"Fuzzy stuff". Exploring the displacement of the design sketch.
What kind of knowledge can historical sketches reveal when they have outplayed their primary instrumental function in the design process and are moved into a museum collection? What are the rational benefits of ‘archival displacement’ and how do we decode collections of sketch materials?
The special kind of visual imagery expressed in a sketch is often of a fuzzy kind, “so idiosyncratic that they are only comprehensible to their maker” (Goldschmidt 1991). This presentation explores the sketch in the archive, a forceful raw material, however left stranded from its origin in the designer’s studio or the instructive and collaborative situations it once guided. Perceiving the collection “a creative technology”, “vital instruments of historical reimagining” (Thomas, 2016), I question how a collection of sketches can work to add new knowledge, change perceptions of a designer’s efforts or transform obstinate design mythologies.
The presentation forms part of a larger research project on Knud V. Engelhardt (1882-1931), an architect and early design entrepreneur who anticipated functional and industrial design thinking in Denmark; despite a reputation among professionals as a design pioneer, his work is largely unknown to the public and suffers from an absence of research. Moving beyond stylistic analysis of individual designs in favour of the extensive collections of sketches and prints in The Archive of Danish Design, the project explores the commercial, artistic and educational contexts of which his sketching originally formed part. With a focus on displacement and hidden contexts, I argue that such perspective prompts us to see the collections of Knud V. Engelhardt as the material remains of an early modern design profession in Denmark.