'Use Your Hands for Happiness':: Home Craft and Make-do-and-Mend in British Women's Magazines in the 1920s and 1930s

Abstract

This article investigates the role of commercial women’s magazines in the dissemination of modern design in Britain in the 1920s and 1930s. Taking Alison Light’s work on conservative modernity as a starting point, it identifies a discourse of feminine modernity, arguing that magazines, along with radio and the cinema, foreground the experiences, aspirations, attitudes and values of women and provide a useful resource for a wider and more nuanced understanding of modernism and the experience of modernity in these years. The significance of the ephemeral, amateur world of DIY design and craft practice has gone largely unrecognised in design history. The special issue and exhibition represent an important step in addressing this absence. Hackney's article on home craft brings together original oral history interviews, the views of editors and primary material gathered from magazines to assert, rather than devalue, the importance of domestic, commercial craft and the complex and varied nature of women’s responses to it.