Resources

Museums of design and the decorative arts, homes and interiors open to visitors, collections to search online, the standard works to read and magazines to follow.

Museums

Nationalmuseum (Stockholm): Sweden’s museum of art and design, with one of the largest collections of furniture, glass, ceramics, silver and industrial design in the Nordic countries.
Röhsska museet (Göteborg): Sweden’s museum of design, fashion and decorative arts, with collections from Europe and East Asia.
Nordiska museet (Stockholm): A museum of cultural history about how people in Sweden have lived, with period homes, textiles, furniture and folk art.
ArkDes (Stockholm): Sweden’s national centre for architecture and design on Skeppsholmen, with exhibitions and collections.
Hallwylska museet (Stockholm): A palace of the 1890s with its original interiors and the von Hallwyl family’s collections of silver, porcelain and furniture.
Tekniska museet (Stockholm): A museum of technology and invention, with radios, telephones, household appliances and vehicles.
Kulturen (Lund): An open-air museum in the centre of Lund with houses, interiors and large collections of ceramics, glass and silver.
Form/Design Center (Malmö): A meeting place for design, crafts and architecture in Malmö, with exhibitions and talks.
Smålands museum – Sveriges glasmuseum (Växjö): The museum in Växjö with the Swedish Glass Museum, about the glassworks of the Kingdom of Crystal and Swedish art glass.
Textilmuseet (Borås): A museum of textiles and fashion in Borås, with collections from the history of the textile industry and contemporary textile art.
Gustavsbergs porslinsmuseum (Gustavsberg): A museum in the old factory about Gustavsberg porcelain, from everyday ware to the designs of Wilhelm Kåge and Stig Lindberg.
Designmuseum Danmark (Köpenhamn): Denmark’s museum of design and decorative arts, with Danish furniture, Kaare Klint, Arne Jacobsen and a large collection of chairs.
Trapholt (Kolding): A museum of modern art and design in Kolding, with a large collection of Danish chairs.
Designmuseo (Helsingfors): Finland’s design museum, with Finnish design from Art Nouveau to Alvar Aalto, Kaj Franck, Tapio Wirkkala and Marimekko.
Nasjonalmuseet (Oslo): Norway’s national museum of art, architecture and design, which incorporates the former Museum of Decorative Arts and Design.
KODE (Bergen): Art and design museums in Bergen, with decorative arts, silver and furniture.
Nordenfjeldske Kunstindustrimuseum (Trondheim): A museum of decorative arts and design in Trondheim, with Art Nouveau and Nordic design.
Victoria and Albert Museum (London): The world’s largest museum of art and design, with furniture, ceramics, glass, silver, textiles and fashion from all periods.
Design Museum (London): A museum of contemporary and modern design, architecture and fashion in Kensington.
Museum of the Home (London): A museum of the home and everyday life in London, with rooms furnished as in different centuries.
The Wallace Collection (London): A private collection in a town house with French furniture, Sèvres porcelain and eighteenth-century Boulle work.
William Morris Gallery (London): A museum in William Morris’s childhood home in Walthamstow, about his wallpapers, textiles and ideas.
Musée des Arts Décoratifs (Paris): France’s museum of decorative arts and design, with furniture, jewellery, toys and posters from the Middle Ages to today.
Vitra Design Museum (Weil am Rhein): A design museum on the Vitra Campus, with a large collection of chairs and exhibitions on modern design.
Die Neue Sammlung – The Design Museum (München): One of the world’s largest design museums, in the Pinakothek der Moderne, with industrial and graphic design.
Bauhaus-Archiv / Museum für Gestaltung (Berlin): Museum and archive of the Bauhaus in Berlin, with furniture, lamps, ceramics and the school’s work.
Stiftung Bauhaus Dessau (Dessau): The Bauhaus building and the Masters’ Houses in Dessau, with collections and tours.
Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe (Hamburg): A museum of art and design in Hamburg, with Art Nouveau, furniture, ceramics and posters.
Gutenberg-Museum (Mainz): A museum of the history of printing, with the Gutenberg Bible and printing presses.
MAK – Museum für angewandte Kunst (Wien): Austria’s museum of applied arts, with the Wiener Werkstätte, Thonet furniture and Biedermeier.
Museum für Gestaltung (Zürich): A Swiss museum of design and visual communication, with a large poster collection.
Triennale Milano (Milano): Exhibitions and a museum of Italian design in the Palazzo dell’Arte in Milan.
ADI Design Museum (Milano): A museum of Italian design built around the Compasso d’Oro award and its collection.
Stedelijk Museum (Amsterdam): Amsterdam’s museum of modern art and design, with Rietveld’s furniture and graphic design.
Rijksmuseum (Amsterdam): The national museum of the Netherlands, with Delftware, dolls’ houses, silver and furniture.
Design Museum Gent (Gent): A Belgian design museum with collections from Art Nouveau to the present.
Museum Plantin-Moretus (Antwerpen): A sixteenth-century printing house in Antwerp, preserved with its presses and type and inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List.
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum (New York): The Smithsonian’s design museum, with furniture, textiles, wallpaper, graphics and product design.
MoMA – Architecture and Design (New York): The Museum of Modern Art’s department of architecture and design, with twentieth-century classics.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York): One of the world’s largest art museums, with European and American interiors, furniture, silver and glass.
Corning Museum of Glass (Corning): The world’s largest museum of glass, with glass from antiquity to today and glassblowing demonstrations.
The Wolfsonian–FIU (Miami Beach): A museum and library of design and propaganda, 1850–1950.
Nihon Mingeikan (Tokyo): Japan’s Folk Crafts Museum, founded by Yanagi Sōetsu in 1936.

Homes and interiors

Carl Larsson-gården (Sundborn): Carl and Karin Larsson’s home Lilla Hyttnäs, with the painted rooms and Karin’s textiles.
Kina slott (Drottningholm): The rococo pleasure pavilion in the park at Drottningholm, with lacquer panels, porcelain and Chinese motifs.
Gustav III:s paviljong (Haga, Solna): Gustav III’s Pavilion in Haga Park, one of the finest interiors of the Gustavian style.
Rosendals slott (Stockholm): Karl XIV Johan’s pleasure palace on Djurgården, with furniture and interiors in the Karl Johan style.
Hvitträsk (Kyrkslätt): The studio home that Gesellius, Lindgren and Saarinen built by a lake outside Helsinki, in Finnish National Romanticism.
Red House (Bexleyheath): The house William Morris had built and furnished with his friends, where the ideas behind Arts and Crafts took shape.
Kelmscott Manor (Kelmscott): William Morris’s country house near the Thames, with his furniture, textiles and wallpapers.
Strawberry Hill House (Twickenham): Horace Walpole’s house, an early and influential example of the Gothic Revival.
Syon House (Brentford): A great house outside London with neoclassical interiors by Robert Adam.
Royal Pavilion (Brighton): George IV’s pleasure palace, with fantasies of India and China in its interiors.
The Hill House (Helensburgh): Charles Rennie Mackintosh’s house for the publisher Walter Blackie, with interiors by him and Margaret Macdonald.
Willow Tea Rooms (Glasgow): Tea rooms in Glasgow that Mackintosh designed down to the smallest detail for Kate Cranston.
Rietveld Schröderhuis (Utrecht): Gerrit Rietveld’s house of 1924 for Truus Schröder, with sliding walls and the clear colours of De Stijl.
Villa Müller (Prag): Adolf Loos’s villa with rooms on different levels and costly materials.
Casa Batlló (Barcelona): Antoni Gaudí’s remodelled town house with undulating forms, mosaic and furniture.
Katsura rikyū (Kyoto): The imperial villa in Kyoto, a model for Japanese architecture and garden design.

Collections online

V&A Collections: The V&A’s collections database, with images and information on more than a million objects.
Cooper Hewitt Collection: Cooper Hewitt’s collection online, searchable by colour, material and designer.
The Met Collection: The Met’s collection online; images of works in the public domain may be used freely.
Smithsonian Open Access: The Smithsonian’s open collections, with millions of images that may be used freely.
Paris Musées Collections: The collections of the Paris city museums online, including the Musée Carnavalet and the Petit Palais.
DigitaltMuseum: The collections of Swedish and Norwegian museums in a shared database.
Finna: A search portal for the collections of Finnish museums, archives and libraries.
Europeana: The EU’s digital library of cultural heritage, with objects from thousands of European museums.
Wikimedia Commons: The free media repository from which the app’s photographs come.

Books

The Gentleman and Cabinet-Maker’s Director (Thomas Chippendale, 1754): The English cabinetmaker’s pattern book with designs for rococo, Chinese and Gothic furniture, which spread around the world.
The Grammar of Ornament (Owen Jones, 1856): A great work with colour plates of ornament from many cultures, a model for nineteenth-century designers.
Principles of Decorative Design (Christopher Dresser, 1873): One of the first books on design for industry, by the designer Christopher Dresser.
Hopes and Fears for Art (William Morris, 1882): Lectures by William Morris on art, craft and work.
Skönhet för alla (Ellen Key, 1899): Ellen Key’s essay on light, simple homes for everyone, one of the founding texts of Swedish design.
Vackrare vardagsvara (Gregor Paulsson, 1919): The Swedish Society of Crafts and Design’s manifesto urging artists to design industry’s everyday goods.
L’Art décoratif d’aujourd’hui (Le Corbusier, 1925): Le Corbusier’s essays on decoration and modern everyday objects, published in the year of the 1925 Paris exhibition.
Die neue Typographie (Jan Tschichold, 1928): The manifesto of modern, asymmetric typography in sans serif.
Pioneers of the Modern Movement (Nikolaus Pevsner, 1936): The classic that traces modern design from William Morris to Walter Gropius. Later editions are titled Pioneers of Modern Design.
Mechanization Takes Command (Sigfried Giedion, 1948): A history of how mechanisation changed everyday life, from slaughterhouses to kitchens and furniture.
Never Leave Well Enough Alone (Raymond Loewy, 1951): The industrial designer Raymond Loewy’s autobiography, on streamlining and the first decades of industrial design in the USA.
Theory and Design in the First Machine Age (Reyner Banham, 1960): An influential rereading of the theories and design of modernism before 1930.
Interaction of Color (Josef Albers, 1963): The Bauhaus teacher Josef Albers’s textbook on how colours affect one another.
Arte come mestiere (Bruno Munari, 1966): The designer Bruno Munari’s short, readable texts on design as craft and everyday life.
The Nature and Art of Workmanship (David Pye, 1968): A classic on craftsmanship: the difference between the workmanship of certainty and the workmanship of risk.
Art Deco of the 20s and 30s (Bevis Hillier, 1968): The book that brought the name Art Deco into general use.
Design for the Real World (Victor Papanek, 1971): A critique of design for consumption, calling for design for real needs. First published in Swedish in 1970 as Miljön och miljonerna.
The Unknown Craftsman (Sōetsu Yanagi, 1972): Yanagi Sōetsu’s writings on mingei and the beauty of anonymous everyday objects, adapted into English by Bernard Leach.
The Penguin Dictionary of Decorative Arts (John Fleming, Hugh Honour, 1977): A reference work on the terms, techniques, styles and makers of the decorative arts.
Industrial Design (John Heskett, 1980): A short, concise history of industrial design.
Grid Systems in Graphic Design (Josef Müller-Brockmann, 1981): The handbook on the grid in graphic design, by one of the leading figures of Swiss typography.
A History of Graphic Design (Philip B. Meggs, 1983): The standard history of graphic design, from writing to digital typography.
Objects of Desire (Adrian Forty, 1986): On how objects reflect society, economy and class, from Wedgwood to office machines.
An Introduction to Design and Culture (Penny Sparke, 1986): An introduction to the history of design as part of culture and consumption.
The Design of Everyday Things (Donald A. Norman, 1988): On how objects can be designed to be easy to understand and use. First published as The Psychology of Everyday Things.
The Elements of Typographic Style (Robert Bringhurst, 1992): An acclaimed handbook of the rules and history of typography.
Weniger, aber besser (Dieter Rams, 1995): Dieter Rams on his design and his ten principles of good design.
Twentieth-Century Design (Jonathan M. Woodham, 1997): A survey of twentieth-century design in the Oxford History of Art.
1000 Chairs (Charlotte Fiell, Peter Fiell, 1997): A thousand chairs from the nineteenth century to the present, with pictures and short texts.
Design of the 20th Century (Charlotte Fiell, Peter Fiell, 1999): A reference work on twentieth-century designers, companies and movements.
Designing Design (Kenya Hara, 2007): The Japanese designer Kenya Hara’s thoughts on design, emptiness and everyday life.

Magazines and web

Form: Svensk Form’s magazine on design, architecture and crafts, published since 1905 and called Form since 1932.
Domus: Italian magazine of architecture and design, founded by Gio Ponti in 1928.
Eye: British magazine of graphic design and typography.
Journal of Design History: Academic journal of design history.
Design Issues: Academic journal of the history, theory and criticism of design.
Dezeen: Online magazine with architecture and design news.