ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on different types of industrious amateurism varying from window transparencies and music making to practices of interior design in the period 1790-1850 in an attempt to recover the submerged role of amateurism in the history of female professionalism. Focussing on the art education developed for the national system of Schools of Design, Patricia Zakreski argues that the principles of pattern designing that were taught in the schools comprised a unique aesthetic that placed the relationship between artistry and industry at its heart. The artistic legitimacy of the skilled handiwork practised by female designers and craftswomen was crucial to the developing notion of the professional. Pamela Nunn explores the institutions of nineteenth century art education; she focuses on the Royal Academy Schools and the supposedly lynchpin year of 1894 in which the Academy granted life study to its female students.
