My first alien, Exhibitions of furniture and design in the XIX century?!

Well, I started  Reading my required book for my class of Contemporary Culture and Design, it´s called Interior Design Since 1900 by Anne Massey, it was hard to deal with all these new names and dates, and seeing that there where so much history that I didn't knew.  I was really excited reading it and learning all this new facts  and almost finishing the first chapter , when suddenly I saw one of the illustrations and I was really astonished.

The illustration showed the Century Gold stand  at the Liverpool International exhibition in 1886 by Mackmurdo of slender forms and Japanese inspiration ,suddenly I was in shock 1886! wow... first of all I never would have imagined a design fair by 1886 and less an international one. I have lived in Chile all my life, and at least in there design is recently taking power , please don´t misunderstand me I don't mean that design has never been a part of Chile , bassicaly all furniture, work of art, wallpaper must have come from abroad, but design fairs with actual stands, showing the trends and styles of the time ,those at least by personal knowledge  in my country started only about 3 or 4 , decades at most!

I have seen Chilean design got stands for showing their designs in world fairs from chairs, tables, lamps, clothing, but this had made me realize how much have we grown in the design areas in such little time, I mean if you compare 1886 to 1988 that´s 100 years difference, interior design wasn´t something that was a topic in my country only until a few years ago, in 2000 I started to see the firs fairs of interior design one of the is called 100 showrooms, which shows international and national Brand products from lighting , to flooring, and more .Even my institution Duoc UC, which was actually the first institution to dictate this career ,only started in 1988.Another fact is that one of the biggest associations of  Chilean design called "Chile Diseño" was founded in 1994 and that we only have had a design biennial for only 5 years.

I guess we, and by we I mean Chilean designers, have a long way to go, we have to keep going at the same rhythm as we are now,   so we can reach international standards, as we are doing today. And that way maybe we will have more knowledge about design and its history and things like fairs from the 1800's doesn't seem like aliens for future designers.

F!

Sources:

institution website http://www.duoc.cl/edd/?page_id=4 

 http://www.chilediseno.org/