Readers of this blog will be aware that my book Design and Heritage: The Construction of Identity and Belonging, co-edited with Rebecca Houze, was published in 2021 by Routledge in its Key issues in Cultural Heritage series. If not, you can read more about its development on the project page and in this blog post on the book’s publication, and read a preview on the book page and more on design and heritage here. I have been pleased and interested to see the publication of two related books by Bloomsbury.

Firstly, in the same year that Design and Heritage appeared, so did Craft and Heritage, edited by Susan Surette and Elaine Cheasley Paterson who both work at Concordia University in Canada (Bloomsbury 2021). This collection of 19 essays considers ‘how heritage and craft institutions, policies, practices and audiences encounter the constraints and opportunities of production, recognition and exhibition.’ The opening section explores ‘citizenship and identity, section two sustainability and section three dynamic craft in cultural institutions’.

Based on my experience as Book Reviews Editor for the Journal of Design History (2002-6), I expected — and hoped — to see joint reviews of Design and Heritage and Craft and Heritage appear in the journal literature, but sadly this has not happened.

I am grateful that the JDH did publish a very positive review of Design and Heritage by Gabriele Mentges in which the reviewer concludes that:

All of the contributions in this volume are extremely informative and instructive, both in content and at the conceptual level, because of their thorough interrogation of the respective historical context. They thus provide an in-depth insight into the history and genesis of design as part of heritage issues. For design and heritage researchers, this volume is essential reading. For others, it provides an exciting introduction to the subject.

Mentges does mention one related title in the review — Stefan Willer, Sigrid Weigel, and Bernhard Jussen (eds.). Erbe. Übertragungskonzepte zwischen Natur und Kultur. (Berlin: Suhrkamp Verlag, 2013) — but not Craft and Heritage.

Three years after both Design and Heritage and Craft and Heritage appeared, this year Rachel Emily Taylor’s Illustration and Heritage was published by Bloomsbury. According to the book’s blurb:

Rachel Emily Taylor uses her own work and other illustrators' projects as case studies to explore how the making of creative work – through the exploration of archival material and experimental fieldwork – is an important investigative process and engagement strategy when working with heritage.

Out of interest, I have reviewed this title for the International Journal of Heritage Studies. Read my review here or access a free pdf here (fifty are available so apologies in advance if you follow this link and they have run out). I note of the book’s structure that it ‘begins with a brief introduction and a more substantial first chapter, bringing together illustration and heritage. The remaining three chapters examine illustration and historical voices, collections, and landscapes, respectively. The text closes with a conclusion, interview glossary (short biographies of Taylor’s interviewees), bibliography and index.’ I then explore the chapter content before concluding that: ‘Illustration and Heritage will interest and inform those curious about the role and capacity of illustrators in heritage contexts, and the ways in which heritage inspires and stimulates illustration practice. I hope, with Taylor, that her book will prompt new projects and collaborations between these complex, immensely rich and related areas of cultural endeavour.’

Perhaps too many years have elapsed for there to be a joint review of Design and Heritage and/or Craft and Heritage with Illustration and Heritage or a review essay of all three, but I remain interested in this. While I cannot — obviously! — write such a review, I do plan to convene a workshop in future for the research students enrolled on the Professional Doctorate in Heritage (DHeritage) programme I direct at the University of Hertfordshire which addresses all three books together. I am sure they will provide food for thought and a rich comparative experience and I look forward to hearing what the students think.