Based on an extended version of the research conducted for the author's Ph.D. thesis, History in Things. Gottfried Semper and Popularization of the Arts in London 1850-55.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Analysis and experience: artefacts in archaeology and cultural history -- Speaking artefacts and reconstructions of the past -- Domestic space and the theory of decorative things -- Interiors and the education of taste -- Commodity and the Great Exhibition -- Artefacts and bodies.

"Material Theories takes a radically new approach to well-established thinking on nineteenth-century architecture and design by investigating Gottfried Semper's classic ideas about dressing, metamorphosis of material, and cultural development, culminating in his two-volume publication Style. This book demonstrates how Semper's theories crystallized among his encounters with material things of the late 1840s and early 1850s. It examines several discursive frameworks and phenomena which shaped the attitude to artefacts in Europe in the mid-nineteenth century, and which were specifically pertinent to Semper's evolution: archaeology and antiquarianism, the domestic interior, print media, collections, and the embodied relationship between the designer and their work. For the first time, this book examines the construction of a design theory not only as an intellectual endeavour by also as a process of confrontation with material things. It employs recent approaches to material culture in order to show that Semper's artefact references constituted his ideas, rather than simply giving impetus to them. It will be an important investigation for academics and researchers interested in interior design history"-- Provided by publisher.