Industrial Arts Education and Pattern Education in China’s Modern Design Education : China’s Modern Design Education in the First Half of the 20th Century from Research on Chen Zhifo

Theme II : Transnational Design in and around Asia

Chen Zhifo (1896-1962) was one of pioneers and founders of China’s modern design education. From the 1910s to the end of the 1940s, as a learner and educator on modern design, his experience and activities reflected the conditions and features of China’s design education during that period, and the correlation between the design education and the social environment of China then.This paper divides Chen Zhifo’s activities into two parts: One is his experience in design learning as a student, and the other is his teaching activities as a teacher. His design learning experience as a student and design teaching experience as a teacher reflected the conditions of the first stage (industrial art education stage) and the second stage (pattern education stage) in the course of the development of China’s modern design education. The industrial arts education in the late Qing Dynasty and the beginning of the Republic of China formed an important part in China’s emerging industrial education. And the industrial education represented the historic trend of China to be stronger through reformation. The industrial arts education was regarded as the beginning of China’s modern design education. And pattern education became the representative topic of design education and the prevailing of such education in the Republic of China (1912-1949)was closely related to the intense competition of the national industrial and commercial commodities against foreign commodities. It can be drawn that the generation and development of China’s modern design education bears close correlation with the overall social and historical development as well as the actual demands of the social, economic and production development. The industrial arts education and pattern education was the foundations and historic fortunes for the modern design education in China nowadays. Researches on the pioneers of modern design represented by Chen Zhifo are of great necessity to summarize the historical experience of the development of China’s modern design education and provide historic references for present design education. This paper mainly applies document research approaches.