''Britain Can Make It'' was an exhibition of industrial and product design held at the

Victoria and Albert Museum The Victoria and Albert Museum (often abbreviated as the V&A) in London is the world's largest museum of applied arts, decorative arts and design, housing a permanent collection of over 2.27 million objects. It was founded in 1852 and ...

London London is the capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary dow ...

in 1946. It was organised by the ''

Council of Industrial Design The Design Council, formerly the Council of Industrial Design, is a United Kingdom charity incorporated by Royal Charter. Its stated mission is "to champion great design that improves lives and makes things better". It was instrumental in the pro ...

'', later to become the ''

Design Council The Design Council, formerly the Council of Industrial Design, is a United Kingdom charity incorporated by Royal Charter. Its stated mission is "to champion great design that improves lives and makes things better". It was instrumental in the pro ...

''.

Background

Even before the end of

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the World War II by country, vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great power ...

, it was recognised that post-war reconstruction of manufacturing and international trade of exported goods would require the widespread acceptance of industrial design as part of future British manufacturing. Accordingly, the ''

'' was founded in 1944 by the

Board of Trade The Board of Trade is a British government body concerned with commerce and industry, currently within the Department for International Trade. Its full title is The Lords of the Committee of the Privy Council appointed for the consideration of ...

, as one of the first

quango A quango or QUANGO (less often QuANGO or QANGO) is an organisation to which a government has devolved power, but which is still partly controlled and/or financed by government bodies. The term was originally a shortening of "quasi-NGO", where N ...

The exhibition

In September 1945, only a month after the end of the war, the Council announced a national exhibition of design "in all the main range of consumer goods" to be held the following year. This was the 1946 ''Britain Can Make It'' exhibition, organized largely at the instigation of the Council's director, S.C. Leslie. The design of the exhibition itself was co-ordinated by Chief Display Designer, James Gardner. The exhibition was held from September to November at the

, London. Part of the reason for choosing this venue was that many of the museum's main exhibits were still in their wartime evacuation storage, outside London. The venue was undamaged by bombing, empty and available, and itself in need of an attraction to restore its pre-war visitors.

"What Industrial Design Means"

A major theme of the exhibition was

didactic Didacticism is a philosophy that emphasizes instructional and informative qualities in literature, art, and design. In art, design, architecture, and landscape, didacticism is an emerging conceptual approach that is driven by the urgent need t ...

, in particular the display "What Industrial Design Means" which had been the first major commission for

Misha Black Sir Misha Black (16 October 1910 – 11 October 1977) was a British-Azerbaijani architect and designer. In 1933 he founded with associates in London the organisation that became the Artists' International Association. In 1943, with Milner Gray ...

and the

Design Research Unit The Design Research Unit (DRU) was one of the first generation of British design consultancies combining expertise in architecture, graphics and industrial design. It was founded by the managing director of Stuart Advertising Agency, Marcus Brum ...

. Through Black's display, "The Birth of an Egg Cup" the role of the designer was presented as the crucial interchange between all the various aspects of design and production. Rather than merely show-casing goods on offer, the exhibition, and this display in particular, were a propagandist attempt to highlight the need to update British approaches to product design if manufacturing was to be successful in post-war competition. The audience was two-fold: the general public who were as yet unused to the notion of design as a distinct process, and also the existing manufacturers who clung to pre-war, if not Victorian, notions of how to run manufacturing industry. Black's design for the display was deliberately eye-catching, from a 13 feet high plaster egg at its entrance, to the continually-operating plastics moulding press making three thousand egg cups per day during the exhibition. This use of a working model in particular was commented on in surveys of exhibition visitors carried out by

Mass Observation Mass-Observation is a United Kingdom social research project; originally the name of an organisation which ran from 1937 to the mid-1960s, and was revived in 1981 at the University of Sussex. Mass-Observation originally aimed to record everyday ...

. Another Design Research Unit exhibit was their design and scale model for a railway coach, a double-decked third class sleeper. This represented two innovations for Britain, indicative of this egalitarian age: the first sleeper for third class rather than first, and also the technical development of fitting two levels into the restricted British loading gauge by the use of a

well car A well car, also known as a double-stack car (or also intermodal car/container car), is a type of railroad car specially designed to carry intermodal containers (shipping containers) used in intermodal freight transport. The "well" is a depress ...

Reactions to the exhibition

A popular reaction in the press was to term it, "''Britain Can't Have It''" as the country was still in the grip of wartime

Austerity Austerity is a set of political-economic policies that aim to reduce government budget deficits through spending cuts, tax increases, or a combination of both. There are three primary types of austerity measures: higher taxes to fund spendi ...

measures and the goods on display were intended for export. Reactions of those attending the exhibition were varied between the general public, the design

intelligentsia The intelligentsia is a status class composed of the university-educated people of a society who engage in the complex mental labours by which they critique, shape, and lead in the politics, policies, and culture of their society; as such, the i ...

and the manufacturers. Critics', such as John Gloag's, reactions were highly positive, congratulating the exhibition organisers both on the intellectual quality of their exhibition and also for the achievement of producing it during such a time of austerity. The public's reaction was less sophisticated, but still positive. Their view was generally that of simply wanting products in the shops that they could actually buy. The only real criticisms came from established manufacturers who largely failed to appreciate the exhibition's attempt to emphasise design and who still judged it as a simple shop-window display, of their same pre-war products.

References

External links

* Posters and graphic art at BCMI

Design Council Archive
* Comprehensive collection of digitised photographs and digitised negatives from Britain Can Make It on th

King Opens Britain Can Make it Exhibition, 1946
- British Pathé Film {{coord, 51.496302, -0.172078, type:event_region:GB, display=title British design exhibitions Design Council Austerity in the United Kingdom (1939–1954) Victoria and Albert Museum 1946 in London 1946 in art