The Importance of Oral Sources and Gray Literature in Historical Research on Design

Keywords: Archives, Education, Grey Literature, Oral History

Abstract

In the 2017 issue of the magazine “Stories of Design Through and From Sources”, a contribution was published dedicated to a type of document often left on the sidelines in historical research, if not even excluded from what is considered “official literature”. Claiming the value of oral history, grey and ephemeral literature, the author, Ida Kamilla Lie, also hoped for a theoretical and practical expansion of research for design by integrating the usual archival documents with these other kinds of sources...

Author Biography

Paola Proverbio, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Milano

Graduated in Architecture from the Politecnico di Milano and received a PhD in Design Sciences from the Università Iuav in Venice. She teaches Theory and History of Design and Contemporary Architecture at Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore and at the Istituto Europeo di Design in Milan. In particular, she deals with the evolution of the design of Italian lighting fixtures and contemporary decorative arts. Since 2010 she has also been involved in the relationship between product design and photography and has been a scientific consultant for the creation of digital corporate archives (Arteluce, Danese, Flos) and consultant for the iconographic archive of Domus magazine. She collaborated with the CASVA (Center for Advanced Studies on Visual Arts of the Municipality of Milan) for the study and cataloguing of design and architecture archives. Since 2019 she is one of the editors of the AIS/Design. Storia e Ricerche journal.

Published
2022-09-05
Issue
Vol 9 No 16 (2022): A Repertoire for our History of Design
Section
Research

Copyright (c) 2022 Paola Proverbio

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Creative Commons NonCommercial-NoDerivates 4.0 international License (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0).