Abstract This special issue explores the potential of a transnational approach to histories of multinational furniture companies. The editors argue that prevailing national and global frameworks in design history inadequately capture the complex cross-border operations, networks, and knowledge flows that shaped multinational design firms from the mid-twentieth century onward. While a national lens cannot sufficiently grasp the history of companies whose activities transcend borders, a global perspective tends to downplay the importance of local actors, conditions, and exchanges. By contrast, transnationalism offers a productive methodological alternative, enabling a more nuanced understanding of how design companies operated across borders through exportation, subsidiaries, and licensing. Through a focus on the postwar expansion of the US-based company Knoll into countries within Europe, North and South America, the Middle East, and Oceania, this special issue makes a case for understanding multinational furniture companies as co-produced through transnational networks of expertise, negotiation, and exchange. In doing so it also contributes to a broader effort to decentre Euro-American design histories.
Abstract This article focuses on the redefinition of Swiss graphic design as a historically and culturally constructed national design discourse between the 1990s and the mid-2010s. Since the 1950s, the label “Swiss” has enjoyed international renown through Swiss Style. In more recent decades, changes in graphic practice have challenged this canonical image and its connotation. Through a chronological analysis and contextualization of selected discursive statements, this article explores the struggle for a contemporary redefinition of Swiss graphic design to emerge in light of the enduring connotation of the national label within graphic design discourse. To this end, it considers how notions of “Swissness” in graphic design have been publicly questioned, represented, contested, and negotiated in specialized but mainstream publications, thereby tracing the emergence, reception, and eventual canonization of alternative narratives. Emphasizing both domestic and foreign perspectives, this article examines how a new generation of designers, curators, and critics challenged, reclaimed, or playfully subverted the national canon. Overall, it argues that the Swiss label in graphic design has a flexible and contested meaning shaped by cultural, historical, and institutional dynamics taking place both within and beyond Switzerland, and that this meaning was progressively reclaimed between the 1990s and the 2010s.
Abstract This article investigates the significant influence of Japanese graphic design on Polish poster art, examining its evolution from the late nineteenth century to the late twentieth century. Framed by the centenary of diplomatic relations between Poland and Japan in 2019, highlighted by the bi-national poster competition “Ideography: Poland/Japan,” the study identifies striking formal and aesthetic parallels between the two traditions. The analysis unfolds in three key phases. The first phase contextualizes the impact of Japanese aesthetics on European art during the Japonisme movement, which profoundly influenced artistic practices across Europe, including Poland. This cultural exchange laid the foundation for the later integration of Japanese visual principles into Polish poster design. The second phase explores how Polish artists embraced Japonisme during the development of their poster tradition, blending theoretical engagement with practical applications. This process led to a distinct national visual identity shaped by global modernist influences and Japanese artistic paradigms. The third phase examines the resurgence of Japanese influence on Polish poster art in the post-World War II period, particularly through the work of Shigeo Fukuda. His metaphorical design language resonated with Polish artists linked to the Poznań School, such as Lex Drewinski, Waldemar Świerzy, and Mirosław Adamczyk, who adapted Fukuda’s innovative approach to foster a shared visual dialogue between the two traditions.
Abstract The article examines the culture of knitting in interwar Czechoslovakia by critically exploring its popularity in the 1920s and 1930s. It contends that knitting, while widespread, did not carry the same ideological weight as other craft practices in the region, allowing it to evolve not as a rural craft but as a fashionable activity that mirrored broader societal changes and modernization efforts in Czechoslovakia. By assessing its multiple meanings, the article offers new insights into Central European histories of design and visual culture through the lens of its various significances and producers. Shedding light on these connections reveals the continuity and reactivation of common craft practices, highlighting the challenging position of their agents, including artists, designers, writers, and home workers in remote villages. It argues that acknowledging their contributions to modern culture involves reconstructing a history that re-evaluates the development of a craft that, despite its popularity, has been marginalized or historicized, much like many of its practitioners.
