All that is Rare, Characteristic or Beautiful

Design and the Defense of Tradition in Colonial India, 1851-1903

Bibliographic Data

ID2390866
AuthorsAbigail S Mcgowan (University of Vermont), Abigail Mcgowan (University of Vermont, corresponding author)
Year2005
Volume10
Issue3
Pages263-287
Publication date2005-11-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueJournal of Material Culture (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1359-1835 • E-ISSN: 1460-3586
PublisherSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1177/1359183505057152
OpenAlexW2104256331
LanguageEN
Citations received6
References cited12

In the 1880s and 1890s, British officials worried that traditional Indian design was disappearing in the face of rapid westernization. But their idea of what constituted 'traditional' design was itself new, forged first at international exhibitions and then in the context of Indian artisanal and consumer experimentation with novel combinations of foreign styles and objects. Indeed, it was the latter which prompted British art officials in India to call for a return to tradition. But traditionalism in design was not just in reaction to Indian cosmopolitan tendencies; it tried to achieve its own, slightly different cosmopolitanism by Indianizing western forms with the application of pure Indian ornament. I argue that it was in the intersection of these competing visions - Indian and British, metropolitan and colonial - of how to use and fill homes with new goods that a new definition of Indian traditional design emerged in this period

Aesthetics · Archaeology · Art · Art history · Clothing · Colonialism · Consumerism · Context (archaeology · Cosmopolitanism · Exhibition · Face (sociological concept · Media studies · Modernization theory · Political science · Politics · Social science · Sociology · Taboo · Vision · Westernization · Anthropology · Fashion and Cultural Textiles · History · Law

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