Skip to Main Content

ARTH 275: Design Research Guide

Open textbook

Origins of contemporary art, design, and interiors (2022): This downloadable book supports the courser Contemporary Design: Origins and Issues, for third-year students in the Bachelor of Interior Design Degree Program at Fanshawe College in London Ontario. The role of the course is to encourage interior design students to contemplate, discuss, and engage with the history of art and design, and visual and material culture from the period following the Enlightenment to our present moment. Many of the chapters include suggested readings found in most academic libraries. Included are assigned readings and/or videos.

Bloomsbury Design Library

Bloomsbury Design Library

Scholarly coverage of the history, theory and practice of crafts and design worldwide, from 1500 BCE to the present day, with cross-searchable access to authoritative reference works, e-books, and museum object images. Explore the history and context of influential design schools, people, periods, places, and disciplines. Includes:

  • Bloomsbury Encyclopedia of Design: global coverage from 1800 to the present by international design scholars and historians from museums and exhibitions, art and design schools, journals and department stores. Covers graphic, textile, furniture, metal, ceramic, fashion, stage and film, and vehicle and product design, and also national histories of design and key design movements.
  • Encyclopedia of East Asian Design: Coverage of arts and crafts, interior, graphic, and design objects for domestic, regional, and global consumption across regional and national histories and geographies.
  • World History of Design: global design from prehistory to the end of the Second World War. Includes: earliest cave art and human tools; examples of visual and material culture from beginnings of civilization, to the Industrial Revolution, to WWII.

Finding Books and Exhibition Catalogues

Search Omni, the catalogue of Queen's University Library, by Any field (combine keywords using Boolean operators), Author/Creator, Title, Subject, or Call Number to find print and e-books, journals, exhibition catalogues and other material formats in our collection.
 
Use Boolean search operators AND, OR, NOT to combine terms, do phrase searching or truncate terms to find books on topics, or information in other formats, especially if you don't know the correct subject heading, or specific author or title.
 
Narrow or refine search by adding other terms: e.g.
 

design AND morris AND 19th
ornament AND design AND india
  
Broaden search using the * symbol to truncate for variable word endings (e.g. nouns, adjectives, singular or plural) or by using OR between similar or possible terms nested in brackets: e.g.
 
ceramic* AND germany AND 20th
crafts AND (19th OR nineteenth OR victorian) AND gender *
"great exhibition" OR "crystal palace"
moma AND exhibition* AND design
bauhaus AND video* (for all formats of videorecordings) [or search bauhaus and use the Omni Videos limit filter]
 

* Note the nested (i.e. bracketed) search for similar or possible terms, in conjunction with your AND term.

Use quotes around a phrase or concept: e.g.
 
"arts and crafts movement"
"great exhibition" AND 1851
"material culture" AND (indigen* OR inuit OR metis OR "first nation*")
 
Limit large result sets by library location or by using "NOT": e.g.
 
"arts and crafts movement" NOT morris
"material culture" (limit to a library - e.g. "Stauffer" or  location "Art Collection" )
 
From your results, select useful titles and click on the Subject field assigned to find other books on your topic.  Sample Subjects and subheadings:
 
Avant-garde (Aesthetics)
Design -- Germany -- History -- 20th century
Industrial design -- Great Britain
Interior decoration
Modernism (Art) -- Germany
Textile design -- History
Textile fabrics -- Africa
Women and the decorative arts

Books on Design