'DESIGN' AND MATERIAL CULTURE
Tellings and Re-tellings from the Ethnographic Museum
Rosa te Velde
What does it mean to bring the term âdesignâ into the Wereldmuseum? What does design history look like from the category of the âethnographicâ? Grappling with these questions, this research project sought concepts and frameworks that could connect design discourse to the colonial project, through and along objects from the Wereldmuseumâs collection. Departing from conversations with curators of the Wereldmuseum, the project aimed to develop an approach that would be helpful in shifting an understanding of the museumâs collection, whilst also establishing a framework that could contribute to designers and design studentsâ understanding of design and material culture. The project resulted in a series of conversations and texts written with and by the curators of the Wereldmuseum and historians outside of the museum. In this text, Rosa te Velde, designer, researcher and educator, reflects on the project.
FIGURE 2
What kind of selection of objects does one make when viewing the Wereldmuseumâs collection through the category of âdesignâ? This hat, made in Salatiga, Java (fig. 1) was selected by one of the curators of the Wereldmuseum. The object was collected by H.J. van Swieten, a civil servant who became a resident in Pekalongan, Java (1883-1886) and entered the collection in 1884. The curator shared with us his reflection on the object:
Between the border and the middle part there is an opening for ventilation. The ground and upper part are gilded, the middle part is light green. This hat was added to the collection of the Colonial Museum in Haarlem in 1884. This museum was much focused on products made of natural materials and besides the (West) Javanese name with a question mark, nothing else is indicated, not even whether this is a sun hat, which it probably was. He also collected a similar hat, though not lacquered, to the collection (TM-H-3027). Another similar hat is in the [Rotterdam] Wereldmuseum collection (WM-2714).Âč
The chosen object raised the question about what is perceptible and known about the hat. Visual, material and technical observations are shared, as well as information about the colonial civil servant who collected the object. More importantly, what the curatorâs choice emphasised was what the lens of âdesignâ did to the curatorâs understanding of material culture: it encouraged a strong focus on a particular, âstreamlinedâ and perhaps exceptional form language and aesthetics that is associated with the notion of âdesignâ. The legacy of âmodern designâ echoes through in this kind of decision making. When is âdesignâ a lens? Or when does it create a tunnel vision?
In another session, the same Wereldmuseum curator shared how further reflection on the object through âdesignâ helped to gain a better understanding
Screenshot of the fifties 'mushroom hat' from fiftiesweb.com.
1 Email from curator, 23 January 2024. The curator preferred to be anonymous in this text.
2 Email from curator, 23 January 2024.
3
of how his own research practices and (biased) observations led him to view the hat in a certain way: âI remembered the hat that I had fancied nearly ten years ago, because of its unusual shape and its colors. I realize that this perpetuates a western look on shape and colours of the âmushroom hatâ [fig. 2].âÂČ
The appreciation of a particular modern design fashion icon â the fiftiesâ mushroom hat â had informed the frame of reference of the curator and the questioning around its design allowed for this realization to emerge. The concept of âdesignâ thus facilitated a discussion around culturally ingrained associations with the term, bringing to mind Wayne Modestâs suggestion to use âdesignâ as a âtranslation termâ, in reference to James Clifford.Âł
Legacies of Modern Design
The invitation from the RCMC to think the collection through âdesignâ departed from the desire to ânot reduce the collectionâs only story to that of colonialismâ. Considering âdesign as translation [âŠ] destabilizes modern designâs claims for universality but also encourages curiosity for what has not been considered âdesignâ.â⎠How do we acknowledge that the Wereldmuseumâs collection is an archive of âthe knowledges, skills and techniques, and the ingenuity of a global majority of peoples across the world, in shaping the world around themâ?â”
In the book Are we human?, New York-based curator couple Beatriz Colomina and Mark Wigley reflect on design as: â[âŠ] a form of projection, to shape something rather than find it, to invent something and think about possible outcomes of that invention. This endless reshaping and speculation about possible outcomes is uniquely human.ââ· The message of the book is that the capacity to design is what sets humans apart from non-humans (something to be questioned from a posthumanist perspective). Yet, historically, as well as in our present-day context, the practice of design remains an exclusive and separate domain of activity, employed by a limited, often privileged group of people. The field of design is considered to have come into existence through European modern industrialisation and professionalisation through education and training.âž In the minds of many people, design is still strongly associated with certain smooth âmodernâ or exceptional aesthetics, even if the practice of design has expanded today to include a wide variety of aesthetics, as well as expanding into other fields.âč
In the past decades, design historians and practitioners have pointed to the ways in which the field of design and its âsolutionismâ is entwined with the history of coloniality, not only helping us understand the colonial nature and implicatedness of industries and capitalism, but also how the legacy of modern design frames which kind of creative practices are recognised as âdesignâ and who is recognised as a designer.10 In the book Design Struggles: Intersecting
3 See the event organised in January 2018: https:// www.materialculture.nl/en/events/design-andas-translation-globalising-design-histories.
4 'By approaching design as a âtranslation termâ, (Clifford 1991) it becomes clear that the term âdesignâ â which in the design museum has a very specific usage â falls apart when considered from a global perspective. Design considered as a form of translation allows us to see it as a (historic) construction reflecting and performing hegemonic power relationships. Considering design as translation thus destabilizes modern designâs claims for universality but also encourages curiosity for what has not been considered âdesignâ.' See the event organised in January 2018: https://www.
materialculture.nl/en/events/design-andas-translation-globalising-design-histories.
5 https://www.materialculture.nl/en/research/themes/ designing-and-ethnographic-museum
6 A. Ansari, âDecolonisation, the History of Design, and the Designs of Historyâ, paper presented at the Annual DHS Conference, 2021 (online). Accessed through: https://mediathek.hgk.fhnw.ch/ink/detail/ zotero2-2641719.7CCEUFRV.
7 B. Colomina and M. Wigley, Are we human? notes on an archaeology of design, Lars MĂŒller Publishers, 2016 p. 10.
8 W. Gunn, T. Otto & R.C. Smith (eds), Design Anthropology: Theory and Practice, Routledge, 2013.
9 Such as graphic design, industrial design, UI/UX
Histories, Pedagogies, and Perspectives, design researcher Claudia Mareis & graphic designer Nina Paim reflect on how today, âdesign and its thinking is deeply complicit in many structural systems of oppression, serving to concretize, perpetuate, and disseminate power and privilegeâ.11 Platforms such as Teaching Design or Futuress address and resist the persistent whiteness of the field of design and design education, through feminist and decolonial approaches.12 According to design scholar Ahmed Ansari, by now, the questioning of the conceptual foundations of design is firmly established but also raises many concerns. In his critical contemplations on âthe decolonial turnâ, he traces the issues that emerge. What does it mean to bring in âotherâ knowledges, he asks, when there is a risk of âhollowing them out of precisely that which is incommensurable and irreducible in those knowledgesâ.13 Ansari questions how âdecolonialityâ in the context of global classrooms becomes understood: he notices a fetishization of âthe indigenousâ and of pre-colonial pasts as well as âmistaking liberal pluralism and cosmopolitanism with decolonisation and pluriversalityâ.14 Museums might not be the right places for âdecolonial workâ, According to design historian Dr. Megha Rajguru, but they can be the sites of inquiry where one can study the âpluralityâ of meanings.15
World Histories of Design?
What are the ways in which design historians have tried to move beyond a eurocentric understanding of design? As part of the project, Rajguru gave a lecture during a session with the curators of the Wereldmuseum on the ways in which design historians have attempted to broaden their scope beyond âAnglo-European modernityâ, and the questions and pitfalls thereof. Rajguru is co-editor of the fourth volume of World History of Design, a project initiated by the late design historian Victor Margolin.16 Rajguru reflected on the problematics of writing âworld design historiesâ, and the issues that come with placing material culture within a singular, all-encompassing framework in design history writing. Through a project like Victor Margolinâs World History of Design, design history expands its territory beyond its eurocentric frame, to include âpre-industrial regionsâ and their material cultures, and therefore broadening what becomes included as design. Material practices however, are still assessed through a modernist lense. Rajguru also reflected on a global design history approach as developed by Glenn Adamson, Giorgio Riello and Sarah Teasley, where the notion of globalized networks and interconnectivity is central, focusing on how objects move through regimes of value and how meaning-making depends on local encounters, acknowledging âpartialityâ of knowledge production.17 Rajguru shared with us a question that she continues to return to in her scholarly work: âIn what ways does design appropriate objects that may not be defined as design? Or is it that design needs to be inclusive?â18 Rajguruâs question is particularly appropriate in design education
design, social design, experience design, service design, or design for development.
10 See for example, the Futuress platform, Elizabeth (Dori) Tunstall, Decolonizing Design: A Cultural Justice Guidebook, MIT Press, 2023 or Ansari et al, âA Manifesto for Decolonising Designâ, Journal of Future Studies, 23:3 (2019), pp. 129-132.
11 C. Mareis & N. Paim, Design Struggles: Intersecting Histories, Pedagogies, and Perspectives, Valiz, 2022.
12 Futuress is a platform with a feminist approach dedicated to the design of politics and the politics of design, see www.futuress.org. Teaching design is a collaborative research platform founded by Lisa
Baumgarten and Anja Neidhardt-Mokoena, with the purpose of sharing feminist and decolonial perspec tives and literature: https://bib.teachingdesign.net/.
13 Ansari, 2021.
14 Ansari, 2021.
15 Dr. Megha Rajguru, online lecture with curators of the Wereldmuseum, Leiden, 11 July 2022.
16 See V. Margolin, World History of Design, Volume I & II Bloomsbury, 2015. The books are advertised by Bloomsbury as âthe definitive historical account of global design from prehistory to the end of the Second World Warâ. Volume 3 (2020) is dedicated to Europe and North America. See also: V. Margolin,
FIGURE 3
How does a world history approach compare to a global history approach? (drawing by Rosa te Velde).
within art institutions in the Netherlands, where there is a strong desire for being âinnovativeâ through discourses of âinclusionâ in todayâs art and design education. What are the ways in which âtraditionalâ practices are incorporated and get translated into design discourse?
Epistemic Translation
According to decolonial scholar Rolando VĂĄzquez, âepistemic translationâ is a way to address the constitution of modern knowledge production and its gatekeeping: what has been incorporated and appropriated and on what terms, and what has been erased and made invisible? More so than a global design history approach which does acknowledge the importance of situatedness and partiality of knowledge production, VĂĄzquez is concerned with the question of coloniality and erasure. In writing about one of the earliest âethnologistsâ, Bernardino de SahagĂșn (who was sent as a missionary in 1529 to present-day Mexico becoming an âexpertâ on the Nahuatl language family), VĂĄzquez shows the ways in which through the âinstitution of a scriptural economy of knowledgeâ, many relations got lost and erased in translation:
The notions of memory (ancestors/memoria), land (tierra) and language (palabra) represent examples of the untranslatable, namely that which is erased by translation and replaced by the modern notions of chronology, space and writing.19
The complex ways of knowing and being in the world got reduced through the âscriptural economy of knowledgeâ to modern concepts and relations. In addition to a âscriptural economy of knowledgeâ, also the institution of the visual and material âeconomies of knowledgeâ have eradicated the complex, manifold, embodied ways of knowing and being in the world and instead established a âmodern wayâ. Through modern science, with its focus on âempiricalâ observation, âseeingâ became synonymous with âknowingâ. For VĂĄzquez, it is crucial
âA World History of Design and the History of the Worldâ, Journal of Design History (2005).
17 Riello
18 Dr. Megha Rajguru, online lecture with curators of the Wereldmuseum, Leiden, 11 July 2022.
19 R. VĂĄzquez, âTranslation as Erasure: Thoughts on Modernityâs Epistemic Violenceâ, Journal of Historical Sociology 24:1 (2011), p 32.
FIGURE 4
What happens when a cultural practice is translated and ârepackagedâ through the modern gaze? (drawing by Rosa te Velde).
A cultural practice rooted in place, tradition, Earth...
Translated and repackaged through the modern gaze
to understand how modernity produced âthe parameters of legibilityâ.20 These questions also apply to material culture. âWith whose eyes are we looking and through whose eyes are we being made to see?â21 is a question central to the work of VĂĄzquez, in reference to Donna Harawayâs question: âwith whose blood were my eyes crafted?â, from her text Situated Knowledges (1988). What violences and erasures have been implicated in seeing, representing and knowing?22 With design as a âtranslation termâ we can look at the ways in which the communal, visual and material practices that were established in specific communities got translated through the modernist gaze. How for example, did nature become repackaged and commodified as âraw materialsâ?23 How did visual practices across the world become understood through the concept of âornamentâ?24 Or how did âcraftâ become a âculturally and racially othering categoryâ25?
Re-Telling Material Culture
Working together with the curators of the museum, these issues and questions led us to work on understanding the ways in which the modernist gaze produced specific framings and stories. To better understand the âplurality of meaningsâ that the objects in the collection afford, it seemed to be essential to establish an understanding of how we have been made to see material culture. With the goal of producing more complete or even more âjustâ (hi)stories, the dominant gaze continues to ârenewâ itself, both in the museum world, as in the cultural field at large. The Wereldmuseum, with its contested histories and changing mission, reflects a transition from a 19th century colonial museum to a 1960s post-colonial museum focused on development, towards, currently, appreciating cultural difference and âcultivating global citizenshipâ. What stories do different tellings facilitate? What different tellings were accepted at particular moments in time and how does this cycle of renewal of discourse continue? How do objects move in and out of categories, including the category
20 R. VĂĄzquez, p. 28.
21 C. Esche, R. Vazquez, T. Cos Rebollo, âDecolonial Aesthesis: Weaving Each Otherâ, 9 November 2023. Accessed through: https:// internationaleonline.org/contributions/ decolonial-aesthesis-weaving-each-other/.
22 According to Haraway, âvision is always a question of the power to see [âŠ] How to see? Where to see from? What limits to vision? What to see for? Whom to see with? Who gets to have more than one point of view? Who gets blinded? Who wears blinders?â D. Haraway, âSituated Knowledges: The Science
Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspectiveâ in: Feminist Studies 14 (3), 1988, pp. 586-587.
23 See for example, Livia Rezende âManufacturing the raw in design pageantries: the Commodification and Gendering of Brazilian Tropical Nature at the 1867 Exposition Universelleâ, in: Journal of Design History 30:2, pp. 122-138 (2017).
24 See for example, M. Simon Thomas, De leer van het ornament: versieren volgens voorschrift 1850-1930, Amsterdam: De Bataafse Leeuw, 1996.
25 Ansari, 2021.
of design? What motivates a new telling? How then could we create conditions for tellings and reflections that shift beyond the dominant gaze and centre the objects, their communities of makers, their cosmologies and their ingenuity?
In Pacific Aesthetics and European Collecting Craze: Wuvulu and Aua Design, curator Wonu Fanny Veys looks at a model canoe from the islands of
Object enters collection
5
Tellings and re-tellings (drawing by Rosa te Velde).
Motivations for collecting?
Telling 1
Motivations for âtelling 1â?
Re-telling
Motivations for âre-tellingâ?
What remains unseen/ unquestioned? What stays important/self-evident?
What would a non-dominant/ non-ethnographic telling look like?
Wuvulu or Aua in the Wereldmuseum collection. She examines the colonial essentialisms tied to collecting practices as a side hustle of commercial expeditions, in reifying the division of Melanesia, Micronesia and Polynesia. The islands of Wuvulu and Aua occupied an ambiguous status within this division, and objects from these islands became subject to discussion. The model canoe was likely made for the European market and therefore was considered to be a âtaintedâ object, but models like these were seen through a different lens from the 1950s onwards for their modern appearance. Veys shows us the many tellings of an object through different periods of time â from the ethnographic-commercial enterprise to the aesthetic appraisal through a lens of âstreamline designâ, to the counter-ethnographic reading of the model. Through the collection and conversations with the curators, I learned about the âJaspertjesâ: the work of Johan Ernst Jasper and the inventories of âInlandsche Kunstnijverheidâ (native arts and crafts) that he produced together with the Javanese artist Mas Pirngadi between 1912-1930, at the time of the âEthical Policyâ in Indonesia. âThe Jaspertjesâ refer to the five volume inventory of different crafts in Indonesia, and are still a standard reference work today in the museum. Jasper and Pirngadiâs inventory was the result of a paradigm shift: at the turn of the century, a small group of connoisseurs, urged for appreciating and understanding Indigenous objects as âdecorative artsâ rather than ethnographic. However, this shift happened during a period of expansion and violence proclaimed as pacification and development. In Yes, but⊠Occupation as Requirement for âDevelopmentâ, I investigate this period of conquest and expansion into the outer possessions beyond Java. In the follow-up article, A Firm Nudge: Politics of âEthicalâ Reform through âinlandsche kunstnijverheidâ,
I delve deeper into the âEthical Policyâ and the âartistic debt of honourâ, and the various initiatives in the field of native arts and crafts. In this article I studied how the notion of âthe will to improveâ serves a rhetoric of progress and development while erasing existing arts and crafts practices.
Although the âEthical Policyâ aimed at bringing prosperity to the Indigenous population, historian Marjolein van Pagee examines how the racist apartheid system strategically limited access to crafts education. Although colonial authorities spoke of educational development, they invested very little in it, designing what was offered primarily to produce a small and easily controlled labour force. Central to the agenda of the so-called âethicistsâ was the notion of the âelevationâ of women, as they believed that womenâs oppression stemmed chiefly from local patriarchal traditions. Such arguments underpinned the Dutch assertion that their continued occupation of Indonesia brought âcivilisationâ. Historian Raistiwar Pratama, together with Marjolein van Pagee, turns our attention to Dewi Sartika, who founded a girlsâ school in Bandung. Within Sartika's curriculum, crafts played an important role. Aceh veteran J.C. Lamster would film one of the schools in his propaganda film of 1913 where girls are lacemaking, which was believed to âinstill housewifely virtuesâ. Although only Sartika's 1913 Dutch-language text Verheffing van de Inlandsche Vrouw (Elevation of the Native Woman) survives, Pratama and Van Pageeâs contribution explores how her pioneering educational efforts were ultimately appropriated within the colonial narrative.
In her text, curator of âSoutheast Asiaâ Marjolein van Asdonck shows the ways the Ethical Policy led to practices of âsavingâ native crafts. Yogya Silver was invented as a tool for ârevivingâ and promoting silver crafts in Indonesia in the 1930s, whilst dismantling and erasing its existing patronage through the colonial expulsion of the royal courts. Van Asdonck traces the ways Mrs. Mary Agnes van Gesseler Verschuir-Pownall played an important role in âYogya silverâ, selecting and designing âauthenticâ Hindu-Javanese motifs and commissioning craftsmen to execute the work for an elite clientele. Van Asdonckâs text builds onto the work of her predecessors in the museum, but critically expands her re-telling, taking into consideration the context of the âEthical Policyâ and the colonial context as a practice of erasure, and therefore moves beyond the idea of Yogya silver as a search for authenticity.
Within these texts, you will see different approaches to terminology. Initially, it seemed clear to simply follow the Words that Matter guide.26 In my own text, I chose to translate âinlandsche kunstnijverheidâ as ânative arts and craftsâ, but use Indigenous (capitalised) in the running text from todayâs point of view. The aim of using ânativeâ was to represent the racist connotations of âinlandschâ, which signifies the racialised hierarchy of the âDutch East Indiesâ colony, which was separated into three (legal) categories: European, foreign Orientals, and âInlandersâ. These categories of the apartheid system were also used in the study of crafts by Rouffaer.27 In the text of Marjolein van Asdonck, we also translated âinlandschâ with ânativeâ, but for Van Asdonck, it was important to use âIndonesiansâ in her article as much as possible, also following the practice
26 Words that Matter: An Unfinished Guide to Word Choices in the Cultural Sector, 2018. Accessed through: https://www.materialculture.nl/en/ publications/words-matter.
of the Wereldmuseum. In conversation with Indonesian historian Raistiwar Pratama, it also became clear to me, that to Indonesians today, âindigenousâ may connote traditional living tribes or specific ethnic groups only. For Pratama, ânativeâ felt more appropriate as a translation of the Indonesian word pribumi, which refers to all people ancestral to the Indonesian archipelago. We chose to leave this diversity in approaches intact to reflect the differences between authors and what they find important and to invite reflections on the difficulty of terminology.
With thanks to Dr. Megha Rajguru, the many insightful and provocative conversations with the curators of the Wereldmuseum, Wayne Modest and Esmee Schoutens, the crucial insights from Rana Ghavami and the editorial work by Ilaria Obata, we inquired into the ways in which tellings and re-tellings of histories of objects invite reflections on the ways in which âdesignâ operates.
I hope this collection of essays will invite more contemplations and speculation on how to create conditions for learning to see and value material culture beyond the dominant gaze, understanding the many modes of creativity and ingenuity held by the Wereldmuseumâs collection.
The research project advanced with the support of Stimuleringsfonds, resulting in the research website Recall/Recalibrate, for which the text by Marjolein van Pagee and her collaboration with Raistiwar Pratama were commissioned. Recall/Recalibrate is focused on the âEthical Policyâ, investigating crafts education at the time.
ROSA TE VELDE is a designer, researcher, and educator. She works as a researcher at the Amsterdam University of the Arts and teaches in the MA Industrial Design program at the Royal Academy of Art, The Hague. Her practice explores the intersections of design, politics, and decoloniality through critical and cross-disciplinary approaches.
27 G. P. Rouffaer, âDe noodzakelijkheid van een technisch-artistiek onderzoek in Ned.IndiĂ«â, in: De Indische Gids Vol. 23, October 1901.
This text was written for the Design/ing and the Ethnographic Museum project for the Research Center for Material Culture. The template for this text was designed by Zuzana Kostelanska, as part of the Recall/ Recalibrate project, funded by Creative Industries Fund NL.
The text is published under CC BY-NC-ND license, which enables reusers to copy and distribute the material in any medium or format in unadapted form only, for noncommercial purposes only, and only so long as attribution is given to the creator.