First Steps: Early Design Education and ...

Journal of Design History Vol. 23 No. 2

doi:10.1093/jdh/epq003

First Steps: Early Design Education and Professionalization in Greece Artemis Yagou

During the 1920s and 1930s, urbanization and industrialization were on the rise in Greece, following a series of major political, economic and social events. In this context, the need for design input to industry was identified by manufacturers and policymakers. This article explores the related educational and professional developments and shows that the applied arts domain was positioned between, and in a sense suppressed by, fine arts on the one hand and engineering on the other. Emerging craft and design professions were stigmatized as being of little social and professional status and design-related educational initiatives were fragmentary and unpopular. It is argued that the interwar years constituted for Greece a period of proto-professionalization or otherwise a time of incomplete formation of the design domain, which undermined the perception and development of design in the long run. Keywords: applied arts—design education—design profession—Greece—interwar—social closure

Introduction Education reflects a society’s choices about how it wants to shape its future. Learning about education’s history is fundamental to understanding the present and guiding future choices. This realization underpins the present article, which attempts to shed light on the conditions under which design education was founded in Greece and the ways in which the design professions were shaped.1 Before embarking on an analysis of design education and professionalization in interwar Greece, it is necessary to make some clarifications regarding the terminology used throughout this article. This article will concentrate on the domain that, in the beginning of the twenty-first century, is generally described as ‘design’. For the sake of simplicity, the terms design and applied arts will be used practically interchangeably to refer to the design domain. It should, however, be borne in mind that this is an oversimplification, as far as the ambiguities and complexities of the fledgling design world in interwar Greece are concerned. In the period discussed, namely the 1920s and 1930s, there was no design profession in the sense that we understand it today, divided among areas of specialization such as graphic, interior, industrial and so on.2 The design domain in Greece was in a primitive state, still largely undefined and operating under a variety of labels that meant different things to different people. Textual sources used for the purposes of this article include a range of terms to differentiate what is today classified under the broad label of design: applied arts (eφarmоsmέneς tέcneς), decorative arts (diakоsmhtikές tέcneς), industrial arts (biоmήcaneς tέcneς), simple arts (aplές tέcneς) and even brutal arts (bάnauseς tέcneς), as opposed to fine arts (kalές tέcneς).3 Generally speaking, the interwar years constituted a politically unstable and socially troubled period for Greece, which is in retrospect considered to be crucial for the country’s modernization process, the consolidation of capitalism and the formation of a consumer society.4 That period was marked in particular by the events of 1922 and their aftermath: the Greek–Turkish war and the mutual

© The Author [2010]. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of The Design History Society. All rights reserved.

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expulsion of millions of refugees that followed, as both countries were driven by strong ethnocentric motives and the desire to create or invigorate their respective nations. In the case of Greece, which was following a slow and problematic modernization process, the consequences of this vast unilateral operation have been cataclysmic. In Greece, then a country of fewer than five million inhabitants, the influx of nearly one and a half million refugees shattered the fragile social and economic balance, fuelled industrialization and accelerated the pace of capitalist expansion. These events have been seminal for the formation of a consumer society in the country and perhaps constitute the starting point of modernity in Greece. Much influence lay in the field of cultural exchange and production, and in particular the domain of design and applied visual arts. Greek society was fertilized by the refugees on many levels and their contribution in the formation of modern Greece has been invaluable. Their massive number was itself a major factor, as it added significantly to the available workforce and at the same time substantially enlarged the demand for goods in the local market. The population exchanges resulted in the creation of a rich, multilingual and multicultural human force, with numerous traditions and different types of professional knowledge, including weaving, tapestry, ceramics, woodcarving, metalwork and decorative painting. Such special skills and competencies were transplanted and new industrial sectors were introduced, most notably tobacco cultivation and carpet making. The special skills of Asia Minor refugees certainly constituted the motivation behind the establishment of several new industries in the 1920s.5 Furthermore, many Greek entrepreneurs who were relocated from Asia Minor enriched the local business environment through their know-how and networking6 [1].

Fig 1. The image (detail) of Asia Minor refugees with Viennese-style furniture on board a ship is a visually powerful indication of the significance of these household objects. Published in: Refugee Greece. Photographs from the Archive of the Centre for Asia Minor Studies, Athens: CAMS, 1992. Courtesy of the Centre for Asia Minor Studies, Athens

The new social environment following the arrival of the refugees fuelled the chronic political instability that was already plaguing Greece in the interwar years. The fluidity and insecurity of the 1920s and 1930s provide the background in which the emergence of design-related professions should be understood and contextualized.7 It was in this complex as well as unstable context that applied arts made their first steps towards professionalization. Amid financial crisis and acute competition, both national and international, enlightened manufacturers, policymakers and artists realized the need for design and declared: ‘Greek products and especially carpets may find a good market in the USA. For this purpose, it is, however, necessary to retain their exquisite quality and improve the artistic composition of the designs. America will pay high prices for artistic carpets of excellent quality’.8 The Permanent Exhibition of Greek Products (Diarkής Έkqesiς Ellhnikώn Prоϊόntwn) that took place in Athens between 1933 and 1938 became a showcase for the best achievements of Greek production. It attracted exhibitors from all sectors of Greek manufacturing and constituted a major milestone for the history of the design professions in Greece9 [2] [3]. Naturally, awareness of the importance of design came alongside the realization of the need for systematic and well-organized vocational education, which should be examined in relation to wider educational and professional developments.10

Art, engineering and the space between As Grace Lees-Maffei observes, ‘“professionalization” refers to the process of developing an activity into a generally recognized profession, through the setting up of professional organizations, the articulation and monitoring of standards and

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Early Design Education and Professionalization

Fig 2. Advertisement of Greek firm producing ‘Vienna furniture’, in other words imitating Thonet production. Permanent Exhibition of Greek Products, 1933-1938, Athens, Zappeion (exhibition catalogue), 1938, page 40

codes of conduct, the institution of clear educational routes and means of assessment, networking and gate keeping’.11 Similarly, Jill Seddon suggests that the prerequisites for the establishment of a profession are ‘recognized training; registration and regulation; the founding of professional associations; participation in official and government bodies; a means of indicating public recognition and the production of a recognizable body of work, identifiable with a single individual’.12 Professionalization is tied to the development of autonomous discourse; Klaus Krippendorff presents four essential components that characterize discourse as social construction: a discourse is kept alive within a community of its practitioners, institutes its current practices, draws its own boundary and justifies its identity to outsiders.13 Anna Valtonen also examines the conditions that a practice needs to fulfil in order to be considered a proper profession and presents an overview of professionalization theories in relation to design. She highlights in particular the concept of social closure, according to which various groups seek to protect and improve their socio-economic situation by restricting access to resources and privileges. Striving for social closure presupposes the definition of borders towards adjacent professions and these borders are in many cases delineated through the establishment of specialized education. Education, often complemented with standardized qualification or certification procedures, thus acts as an effective sorting mechanism.14 Furthermore, professionalization is considered to be a feature of a modernization process.15 As recent studies illustrate, for Greece, the interwar years were fundamental for the formation or consolidation of art and engineering professional ideologies and their achieving social closure. Both areas of competence solidified their domains and directly influenced the design field, since they may be regarded as adjacent professions to design. The examination of their formation is therefore a precondition for understanding the emergence of the younger and less established discipline of design. To do so, it would be appropriate to discuss the Greek educational system and in particular the pioneering institution of technical and artistic education, the School of the Arts and its role in the formation and development of related disciplines.16 Greece became an independent state in 1830 and the Greek educational system was established following a formalist, classicist and repressive model. The initial emphasis on practical arts and crafts in the days of Capodistrias, the first Governor of Greece, had been abandoned after the enthronement of the Bavarianborn King Otto. Education was ideologically dominated by archaeolatry (the adoration and glorification of the ancient past), was suspicious towards pragmatism and despised the practical.17 Technical and vocational education was neglected and limited to a few commercial and naval schools, which could not be considered as a substantial educational network parallel to the dominant classical model.18 The difficult beginnings of art and engineering professions in Greece may be connected to the foundation of the School of the Arts (Scоleίоn twn Tecnώn) in Athens, the capital of the young Greek State. The School of the Arts was established as a free Sunday school in 1836 and was aimed at those who wanted to train as ‘chief technicians (masters) in Architecture’.19 It was a basic technical school, intended to

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furnish the much-needed workforce with a minimum of expertise in building. The assumption underlying the establishment of this school was that the development of technical studies constituted a fundamental prerequisite for national prosperity in a country that was ravaged after a long war of independence. Soon after its establishment, the School was divided into three sections, the first operating as a technical school on Sundays and holidays, the second as an everyday school for technicians of ‘industrial arts’ such as metallurgy, carpentry and clock making, and the third one as a school for the ‘fine arts’, namely painting, sculpture and architecture. This development was an acknowledgement of the incipient divergence between technical and artistic endeavours.20 From the beginning, the orientation of the school had been an issue, tensions being developed among individuals who were the agents of an artistic culture and those military men and technocrats who shared an engineering culture.21 Intense power struggles took place between the artistic and engineering groups during the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth. In these periods, the school’s priority alternated between the arts and technology, depending on those in charge of the School’s management, State influence and other factors.22 Gradually, a separation was achieved between Fine Arts on the one hand and Engineering on the other, thus creating two strands developing through their own practices and ideologies; the borders between the two strands remained blurred, however, in many cases. Between 1910 and 1929, the School of Fine Arts was gradually separated from its sibling technical school and became autonomous, and still operates today as the Athens School of Fine Arts (Anwtάth Scоlή Kalώn Tecnώn), the most prestigious, university-level institution of artistic education in the country.23 In 1914, the technical branch became the National Technical University of Athens (Eqnikό Metsόbiо Pоlutecneίо), an institution populated by male students forming an intellectual and social elite.24 Still operating under this name today, it is the most prominent technical educational establishment of the country, providing university education in a range of engineering domains.25 Thus, the original School of the Arts, having started as a school aiming at providing much-needed technicians and craftsmen to the primitive, post-revolutionary Greek society of the mid-nineteenth century, was gradually differentiated and finally divided into two clearly separated University-level schools of Fine Arts and Engineering, respectively [4] [5].

Fig 3. Cover, Permanent Exhibition of Greek Products, 1933–1938, Athens, Zappeion (exhibition catalogue), 1938. This bold design by Fokion Dimitriadis expresses the confidence and optimism of the professional classes

Both art and engineering representatives worked hard to solidify their newly achieved autonomy, privileges and professional ideologies from which these privileges emanated. As a recent study shows, the National Technical University of Athens was instrumental in improving the status of the so-called practical arts, sparing them the negative connotations of manual work and the empirical culture of labourers, and endowing them with the prestige of scientific knowledge.26 Engineering graduates were identified with an ideology of rationalism and technical progress and became antagonistic to practical engineers and technicians without validated degrees who operated on the basis of experience and empirical knowledge.27 The interwar years

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were instrumental in developing a technocratic ideology serving to differentiate engineers from other technical professions.28 Engineers were fighting for the institutionalization of an educational and professional pyramid, with engineers occupying the top, and the rest of the technical schools at lower positions enjoying fewer privileges, especially in connection to State mechanisms and public agencies, which were major sources of employment.29 Similar developments were taking place in the artistic community and it is argued that:

Fig 4. Group of engineers: students and teachers of the National Technical University of Athens at the construction site of the Marathon dam, 1928

the full decoupling of the School of Fine Arts from that of the Industrial Arts would prove to be decisive to its subsequent course, especially as this decoupling took place in an age when the international artistic movements and more generally the expressions of modernism in all aspects of art had started penetrating the Greek cultural space as well.30 This separation of the fine arts meant that it was possible to devise educational courses with a purely artistic orientation, completely free from any association to architecture or applied arts.31 Thus, eventually, the National Technical University became both the official guardian of technical knowledge, including architecture, and a privileged representative of such knowledge in relation to the State, while the School of Fine Arts was entrusted with the diffusion of new aesthetic standards and the shaping of taste in general.32 Subsequently, the technical and artistic education developed along the highly polarized and hierarchical fashion described, which was very influential to the way the respective professions were understood, institutionalized and practised in the following decades. These developments have been clearly seminal for the design domain, since the crafts that had formed the backbone of the original School of the Arts were gradually marginalized and left out of the curricula of both new schools.33

Educational ventures in crafts and design Fig 5. Group of Greek artists in colleague’s atelier, Paris, 1920s

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Following the aforementioned division between fine art and engineering, the design-related professions that would constitute a ‘third space’ in education, distinct from art and engineering, remained practically non-existent on the upper levels of the educational system. Design education was, however, catered for by a multitude of lower level schools, both public and private. In order to fully understand the second-rate position and peripheral role of such schools, it would be necessary to situate them against the existing background of primary and secondary education. As already mentioned, the educational system as a whole was dominated by archaeolatry and had a strong orientation towards classical studies, to the detriment of science and technology.34 Commentators criticized the system for being uncoordinated and inefficient as well as institutionally unclear, and called for a reorientation of society and education

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according to the demands of the times. They urged for a radically different prioritization of political and social aims, towards industrial development and economic autonomy.35 After 1922, the new social and economic conditions resulting from the refugee influx brought to the table once again the issue of practical education, which included, in one form or another, the precursors of what is nowadays called design. There were arguments about the ‘futility of scholastic knowledge acquired at school’ and claims that ‘the State should replace the ideological, abstract and encyclopaedic schooling by a practical and specific education, which would correspond to the real needs of producers’.36 Technical or practical education was considered of national importance and the example of similar educational ventures in other ‘civilized countries’ was called forth to prove this argument.37 Among the various schools catering for arts and crafts in interwar Greece, the Sivitanidios School of Arts and Crafts (Sibitanίdeiоς Scоlή Tecnώn kai Epaggelmάtwn), which was legally established in 1926 but only started to operate during the academic year 1929–1930, stands out as the most systematic initiative38 [6]. The School was founded through a generous bequest by the two Sivitanidis brothers, wealthy businessmen of the Greek Diaspora of Alexandria, Egypt. The aim of the School was clearly stated in the founding document and subsequently repeated and emphasized in many occasions; it was to support the development of technical education, to shape professional craftsmen for handicrafts and industry.39 Initially, the Board of Directors had announced their intention of establishing a large number of different departments (‘schools’) in a range of subjects: mechanics and electrotechnics, carpentry, pattern cutting and millinery, building, decorative arts, typography and bookbinding, handicrafts, leather processing, hotel studies, hairdressing, textiles, oil and soap production and alcoholic beverages production. Some of these departments never materialized and most others had a troubled existence, with fluctuations depending on the number of students enrolled, the support received by the management, the acceptance by the wider public and other factors. The

Fig 6. Sivitanidios School building as it stands today next to the Kallithea metro station, Greater Athens (photograph by the author)

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school’s management in the interwar years consisted of industrialists and other experienced professionals who ran the establishment in a tight and paternalistic manner to which the school owes some of its success and subsequent fame. The managers of Sivitanidios imposed their own conception of how a modern school of crafts and professions should be, following imported models, in particular the ‘great European ones’.40 The primary model followed initially was that of the Conservatoire des Arts et Métiers, Paris, but it was soon realized that the French pattern had to be adapted to the Greek reality, as the school’s clientele consisted of poverty-stricken children of peasants, traditional craftsmen and labourers.41 In 1931, members of the school’s Board made a trip to Germany and Austria, to survey educational methods and practices in situ. They visited 27 schools, as well as several factories, thus acquiring a broad understanding of technical education.42 Belgium was also another example often presented and promoted by Sivitanidios officers, especially the Charleroi Université du Travail, where new methods combining education with paid work were tried43 [7] [8]. The classification as well as status of applied arts schools in Greece becomes evident in a volume published by the National Technical University of Athens on the occasion of its centenary in the mid-1930s. In this volume, the history of the National Technical University of Athens is followed by a description of ‘Schools of Arts and Professions’, divided into three categories (A, B and C). 44 Category A of this classification included the Sivitanidios School, the Vallianios Vocational School on the island of Kefallonia (Balliάneiоς Epaggelmatikή kai Biоmhcanikή Scоlή Lhxоurίоu) and the Papastratios Vocational School for Toys and Decoration (Papastrάteiоς Epaggelmatikή Scоlή Paignidiώn kai Diakоsmhtikής) in Athens.45 The majority of the subjects taught in these schools belong to the areas of ‘applied arts’. For example, the curriculum of the Papastratios School, founded by the Papastratos tobacco industrialists, included the construction of toys made of wood, paper, cloth, metal, as well as decoration on various materials, especially textiles, leather and metal. The Vallianios School was teaching electrical

Fig 7. Door with coloured glass, possibly made by Sivitanidios School students during the interwar years, Sivitanidios School, Athens, 2005 (photograph by the author)

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technology, draughtmanship, bookbinding and weaving. Category B schools comprised Elliniki Viotechniki Etairia (Greek Crafts Company/Ellhnikή Biоtecnikή Etaireίa) that included night technical schools and the Diplarios School (Diplάreiоς Scоlή), as well as a number of vocational night schools in Athens and various provincial cities aiming at producing mechanics, draughtsmen, woodcarvers and other vocations falling under the ‘arts and professions’ label. In Category C were classified various public and private orphanages for boys, which provided one or two years of elementary technical education, following primary school completion. The specializations offered by these low-level schools included design-related fields such as carpentry, typography and furniture making. Although all these schools were meant to cater for the developing small and medium-sized industrial sector, there is no evidence of any systematic effort towards mutual coordination. It appears that the applied arts domain consisted of a mixture of largely unrelated initiatives, lacking institutional clarity and educational efficiency.46 Furthermore, the above classification, considered in conjunction with the Sivitanidios School departments listed in the previous paragraph, represents an extremely broad as well as confusing range of areas of expertise. It constitutes in fact a widely conceived ‘third space’ of crafts and applied arts, which is basically defined and conceptualized less by what it includes than by what it excludes, namely ‘Engineering Science’ or ‘Fine Art’. In a similar vein, another 1930s study describes the schools of arts and professions (or vocational schools) in a sweeping manner, within a continuum from handicrafts to industry:

Fig 8. Modernist sofa in wood and leather, designed and made by Sivitanidios School students during the interwar years, Sivitanidios School Collection, Athens, 2005 (photograph by the author)

Vocational schools are specific stages in the evolution of civilization and of small industry, which results in industrialization in the course of time and under the influence of certain important factors; such schools may be classified under organized domestic crafts, which in turn result from the development of handicrafts 47 [9]. The fluidity of the applied arts domain was further emphasized by the difficulty in finding appropriate teachers, a problem described as ‘thorny’.48 Among other things, the lack of specialists who were knowledgeable about the design domain and could effectively impart their expertise to others brings to the fore a more general question: was the emergence of this ‘third space’ of applied arts related to a distinct cognitive base? 49 An answer to this question is provided by an article inspired by the theories of French reformer Julien Fontègne in ‘Handicraft as Educational System’, published in 1930 in the magazine Erga. The article promotes direct or experiential knowledge, which corresponds to the term intuition (mentioned in English), and makes reference to theories by philosophers and educators John Amos Comenius, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi, Ernst Haeckel, Stanley Hall, John Dewey, Maria Montessori, Robert Seidel and others as well as to related teaching methods employed in Sweden, the USA, Germany, France and Switzerland.50 Another article in Erga propagandizes ‘learning by doing’ and presents the example of education in the USA, where ‘handicrafts are considered to be discipline lessons of equal value to other branches of education’.51 These were the seeds of a cognitive base which acknowledged the special character of applied arts and the particularities and advantages of design-based education.52 It is, however, highly questionable whether and to what extent this theorization reached the students and craftsmen themselves or was limited to the engineering or other intelligentsia that tried to shape this ‘third space’ of design-related professions, while at the same time promoting and protecting its own interests.

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Fig 9. Advertisement promoting the furnituremaking capacity of Hadjikonsta Orphanage: ‘Furniture manufacture of any kind, using excellent materials and highly diligent work, on the basis of the most artistic designs. Guaranteed results, unbeatable prices’. The photograph shows a variety of furniture in both historical and modernist styles. Permanent Exhibition of Greek Products, 1933-1938, Athens, Zappeion (exhibition catalogue), 1938, page 39

Struggling for prestige This leads to the question of the outcomes and success of schools teaching design subjects. To this end, design-related education in interwar Greece needs to be discussed in the context of prevailing ideologies and its social acceptance measured against dominant mentalities. These did not prove to be favourable towards design and practical professions in general. The old discussion about Greece’s nature as a traditionally agrarian country and whether it should follow the path of industrialization was revitalized during the interwar years, under the pressure of changing financial and social conditions that threatened the country’s well-being and even survival.53 The lack of educated technicians and workers, as well as the need for developing arts and crafts for industry, had been acknowledged. 54 The pressure exercised by mass mentalities did not, however, leave much room for development. Greek industry was ‘fighting against official and unofficial prejudice’.55 Throughout the interwar years, Sivitanidios School struggled with the problem of low prestige, which placed its activities in the area of manual work and therefore made them particularly unattractive. The magazine Erga (Works/Έrga), closely related to the fate of the Sivitanidios School through a number of individuals who belonged both to the magazine’s editorial group and the school’s Board, was a key supporter of industrialization and conducted a long-standing, persistent campaign in favour of this idea. A number of polemical articles in Erga during the 1930s testify to this passionate but rather futile struggle by the magazine against prejudice. These articles were linked by the magazine’s editors to their attempt to improve the status of practical or manual work. As the editor states in his introduction for these articles: Technical education, namely the creation of educated technicians worthy of their name, is a wheel on which Greek industry and handicraft will move. [. . .] It appears anyway that practical education – by which term we mean the all-embracing introduction of practical knowledge, handicrafts, etc. as

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a general educational system – is the best means of general education of a people, instead of various other systems existing so far. It has started being acknowledged that classical education does not correspond to contemporary living conditions and those in charge of Greek education should reorient themselves towards other directions.56 Erga asks its readership ‘to propagandize to the children of urban centres the zeal for practical technical education’ and observes that many graduates of primary school or of the first classes of secondary school could be directed towards the applied arts.57 The campaign by Erga was ill-fated: the industrial environment was unattractive not only to workers and technicians who occupied the lower positions, but even to engineers.58 Despite the prestige that their university degree ensured them, engineers avoided employment in industry, for financial but also for status reasons. Employment in public or private construction works was not only more lucrative but also more prestigious. The coupling between the technical world of engineers and the industrial world of production did not materialize in interwar Greece.59 The problem of social acceptability of industrial environments was understandably much more acute in the lower strata of technical and crafts education. This type of education did usually offer a profession that could be viable in the future, but did not ensure the increased security, financial rewards and social mobility promised by the clerical, public-sector jobs to which most petit-bourgeois and rural families aspired. As an article in Erga notes, ‘the Greek parent, bourgeois or farmer, considers his child’s employment in the field and the workshop as being inferior to his dignity’.60 Characteristically, an article mentions the ‘difficulties of Greek industry to find and educate the appropriate material’.61 Popular prejudice was not restricted to professional choices by youngsters and their families, but was extended to the products of labour themselves. Greek consumers preferred foreign products and it was noted with disappointment that ‘familiarization of consumers with the use of Greek industrial products is so far incomplete’.62 Attempts by various institutions to develop a ‘national’ strategy and infuse the Greek public with pride for local products, following the example of other countries supporting their own produce, had limited success.63 The situation was exacerbated by the interventions by other professionals. Several texts emanating from individuals practising the dominant professions further consolidated the established distinctions between ‘higher’ and ‘lower’ vocations. It is highly indicative of the situation that public reactions forced the management of Sivitanidios to abolish the Department of Graphic and Plastic Decorative Arts. These reactions included not only students’ unwillingness to enrol and employers’ reluctance to recruit graduates of this department but also insufficient promotion and development of the department, as well as defamation of its work by certain artists. Improvement of Sivitanidios’ output constituted a threat to ‘higher’ schools and a clash of interests became implicit. The attempt to change Sivitanidios to a School of Decorative Arts producing decorators, painters, sculptors and engravers, and thus upgrading from lower to medium level, met with fierce resistance and led the school management to curtail these ambitions.64 The attitude of artists towards design was highly ambivalent. A supporter of the crafts exclaims: ‘Now where is the sculptor who would lightheartedly make buttons, door handles, fireplaces, etc.? They find it degrading—even when they starve, artists do not condescend to undertake such a task’.65 Even so, although the artistic world despised crafts, many artists were engaged in design as a means of livelihood and were blocking competitors from entering the applied arts market. For example, fine artists were systematically involved in the design of magazine covers, cigarette packs,

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promotional posters for commercial and industrial products or various other typographic works66 [10]. On the other side of the spectrum, a professor of the National Technical University of Athens clearly distinguishes his institution from applied arts schools, the latter being of an: exclusively practical mission, in other words in the education of competent, trainee ‘technicians’ or otherwise in the training of specialist lower technical staff, able to understand and apply correctly the orders of its superintendent engineering scientists and constitute with them an organic set of people complementing each other, for the benefit of the quality of works undertaken and the technical progress of the country.67

Fig 10. Advertisement for light cigarettes by Papastratos manufacturing company, designed by the atelier of artists N. Kastanakis and A. Spachis, early 1930s. The influence of abstract painting and modern typography is apparent. Image from the collection of the Hellenic Literary and Historical Archive (E.L.I.A.). Courtesy of the Hellenic Literary and Historical Archive

But who were those people preparing to become craftsmen and designers of different kinds? It would be anachronistic to claim there was a tight group consciously sharing a consistent ideology or vision. Evidence shows that they were mostly young people forced by the dire financial conditions to engage with what seemed to be a promising source of income, often following in the steps of a father who held a related profession. Neither the search for a cognitive base nor the educational initiatives was directed by a conscious and autonomous community, but rather patronized by adjacent professional communities aiming to frame and channel design activities to the benefit of their own domains.68 The highly paternalistic attitude was shared by the ‘higher’ professions and by the school management itself. Students were mostly of humble origins (children of peasants, of traditional craftsmen and labourers), and they were often perceived as a potential threat to the status quo and to social stability. There were even reservations and caution against a possible ‘educational revolution’.69 Managerial and industrial circles were interested in the prevention and containment of workers’ demands and organized union activities. The highly moralist tone of Erga articles is very much indicative of the dominant mentality. The author of a 1930 article in Erga expects that future graduates will not only be good workers but also ‘agents of the purging of the labour idea’, they will bear the healthy spirit of ‘[. . .] work as a sincere partner of capital, a helper and not a prosecutor’. Part of their education would be to ‘love their future employers’70 [11]. It has been argued so far that the low popularity of design-related professions may be attributed to the classicist bias of the Greek educational system, to the dominance and higher social status of art and engineering as well as to the clerical aspirations of most parents for their offspring. Last but not least, the issue of gender distinctions should be raised in connection with the applied arts. It was accepted that ‘the professions based on applied arts may open up to a very large number of girls, in industry and small-scale industry of decorative painting, processing of wood, leather, metal, horn, ivory, porcelain, ceramics’.71 The Sivitanidios School was primarily intended for boys, but girls also enrolled in

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some of the applied arts specializations.72 A range of other professional schools and orphanages specifically for girls provided instruction on various practical skills that were deemed appropriate for women destined to become housewives and mothers or work in specific industrial sectors such as textiles. Such institutions were to be found not only in Athens but also in many provincial towns and included specializations such as sewing, pattern cutting, millinery, weaving, carpet making, cooking and other related skills. Apparently, certain specializations were more acceptable for women, being fit to their ‘nature and prescribed role in society’73. The issue of the role of women in interwar Greek design is, however, a very complex one and is touched only cursorily in this article. Extensive, in-depth study of women in relation to Greek design remains to be conducted.74 Here it should be clarified that the masses of working-class girls who were destined for the various professional schools had almost nothing in common with a tiny minority of aristocratic women who played a significant role in the applied arts discourse of the interwar years, for example Angeliki Hadjimihali or Eva Palmer-Sikelianou.75 In any case, it is reasonable to propose the hypothesis that the connection of the applied arts domain with women further contributed to its low prestige [12].

Fig 11. Publicity photograph from Sivitanidios School workshop, interwar period. Note the austere and defiant composure of the two supervisors, as well as the uniform-wearing students. Courtesy of Sivitanidios School of Arts and Crafts

Turning again to the wider picture, I would argue that we cannot talk of professionalization, but perhaps only of proto-professionalization in the margins of related, more established professions. To resume the analysis by Valtonen, the Greek case seems more akin to so-called professionalization from below, although the local market was too small and immature to fully support such a process. On the other hand, professionalization from above (where State dependency is high as the State funds professional organizations and controls educational institutions) was unlikely, given the fragmented and incomplete nature of State initiatives.76 The body of ‘designers’ was in fact a mixture of professionals with varied backgrounds, rather than a consistent or self-conscious group with common history or aims. Many people, including artists, turned to the applied arts because of hardship, struggling to make a living. It therefore appears anachronistic to speak of a professionalization period for design or of a specific professional ideology; I would rather speak of emergent professionalization or proto-professionalization.77 During the same period, the related but much more powerful domains of art and engineering were themselves struggling to delineate their professional claims, define their territory and realize their social closure. The interwar years did indeed witness the professional consolidation of art and engineering, at least to a certain extent. Nonetheless, there was neither a conscious community nor a mature market to allow the seeds of the applied arts professions to develop in a similar manner. The fledgling design community was colonized by adjacent professional areas, it was often manipulated by powerful groups such as industrialists or school management and it could not develop its own, autonomous discourse. It has also been suggested that the professional practice of design is ‘tied to the emergence of the designer as a distinct individual, apart from the trades and crafts’.78 This condition was not realized in the Greek case, since there is no evidence of the emergence of designers as independent professionals. The final blow to the development of an independent design domain was given by the Second World War, which reoriented all the activities towards military preparations and shattered the decorative arts’ educational ambitions and prospects.79 The brutal decade of the world war and civil war that followed resulted in the collapse of Greek industry and the disintegration of the social fabric. Under such circumstances, the design professionalization project was postponed for

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much later. It is striking that the following paragraph, expressing the inconclusive character of many creative initiatives during the 1930s, could have been equally written about the applied arts:

Fig 12. Young refugee girl copying a carpet design. Women, whether skilled or unskilled, were crucial for the development of interwar industry. Photograph by Harry Decker, published in The National Geographic, November 1925

[The interwar period] does not have in the field of art its own consummation, as its internal ongoing developments and the contrasts shaped were revoked before they could become ripe, they were interrupted without conversing, some without even flourishing. So, it is not accidental that in the historiography of art, the Greek interwar years are approached more through the ideological demands that had been made and the expectations that had been expressed by intellectuals and artists especially during the thirties, rather than by their artistic achievements themselves.80 In an analogous manner, the design domain was characterized by ambitions and hopes that did not reach fruition.

Conclusion Early design education in Greece was shaped as much by constructive initiatives as by its own inefficiencies and external obstructions. In objective terms, there was abundant space for the development of design-related professions in Greece, a capitalist society in the making. In practice, the fledgling domain of ‘decorative’ or ‘applied’ arts fought for its existence in a society where industrial development faced suspicion and manual work was treated with disdain. Furthermore, decorative or applied arts had to face the Scylla and Charybdis of Fine Arts and Engineering, respectively, that were themselves engaged in a power struggle for institutional power and social prestige. The social dynamics were not favourable towards what was seen as a second-class occupation, measured against ‘higher’ art and the ‘science’ of engineering, as well as the widespread prejudice of Greek society towards practical work and the industrial sector in general. Although crafts had been deemed by many as most important for the economic development and the well-being of the country, subsequent moves were dictated by megalomania and lack of pragmatism, which left crafts and design education with unclear identity and low status. The interwar years saw the professional consolidation of art and engineering (including architecture), but there was neither sufficient ‘vital space’ nor a critical mass of conscious professionals in the applied arts to enable the development of this domain. The decade-long world and civil wars that followed ruined the already unstable, fragmentary attempts to establish applied arts education. Thus, the prerequisites for professionalization and discourse development formulated by Lees-Maffei, Seddon, Valtonen and Krippendorff could not be met: the applied arts ‘project’ remained incomplete. Specifying the ways in which the first steps of design education in interwar Greece affected the state of design education and professionalization in the post-war decades would be the subject of further research. It seems logical to put forward the hypothesis that these first uncertain and problematic steps have been crucial. Artemis Yagou AKTO art & design E-mail: [email protected] If you have any comments to make in relation to this article, please go to the journal website on http://jdh.oxfordjournals.org and access this article. There is a facility on the site for sending e-mail responses to the editorial board and other readers.

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Notes 1 These questions were first formulated and developed as part of a postdoctoral research project, which was meant to trace the origins of the current state of design education in Greece back to the first steps of design activities. The Sivitanidios School Archive, the magazine Erga and the catalogue of the Zappeion exhibition (referenced in more detail in the endnotes that follow) constitute the main primary sources for this study. It has, however, been necessary to supplement these with a wealth of secondary sources, in order to contextualize this text and make it meaningful to an international audience. The research underpinning this publication was partially supported by two grants: a postdoctoral research grant by I.K.Y., the Greek State Scholarships’ Foundation (2002–03), and a Design History Society TwentyFifth Anniversary Research Award (2004). I am grateful to both institutions for their support. The paper is in a sense complementary to my paper ‘Innovating by Design in Interwar Greece’, Entrepreneurial History Discussion Papers, 2008, freely available on-line at: http://www.ehdp.net/p002.html (accessed 21 October 2009). Preliminary findings of this research had been reported in: A. Yagou, ‘The Emergence of Industrial Design in Interwar Greece 1922–1940’, Design History Society Newsletter, no. 100, 2004, p. 9. I would also like to thank all the individuals who helped me by providing tips for bibliographic sources, granting or facilitating access to archival material or commenting on earlier versions of this article. 2 ‘Crafts’ or ‘applied arts’ constituted the backbone of a broad professional category, a ‘third space’ loosely connected with and positioned between art and engineering. In today’s terms, this professional space would be labelled ‘design’. 3 Extensive research in a range of primary sources would be necessary in order to make fine distinctions between these terms and specify their meanings and usage in a more nuanced manner. Therefore, in this article, the differences between related terms such as ‘craft’, ‘applied arts’ and ‘design’ remain deliberately vague. For a similar situation in the British context, Woodham notes: ‘[. . .] the widely felt uncertainty of terms commonly used in the interwar years such as “commercial art” or “graphic design”, “industrial art” or “industrial design” reflected the inability of designers to establish a clear-cut professional identity or status’. J. M. Woodham, Twentieth-Century Design, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1997, pp. 165–81, especially 167. For an analysis of the evolution of design terminology in Greece, see: A. Yagou, ‘Greek Words for Creation: Reflections on Design Discourse in the Context of the Greek Language’, Another Name for Design: Words for Creation, ICDHS 2008 Osaka, Proceedings of the Sixth International Conference of Design History and Design Studies, Osaka, 2008, pp. 32–5. For comments on early design terminology in the English language, see D. Irwin, ‘Art versus Design: The Debate 1760 to 1860’, Journal of Design History, vol. 4, no. 4, 1991, p. 219. 4 The views of Greek historians on the interwar years form a relatively homogeneous outline of that period as one of great social transformations. Although there is no bibliography dedicated to Greek design during these years, relevant material may be identified in general histories, as well as in studies on art or engineering: A. Rigos, I Defteri Elliniki Dimokratia 1924–1935, Koinonikes Diastaseis tis Politikis Skinis (The 2nd Greek Democracy 1924– 1935, Social Dimensions of the Political Scene), Themelio, Athens, 1999, pp. 9–13; E. Matthiopoulos, ‘“Kales Technes” (Fine Arts)’, in Istoria tis Elladas ston Eikosto Aiona, 1922–1940 O Mesopolemos, tomos B2 (History of Greece in the 20th Century, 1922–1940 The Interwar Years, vol. B2), C. Hadziiossif (ed.), Vivliorama, Athens, 2003, pp. 400–59; A. Mertyri, I Kallitechniki Ekpaideusi ton Neon stin Ellada 1836–1945 (The Artistic Education of the Young in Greece 1863–1945), Neohellenic Research Institute/National Hellenic Research Foundation, Athens, 2000; Y. Antoniou, I Ellines Michaniki—Thesmi kai Idees 1900–1940 (The Greek Engineers— Institutions and Ideas 1900–1940), Vivliorama, 2006. The only work dedicated to design is limited to the furniture sector, but nevertheless provides important insights: G. Parmenidis & E. Roupa, To Astiko Epiplo stin Ellada 1830–1940: Enas Aionas Sigrotisis Kanonon Schediasmou (Bourgeois Furniture in Greece, 1830– 1940: A Century of Construction of Design Rules), National Technical University of Athens Press, Athens, 2004. See also: A.

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Yagou (2007–1), ‘City Lights: A Detail of Greek Interwar Modernism’, Design Issues, Vol. 23, No. 1, Winter 2007, pp. 18–27. 5 Greek industry consisted primarily of small and medium-sized companies, mostly family-run, with poor technical equipment and limited organizational expertise. Most industrial development was concentrated in Greater Athens and the neighbouring port of Piraeus. M. Dritsa, Viomichania kai Trapezes stin Ellada tou Mesopolemou (Industry and Banks in Interwar Greece), Cultural Foundation of the National Bank of Greece, Athens, 1990, especially pp. 45–111. 6 A. Yagou (2007–2), ‘Beyond Disaster: Proposal for a GreekTurkish Design Research Project’, paper presented in Dancing with Disorder: Design, Discourse and Disaster, 7th EAD Conference, Izmir, 11–13 April 2007. 7 For relevant accounts of the social and ideological climate during the interwar years, see: Y. Kairofyllas, I Athina tou Mesopolemou (Athens in the Interwar Years), Philippoti Publications, Athens, 1988; T. Kayalis, I Epithimia gia to Moderno—Desmeuseis kai Aksioseis tis Logotechnikis Dianoisis stin Ellada tou 1930 (The Desire for the Modern—Engagements and Claims of the Literary Intelligentsia in 1930s Greece), Vivliorama, Athens, 2007. The emergence of design awareness among industry and the public alike, as well as the belief among business circles of the importance of design education, deserves special attention and has been discussed extensively in my 2008 paper mentioned in n. 1. 8 Opinion expressed by carpet maker Hattos Vaianos, who had studied in Verviers, a Belgian town renowned for its thriving wool and textile industry, Erga, no. 93, 15 April 1929, 600. 9 Diarkis Ekthesis Ellinikon Proionton, 1933–1938, AthinaiZappeion, (Permanent Exhibition of Greek Products, 1933–1938, Athens-Zappeion), exhibition catalogue, 1938. 10 Design awareness for industry was forward-looking and related to modernization; it should be distinguished from crafts revival, which was taking inspiration from the past and was opposed to industrial development. Relevant material in: Matthiopoulos, op. cit., pp. 415–16; A. Yagou (2007–3), ‘Metamorphoses of Formalism: National Identity as a Recurrent Theme in the History of Design in Greece’, Journal of Design History, vol. 20, no. 2, 2007 (special issue on south-eastern European design) pp.145–59; Erga, no. 129, 15 October 1930, p. 253; and n. 52. 11 G. Lees-Maffei, ‘Introduction: Professionalization as Focus in Interior Design History’, Journal of Design History, vol. 21, no. 1, 2008, pp. 1–18, p. 1. 12 J. Seddon, ‘Mentioned but Denied Significance: Women Designers and the “Professionalization” of Design in Britain, c. 1920–1951’, Gender & History, vol. 12, no. 2, 2000, pp. 425–47. 13 K. Krippendorff, The Semantic Turn—A New Foundation for Design, Taylor and Francis, Boca Raton, FL, 2006, especially pp. 23–5. 14 A. Valtonen (2006-1), ‘Professionalization in Industrial Design— Connecting and Comparing Alternative Routes: Architecture and Engineering as Examples’, Connecting Conference Proceedings, International Committee of Design History and Studies ICDHS, Helsinki, 23–25 August 2006; A. Valtonen (2006-2), ‘Strategies for Surviving in a Changing Environment: The History of Industrial Design Education in Finland’, Paper presented at Wonderground, Design Research Society International Conference, Lisbon 1–4 November 2006, http://www.iade.pt/drs2006/wonderground/proc eedings/fullpapers/DRS2006_0028.pdf (accessed 21 October 2009). 15 Gerry Beegan and Paul Atkinson, ‘Professionalism, Amateurism and the Boundaries of Design, Journal of Design History, vol. 21, no. 4, 2008, pp. 305–13, especially p.307. A similar process of formation of a ‘professional’ consciousness was noted in 1930s Greece among authors, critics and poets, who were gradually becoming ‘men of letters’ (Kayalis, op. cit., p. 68). 16 G. Anastassopoulos, Istoria tis Ellinikis Viomichanias, Tomos C (1923–1940) (A History of Greek Industry 1840–1940, Vol. C, 1923– 1940), Greek Publication Company, Athens, 1947, p. 1208.


17 The urgent need for basic, craft-based education had been acknowledged by the first governor of the newly-founded Greek State, Ioannis Capodistrias, who had worked systematically in this direction. (Mertyri, op. cit., pp. 27–37) Following his assassination in 1833, his plans were abandoned and education took a classicist turn that was to be followed well into the twentieth century. Relevant bibliography in: Antoniou, op. cit., p. 93, and in Mertyri. See also next note. 18 C. Tsoukalas, Exartisi kai Anaparagogi: O Koinonikos Rolos ton Ekpaideutikon Michanismon stin Ellada (1830–1922), (Dependence and Reproduction: The Social Role of Educational Mechanisms in Greece 1830–1922), Themelio, Athens, 1992, 504–05. The antitechnical and pedantic bias of the Greek educational system and its massive impact on the development of the country is well documented by the former study, as well as by numerous others, most notably the following: A. Dimaras, I Metarrythmisi pou den Egine (The Reform that Never Was), Themelio, Athens, 2003 (1973); A. Kazamias & M. Kassotakis (eds.), I Ekpaideutikes Metarrythmiseis stin Ellada: Prospathies, Adiexoda, Prooptikes (Educational Reforms in Greece: Attempts, Deadlocks, Prospects), University of Crete, Heraklion, 1986; I. Panagiotopoulou, ‘I Mesi Epaggelmatiki Ekpaideusi stin Ellada tou Mesopolemou. Mia Geographiki Prosegisi tis Symvolis tis sti Viomichaniki Anaptyksi tis Horas (Secondary Vocational Education in Interwar Greece. A Geographical Approach of Its Contribution in the Industrial Development of the Country)’, Technika Chronika-A, vol. 13, no. 2, 1993, pp.77–103; A. Andreou, ‘Historiographia tis Ellinikis Ekpaideusis: Mia Periodologisi (Historiography of Neohellenic Education: A Periodization)’, Theseis, no. 45, October to December 1993, http://www.theseis.com/index.php?option=com_content& task=view&id=431&;Itemid=29”> http://www.theseis.com/index.p hp ? option = com_content & task = view & id = 431 &; Itemid = 29 (accessed 21 October 2009); A. K. Provata, Ideologika Reumata, Politika Kommata kai Ekpaideutikh Metarrythmisi 1950–1965: O ‘Logos’ gia tin Techniki-Epaggelmatiki Ekpaideush kai Anaptyksi (Ideological Currents, Political Parties and Educational Reform 1950–1965: The ‘Discourse’ on Technical-Vocational Education and Development), Gutenberg, Athens, 2002; P. Kyprianos, Sygritiki Istoria tis Ellinikis Ekpaideusis (A Comparative History of Greek Education), Vivliorama, Athens, 2004; S. Bouzakis, Neoelliniki Ekpaideusi 1821–1998 (Neohellenic Education 1821– 1998), Gutenberg, Athens, 2006; A. Angelakis, ‘Techniki Ekpaideusi stin Ellada: I Sivitanidios Scholi ton Tecnon kai ton Epaggelmaton tin Periodo tou Mesopolemou (Technical Education in Greece: The Sivitanidios School of Arts and Crafts during the Interwar Years)’, Unpublished Diploma Thesis, Joint Postgraduate Programme on the History and Philosophy of Sciences and Technology, University of Athens/National Technical University of Athens, 2004, http://user s.NationalTechnicalUniversityofAthens.gr/aangel/sivitanidios.htm (accessed 1 October 2005, web address no longer accessible).

28 The establishment of the Technical Chamber of Greece, which was open only to certified engineers and excluded craftsmen and technicians, contributed substantially to the hierarchical classification of technical professions. (Antoniou, op. cit., p. 181) Similarly, artists established in 1910 the first association for the protection of their professional rights. (Mertyri, op. cit., p. 270). 29 Antoniou, op. cit., p. 147. 30 Mertyri, op. cit., p. 275. 31 Ibid., p. 358. 32 Ibid., p. 368. 33 Distinguished historian Vassilis Panayotopoulos has emphasized the negative consequences of the upgrading of the former School of the Arts to University status, a fact that left a marked educational void in connection to the applied arts. Comments made on 24 January 2007, Sivitanidios Public School, Athens, during the presentation of the book: A. Vaxevanoglou, Sivitanidios Scholi Technon kai Epaggelmaton (School of Arts and Crafts: From Foundation to Establishment), Sivitanidios Public School, Athens, 2005. 34 Tsoukalas, op. cit., p. 530. 35 Panagiotopoulou, op. cit., pp. 91–2; Rigos, op. cit., p. 30. 36 Erga, no. 123, 15 July 1930, p. 57. 37 Praktika Diikitikou Symvouliou (Minutes of the Board of Directors), Sivitanidios School Archive, 31 October 1928, p. 143, and Anargyros Eliadis, Report on the Establishment of Technical Education in Greece, 1926, both in the archive of Sivitanidios School. Anargyros Eliades served for several years on the Board of Sivitanidios School. Note that the magazine Erga was closely connected to Sivitanidios and constituted one of the bastions in favour of practical education. 38 Vaxevanoglou, op. cit. 39 See especially Sivitanidios School of Arts and Crafts founding document, as well as Praktika Diikitikou Symvouliou (Minutes of the Board of Directors), 31 October 1928 and 10 April 1940, both in the Sivitanidios School Archive. 40 Praktika Diikitikou Symvouliou (Minutes of the Board of Directors), Sivitanidios School Archive, 31 October 1928 and 16 March 1929. 41 Vaxevanoglou, op. cit., p. 359. 42 Praktika Diikitikou Symvouliou (Minutes of the Board of Directors), Sivitanidios School Archive, 1 April 1931 and 4 June 1931.

24 Antoniou, op. cit., p.126 and pp. 245–55.

43 Belgium, being one of the most industrialized countries in Europe, had successfully dealt with the issues of reconciling industry with the decorative arts much earlier. See: Art et Industrie, Les Arts Décoratifs en Belgique au XIX Siècle (colloquium proceedings), 23–24 October 2003, Musées Royaux d’Art et d’Histoire, Bruxelles. [In French]; Erga, no. 89, 15 February 1929, pp. 474–9. For perspectives on arts and crafts education from other countries (primarily Britain), see: M. Romans (ed.), Histories of Art and Design Education: Collected Essays, Intellect, 2005; S. Macdonald, A Century of Art and Design Education: From Arts and Crafts to Contemporary Arts, The Lutterworth Press, 2005; as well as individual articles in the Journal of Design History and Design Issues. The limitations of length and format, as well as issues of accessibility of foreign material, do not allow further comparison with other countries in this paper. It is hoped, however, that the issues presented here may lead to similar work from other countries and eventually to fruitful comparisons.

25 The National Technical University of Athens was granted equal status to the first Greek university, founded in 1837, the University of Athens. (Antoniou, op. cit., p. 126 and Tsoukalas, op. cit., p. 431).

44 Hatsopoulos, the author and a professor of the National Technical University, is keen to emphasize the inferior status of the various technical and vocational schools in relation to his own institution.

26 Antoniou, op. cit., p. 22. In his book, Antoniou examines the conditions of emergence of engineering studies and professions in Greece in the first half of the twentieth century, as well as the conditions of reception, appropriation and reproduction of professional ideologies from abroad.

45 Although some of the schools were partially or fully dependent on the public sector, many of the schools’ titles refer to the names of magnates, whose generosity and vision had made the schools possible in the first place through respective bequests.

19 I. D. Hatsopoulos, ‘Istorikon’ (‘History’), in Techniki Epetiris tis Ellados, N. Kitsikis (ed.), Technical Yearbook of Greece, Technical Chamber of Greece, Athens, 1935, vol. 1, pp. 51–173. 20 In 1887, the everyday school was renamed ‘School of Industrial Arts’, influenced by the French écoles des arts industrielles. The name was later dropped as being ‘ill-sounding’, its derogatory connotations relating to its humble origins as a school for craftsmen. (Antoniou, op. cit., p. 110 and 124). 21 Mertyri, op. cit., p. 205. 22 Mertyri, op. cit., pp. 187–8 and p. 221. 23 Antoniou, op. cit., p. 122; Mertyri, op. cit., p. 264 and 378.

27 Antoniou, op. cit., p. 91.

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46 Megali Elliniki Enkyklopaideia (Great Hellenic Encyclopedia), vol. 10, Pyrsos, Athens, 1934, pp. 328–9; Antoniou, op. cit., p. 147.

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47 Anastassopoulos, op. cit., p. 1322. There is generally a lack of clarity in the distinction between domestic production, crafts and design for industry; the respective limits are blurred. For example: Erga, no. 113, 15 February 1930, p. 469; ‘I Ekthesis tis Valkanikis Laikis Technis (The Exhibition of Balkan Folk Art)’, Erga, no. 129, 15 October 1930, p. 253. It should also pointed out that the concept of practical education encompassed a much wider spectrum than design-related professions; it was meant to generate a variety of practitioners including not only applied artists but also educated technicians and farmers, all deemed significant to the country’s survival and economic regeneration. (Panagiotopolou, p. 83). 48 Praktika Diikitikou Symvouliou (Minutes of the Board of Directors), Sivitanidios School Archive, 16 June 1933, 23 June 1933 and 6 April 1938; Anastassopoulos, op. cit., p. 1322. 49 The search for and development of a distinct cognitive base is often considered to be another feature of professionalization. Through education, it is possible to define a cognitive base for the new profession, an esoteric body of knowledge which constitutes the foundation of the emerging profession as well as its distinctive feature from other areas of expertise (Valtonen, 2006-2, op. cit.). This is a popular idea in design literature, as Wang and Ilhan note: ‘The literature on the design professions betrays a uniform assumption that a design profession, like any profession, must possess a distinct body of knowledge’. However, Wang and Ilhan move on to persuasively argue against this idea and claim that there are no independent knowledge entities in the design professions. From this starting point, they then develop a sociological rather than epistemological distinctiveness of the design professions. D. Wang and A. O. Ilhan, ‘Holding Creativity Together: A Sociological Theory of the Design Professions’, Design Issues, vol. 25, no. 1, Winter 2009, pp. 5–21. 50 Erga, no. 123, 15 July 1930, pp. 57–61. 51 Erga, no. 124, 30 July 1930, p. 90. 52 Similar opinions about manual work had been expressed by Eva Palmer-Sikelianou, who had worked extensively for the revival of crafts in Greece during the interwar years. She was, however, speaking from a quite different, elitist point of view focused on individual satisfaction and improvement rather than from a concern for mass production and economic viability: ‘[. . .] manual work is an indispensable part of ‘new education’, because its mechanisms work in such a way to “ennoble man”’. E. Sikelianou, Oraia Mataioponia—Tris Dialexis (Beautiful Futility—Three Lectures), Ellinika Grammata, Athens, 2005, pp. 93–4. 53 The opposing views expressed about this issue may be accessed through a number of primary and secondary sources: X. Zolotas, I Ellas eis to Stadion tis Ekviomichniseos (Greece in the Industrialization Stage), Eleftheroudakis, Athens, 1926; C. Hadziiossif, I Girea Selini: I Viomichania stin Elliniki Oikonomia 1830–1940 (The Elderly Moon: Industry in the Greek Economy 1830–1940), Themelio, Athens, 1993, especially p. 166, 217, 258, 280, 304 and pp. 321–49; M. Mazower, I Ellada kai i Oikonomiki Krisi tou Mesopolemou, Cultural Foundation of the National Bank of Greece, Athens, 2002, p. 309 (originally published as Greece and the Inter-war Economic Crisis, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1991); C. Vergopoulos, Ethnismos kai Oikonomiki Anaptiksi: I Ellada sto Mesopolemo (Nationalism and Financial Development: Greece in the Interwar Years), Exandas, Athens, 1978, pp. 79–80; C. Agriantoni, ‘Oi Michanikoi kai I Viomichania: Mia Apotichimeni Sinantisi (Engineers and Industry: An Unsuccessful Meeting)’, in Istoria tis Elladas ston Eikosto Aiona, 1922–1940 O Mesopolemos, Tomos B1 (History of Greece in the 20th Century, 1922–1940 The Interwar Years, vol. B1), C. Hadziiossif (ed.), Vivliorama, Athens, 2002, pp. 268–93. Anastassopoulos, op. cit., pp. 1208–12; Erga, no. 124, 30 July 1930, pp. 108–09; Erga, no. 133, 15 December 1930, p. 357; Antoniou, op.cit., pp. 361–8. 54 Erga, no. 89, 15 February 1929, p. 473. Note also the systematic publications in favour of industrialization by the journal Erga, a major propagandist of engineering ideology and technocracy (Antoniou, op. cit., pp. 371–6 and p. 226): ‘Parasitismos kai Viomichania (Parasitism and Industry)’; Erga, no. 118, 30 April 1930, p. 625; Erga, no 133, 15 December 1930, p. 357; ‘I Elliniki Viomichania Exipiretei to Koinon Symferon (Greek Industry Serves our Common Interest)’, Erga, no. 134, 30 December 1930, p. 385; ‘I

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Oloklirosis tis Paragogis mas (The Integration Of Our Production)’, Erga, no 136, 30 January 1931, p. 435; ‘To Kyvernitikon Endiaferon yper tis Viomichanias (The Governmental Interest for Industry)’, Erga, no. 144, 30 May 1931, p. 649; Tsoukalas, op.cit., p. 377. 55 Erga, no. 144, 30 May 1931, p. 649. A career as a shop-keeper or lawyer was aspired to by peasant children and their families (Mazower, op. cit., p. 183). On the social mobility aspirations of industrial workers, as well as the low popularity and temporary character of factory work, see also: P. Pizanias, Oi Ftochi ton Poleon: I Tecnognosia tis Epiviosis stin Ellada to Mesopolemo (The Urban Poor: Survival Know-how in Interwar Greece), Themelio, Athens, 1993, pp. 159–60. 56 Erga, no. 124, 30 July 1930, p. 87. 57 Erga, no. 100, 30 July 1929, p. 107. 58 Relevant bibliography in: Antoniou, op. cit., pp. 168–9. 59 Agriantoni, op. cit. 60 Erga, no. 106, 30 October 1929, p. 267; Rigos, op. cit., pp. 159–63. 61 Erga, no. 147, 15 July 1931, p. 83 [my italics]. 62 Erga, no. 152, 30 September 1931, p. 222; G. K. Strigos, ‘N’Anaptyksomen tin Agapi tou Laou pros ta Proionta tis Ellinikis Viomichanias (Let’s Develop the Love of the People for the Products of Greek Industry)’, Permanent Exhibition of Greek Products, 1933–1938, Athens, Zappeion (exhibition catalogue), 1938, p. 59; D. Vassileiadou, T. P. Roukis & S. Spyridis, Oi Aparhes tis Katanalotikis Koinonias stin Ellada tou Mesopolemou (The Beginnings of Consumer Society in Interwar Greece), unpublished seminar paper, Rethymno (Crete): University of Crete, 2001, p. 39. On the suspicion of Greek consumers towards modern, industrial products in general, see: E. F. Eliou, ‘Koution Egomio’ (In Praise of Boxes), Kritika Keimena gia tin Techni 1925– 1937 (Critical Texts on Art 1925–1937), Themelio, Athens, 2005. 63 Erga, no. 144, 30 May 1931, 649; Yagou (2007–3), op. cit., pp. 145–59. 64 Praktika Diikitikou Symvouliou (Minutes of the Board of Directors), Sivitanidios School Archive, 6 April 1938, pp. 21–2. 65 Sikelianou, op. cit., p. 60. 66 Matthiopoulos, op. cit., p. 441; Mertyri, op. cit., p. 446 and pp. 488–9. 67 Hatsopoulos, op. cit., p. 167. 68 Vaxevanoglou, op. cit., pp. 54–5; Panagiotopoulou, op. cit., p. 94 and 99. 69 Vaxevanoglou, op. cit., pp. 250–2. Note the general political instability of the days, the prevailing authoritarian mentality and the various crises of democratic rule that culminated in the dictatorship of 1936–1940. 70 Erga, no. 122, 30 June 1930, p. 49. 71 Anastassopoulos, op. cit., p. 1081. 72 Praktika Diikitikou Symvouliou (Minutes of the Board of Directors), Sivitanidios School Archive, 16 March 1929. 73 Megali Elliniki Enkyklopaideia, pp. 328–9. 74 The feminist discourse of the interwar years has been presented extensively in: E. Avdela & A. Psarra (eds), O Feminismos stin Ellada tou Mesopolemou—Mia Anthologia (Feminism in inter-war Greece. An anthology), Gnossi, Athens, 1985; K. Xiradaki, To Feministiko Kinima stin Ellada (1830–1936)—Protopores Ellinides (The Feminist Movement in Greece (1830–1936)—Pioneering Greek Women), Glaros, Athens, 1988. These studies, documenting the discriminated and patronized existence of Greek women in the interwar years, may provide the foundation for further research into the role of gender issues in the development of design-related professions in Greece. 75 Anastassopoulos, op. cit., pp. 1296–8; see also n. 52. 76 Valtonen, 2006-1, op. cit. The Greek case may be loosely compared to the situation in the USA following the 1929 Crash, when intense crisis and market pressures contributed to the need for differentiation for market survival and eventually to the


emergence of professional industrial design. On the growth of the industrial design profession in the USA, see: Woodham, op. cit., pp. 66–70. For analogies with the UK professionalization context, see Seddon, op. cit. 77 A noteworthy exception may be identified in the area of furniture production. Parmenidis and Roupa document the professional consolidation of furniture making, the most advanced craft domain in Greece during the interwar years. Nonetheless, this case may not be generalized into an all-embracing design professional consciousness. Note that, in the early 1930s, industrial design was only just beginning to become professionalized in the USA, the most advanced country in the world in the field.

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78 G. Beegan & P. Atkinson, op. cit., p 307. 79 Sivitanidios today still operates as a vocational school, albeit wrought with numerous problems. For a very informative journalistic account, see: A. Chadjigeorgiou, ‘Sivitanidios Scholi: Zititai Phos sto Tounel ton Kondylion’ (‘Sivitanidios School: Searching for Light in the Tunnel of Funds’), Eleftherotypia, 4 July 2006, pp. 44–5. The school’s imposing, interwar building with spacious atrium, next to the Kallithea metro station in Greater Athens, is a vivid reminder of interwar possibilities and hopes that were crushed by future events. 80 Matthiopoulos, op. cit., p. 401.

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