The thesis comprises a descriptive catalogue of the working drawings for domestic furniture by Ernest W. Gimson and Sidney H. Barnsley, together with a text which examines the drawings, the nature and evolution of the Gimson/Barnsley style, and the historical context of their work. Nature and scope of the research The principal task has been to make the drawings as intelligible as possible. Each has therefore been provided with a description under several headings. Selected drawings have been described at length and most of these illustrated. No attempt has been made to match every drawing with an executed piece, though a number of pieces have been referred to when documentation was available. Treatment of designs in both catalogue and text is analytical as well as descriptive. Contributions to knowledge of the subject The drawings have been arranged in date order within the accepted categories. Wherever possible dates have been suggested for the many undated drawings. An attempt has been made to indicate all relationships between drawings. As far as possible all obscurities in the drawings have been clarified and ambiguities discussed and resolved. Significant aspects of technique have also been noted and discussed. Among the documentary material examined and collated are: Ernest Gimson's Job Book; the sketch-books and notebooks of Gimson and Sidney Barnsley; correspondence (all the foregoing unpublished); periodical literature in architecture and the decorative arts between 1885 and 1930; books; collections of photographs. The descriptions of selected designs, and the measurements given for all designs, will facilitate the identification of pieces of furniture for the purpose of compiling a comprehensive catalogue of the drawings and furniture of both men. Summary of main findings. Ernest Gimson and Sidney Barnsley were major figures in the English Arts and Crafts movement. The present catalogue and account of their work as furniture designers helps to confirm this estimate of them. It also shows them to have been more versatile, original, and eclectic than has been supposed.

The focus of this thesis is the manufacture and consumption of furniture in British India in the second half of the eighteenth and the eill"ly nineteenth centuries. Working from sources which include furniture and pictures as well as contemporary written material, which ranges from diaries and memoirs to accounts and estate inventories, furniture is examined in the broader context of British trade and settlement in the Subcontinent. The tllesis explores tlle ownership and use of furniture among Europeans in India, primarily in tlle Bengal and Madras Presidencies, with emphasis placed on understanding elements of European domestic life such as interior decoration and shopping. AngloIndian interiors are examined, as are the factors which influenced their appearance. In an attempt to reconstruct the furniture market in early colonial India, the iliesis addresses tlle various sources of furniture and studies the acquisition and availability of botll imported and local manufactures. The iliesis also interprets the consumption of Western-style fumiture and decorative articles among Indians as an effect of the growing European influence. AltllOugh addressing a number of centres of cabinet-making, tlle thesis does not examine tlle technical or stylistic aspects of Anglo-Indi~U1 fumiture in dCpUl, but inslead creates illl understanding of Anglo-Indiilll furniture by examining issues such as technology transfer, workshop organization, tlle use of pattems, and the availability of materials.

Chapter 1, entitled "The Scottish Tradition", builds on the early twentieth-century consensus that Lorimer had resuscitated a moribund Scottish tradition of design. While critics have examined the Scottish roots of Lorimer's architecture, the native sources of his furniture design have received little corresponding attention. This section aims to demonstrate the ways in which Lorimer's interest in historical Scottish architecture and woodwork informed his interior and furniture design. In particular, his use of vernacular and regional forms is juxtaposed with the revival of traditional types and motifs he shared with contemporary designers. Complementing a concern with indigenous design is Lorimer's interest in continental antique furniture. Lorimer's personal collection, and those of his clients, may be identified as formative in the development of his design. Chapter 2 examines the main sources, against the social background of Scottish furniture and interior design during the period. The circumstances of the commissions discussed here reveal Lorimer's combination of the roles of architect and interior designer, the focus of Chapter 3 on Lorimer's wide-ranging activities at Balmanno Castle, Perthshire. Chapter 4 seeks to redress the balance between Lorimer as traditionalist and agent for reform, particularly in the area of design education. It will be argued that his own design innovations were secondary to the latter achievement. His attitudes to industrial design and handcraft are considered here, which leads to the final chapter on workmanship. This section is comprised of an in-depth study of Lorimer's working relationship with the executants of his designs; the variant use of handwork and machinework is discussed, and finally some attempt is made to discern and acknowledge the peculiar contributions of designer and workmen.

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Over the last two decades a category of artefact has appeared that has come to be termed 'design art': highly expressive furniture and domestic products that are created as self-initiated, often limited edition designs, sold through galleries, exhibited in museums and collected in the manner traditionally ascribed to art. To date no in-depth theoretical analysis of the growth of such design has been conducted and key protagonists such as Droog Design have received little critical attention, as those involved have been largely left to write their own history. Consequently, the aim of this thesis is to account for the development of these objects as the products of particular cultural and historical conditions and ask what the implications of the rise of these particular practices of making, distribution and use may be. This thesis proposes that close analysis of the objects, their form and functional potential, reveals their dialectical qualities, in that in their materiality the tensions and conflicts of the period of their development can be discerned. Through an account of the development of the market for such goods it examines the way in which these things can be studied as commodities, in that they can clearly be understood as status symbols or a form of cultural capital. It is also asserted that by regarding such design as having the potential to impact upon everyday life, and not just as existing as something to be consumed by an elite, such practices illuminate broader problems of the ethics of design in a wider sense. In this way it is argued that these communicative objects, in their ambiguous form and problematic relationship to function, can give an insight into the way we live with performative things: the ideological products of modernity that act upon us as we use them and which contain in their being the protocols and disciplinary forces of their time. The intention therefore is to ask whether design art can be seen as a politically radical practice that suggests ways in which both makers and users can assert a new relationship to the things with which we live.

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This thesis deals with the proposal that environmentally benign items of free standing furniture may be produced by the use of such well established techniques as training and grafting natural tree growth to shape. The project has been driven by the growing environmental concerns of which mankind has become aware in the late twentieth century, and which are starting to exert such a powerful influence in the twenty first. A broad history of man's use and control of natural tree growth, ranging geographically from Europe to Australia, and in size from hand held agricultural picks to eighteenth century sailing ships, is followed by a brief description of the ways in which the explosive increase in world popuanon. together with the expanding industrial activities of the Western consumer society, are feared to be threatening the stability of the natural environment. The various disasters and catastrophic accidents which have brought this situation to the attention of the general public are briefly surveyed, together with National, International and a range of Industrial responses. As one of the professions most closely concerned with the production of consumer items, the various reactions of the Design Community are similarly examined. In conclusion, the author's proposal for an experimental item of furnitureenvironmentally benign in production, use and disposal - is described and illustrated. A simple free standing three legged stool, the form of both the item itself and that of the jig required to control it's growth, are described and illustrated. The growth of examples of this, carried out on three sites across southern Britain are documented, experimental results reported and discussed. A further range of designs suitable to be produced using this method of controlling and grafting natural growth is proposed, and suggestions made for further experimentation.

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