The Art of Display

From the great department store with love: window display and the transfer of commercial knowledge in early twentieth-century Sweden

“…This includes a focus, first, on the turn-of-the-century department store and its ambition to 'produce desire' through display, attractions, colour and light 4 ; and second, on the new, simpler aesthetics of functionalism, which with the advent of new marketing theories challenged the boundaries between art and commercialism. 5 Although these studies are important for understanding the developments in both consumer culture and retailing, such approaches have some shortcomings. First, they are often limited to the most conspicuous examples and do not analyse the wider distribution of commercial display or the more average shop windows.…”

“…The windows, especially those of the large department stores, were central elements in creating the dream worlds of consumption, described by Rosalind Williams, Michael Miller, William Leach and others. 9 The functionalist window too, and its promise of modernity, has been discussed in historical research 10 as well as in contemporary trade literature and popular media. Literary authors as well, such as Theodore Dreiser in the US or Karin Boye in Sweden, described early twentieth-century shop windows as paramount sites of modern consumer desire.…”

“…61 In fact, historical research also asserts the prominence of the 1930s shop windows in Sweden. 62 And in 1935, when Lundkvist visited England to teach a course, a Swedish trade magazine proudly quoted its British counterpart, Display: 'Probably the finest displays in the world to-day have been in Sweden'. 63 The organizations of display professionals appear not to have been especially active in the 1920s and 1930s, although there are some traces of contacts between them and the retailers' associations in the trade press.…”