Designing early television for the ideal home: The roles of industrial designers and exhibitions, 1930s–50s

Abstract

From the late 1930s, prominent architects and designers were enlisted in the design of early television receivers and their display at national exhibitions. This article examines the roles of art, industrial design and major exhibitions as cultural agents in popularizing television as a national medium in Britain between the 1930s and 1950s. Bringing together debates about the cultural production of early television from media and cultural studies and design history, the article approaches industrial designers as cultural intermediaries who shaped cultural tastes and dispositions to popularize television. The Council of Industrial Design’s philosophy and design strategies are assessed to explain the influence of British government policy on early television and model home interiors. The state and commercial promotion of television was framed by both modernist ideas about ‘good design’ and traditional ideas about nation, gendered consumer values, family and home. The article argues that the government promotion of ‘good taste’ and ‘good design’ served as moral agents of post-war national improvement in forging a consumer-led public culture. Within these parameters, industrial designers performed the vital role of ‘tastemakers’ by bestowing status, legitimacy and value on television as a consumer technology and domestic medium designed for the ideal home and family.