 2 is available here.