Beauty and Power serves as an accessible general introduction to the origins of modern design and an original contribution to understanding the role that cross-cultural processes have played in design’s history. How did modern design in its origins begin to transform lives globally? This is the first history of the origins of modern design intended for general readers to discuss examples from Africa, Asia, and the Islamic World. Beauty and Power not only accounts for cross-cultural sources and effects, it supports their centrality to the growth of modern design. National competitiveness in this Age of Empire forms the basis of emerging global design.

Throughout the period and in all of its cultural contexts, a focus on the display of wealth and power through ornament helped distinguish social classes. Increasingly, citizens in the West borrowed ornamental motifs from non-Western cultures and the reverse was also true. While this book presents these visual aspects of design, it also seeks the meanings associated with the visual traits. Increasingly, those meanings emerged out of the economic interaction between members of different nations.

The book considers how design was historically interwoven with the social dimensions of 19^th-century life, from industrial production and the rise of consumerism to national identity and competitiveness. Beauty and Power considers several design disciplines, including architecture, craft, fashion, furniture, graphic, industrial, and transportation design.