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- Title
Redrawing Power? Dutch Wax Cloth and the Politics of 'Good Design'.
- Authors
Edoh, M. Amah
- Abstract
Known as 'African print,' Dutch Wax cloth is both a marker of West African cultural identity and a European import to West Africa from the 19th century. For some observers, the designs embody a legacy of colonial domination, as products of colonial trade routes that are still created in Europe by non-African designers. Based on ethnographic research conducted in the studio where Dutch Wax prints are designed, this article considers designers' conceptualization of their practice alongside their critics' perspectives. I argue that the designers' practice is guided by a 'Good Design' ethos, anchored in the technical and creative process of bringing expert skill, experience, and personal handwriting to bear on designs, a process that designers envision as divorced from place and politics. For designers, `Good design' offers the potential for connection with users around a shared love for beautiful designs. Though they expressly consider their work apolitical, I read the designers' conceptualization of their practice as a political stance enlisting design practice and objects in a project to redraw power relations between Europeans and Africans. By laying out competing visions of the politics of Dutch Wax print design, this article contributes a critical approach to studies of place and/in design.
- Subjects
AFRICA; TEXTILES; DUTCH arts; HISTORY of African arts; COTTON textiles; RESIST-dyed textiles; TEXTILE design; PRINTED fashion apparel; TEXTILE manufacturers; HISTORY
- Publication
Journal of Design History, 2016, Vol 29, Issue 3, p258
- ISSN
0952-4649
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1093/jdh/epw011