Bright Modernity
Description
Color is a visible technology that invisibly connects so many puzzling aspects of modern Western consumer societies-research and development, making and selling, predicting fashion trends, and more. Building on Regina Lee Blaszczyk's go-to history of the "color revolution" in the United States, this book explores further transatlantic and multidisciplinary dimensions of the topic. Covering history from the mid nineteenth century into the immediate past, it examines the relationship between color, commerce, and consumer societies in unfamiliar settings and in the company of new kinds of experts. Readers will learn about the early dye industry, the dynamic nomenclature for color, and efforts to standardize, understand, and educate the public about color. Readers will also encounter early food coloring, new consumer goods, technical and business innovations in print and on the silver screen, the interrelationship between gender and color, and color forecasting in the fashion industry.
Reviews / Votes
"This rich collection of essays sharpens analysis of a still relatively neglected topic. From synthetic dyes to electric lightbulbs, the book's analyses of the multifarious connections between color science, commerce and culture vividly capture how color helped shape the twentieth century. The book's breadth of new scholarship uncovers many fascinating complexities around color forecasting, design and commercial application during a pivotal chapter in the history of color in Europe and the USA." (Sarah Street, Professor of Film and Foundation Chair of Drama, University of Bristol, UK)"The full spectrum of colorful topics. This innovative and carefully crafted collection combining rigorous scholarship and imaginative analysis across time and space documents the impact of color on modernity in the West." (Gary Cross, Distinguished Professor of Modern History, Pennsylvania State University, USA)
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Persons
Regina Lee Blaszczyk is Leadership Chair in the History of Business and Society at the University of Leeds, UK. Her nine books include several award-winning titles: Imagining Consumers: Design and Innovation from Wedgwood to Corning ; Producing Fashion: Commerce, Culture, and Consumers (editor); and The Color Revolution.
Uwe Spiekermann teaches economic and social history at the University of Göttingen. His research interests in German and American history include consumption, retailing, nutrition, and knowledge. He has published extensively, including Decoding Modern Consumer Societies (coeditor) and The Rise of Marketing and Market Research (coeditor).
Content
I. Foundations: Industry and Education.- 1. Coloring the World: Marketing German Dyestuffs in the Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries.- 2. Learning to See with Milton Bradley.- II. Gender and Color.- 3. "Real Men Wear Pink?" A Gender History of Color.- 4. New Words and Fanciful Names: Dyes, Color, and Fashion in the Mid-Nineteenth Century.- 5. Let's Go Shopping with Charles Sanders Peirce: Color Scientists as Consumers of Color.- III. Ringmasters to the Rainbow: Color Inventions and Visual Culture.- 6. Movies Meet the Rainbow.- 7. Glamour Pink: The Marketing of Residential Electric Lighting in the Age of Color, 1920s-1950s.- 8. Life in Color: Life Magazine and the Color Reproduction of Works of Art.- IV. Predicting the Rainbow.- 9. The Color Schemers: American Color Practice in Britain, 1920s-1960s.- 10. Modeurop: Using Color to Unify the European Shoe and Leather Industry.- 11. Who Decides the Color ofthe Season? How the Première Vision Trade Show Changed Fashion Culture.