A Guide to Window-Dressing (sometimes stylised as A Guide to Window Dressing or A guide to window-dressing) is an illustrated anonymous publication and handbook on the subject of window-dressing first printed in London in 1883. It is one of the earliest known books printed on the topic; specifically, it provides detailed instructions and guidelines on window-dressing, drapery and display windows for the use of professional retailers and privately owned homes.
Through its descriptions of virtual topics in business, marketing techniques associated with window product display, and the use of windows as fashionable parts of residential spaces, the book is considered a seminal work on minute advertising procedures and home decor techniques exercised in late-19th-century Europe.
Through a lack of general reprinting, the work is considered extremely rare. As of February 2010, WorldCat.org displays only one result for the book in worldwide public libraries – the Buffalo & Erie County Public Library in Buffalo, New York in the United States. A reprinted version was published in 2008 by the rare and out-of-print book publisher Kessinger Publishing under .
The first edition of A Guide to Window-Dressing is designated with the OCLC number 39203562.
Background
According to the original 1883 text, A Guide to Window-Dressing was first published earlier that year in a local periodical, The Warehousemen and Drapers' Trade Journal. The journal article was written and submitted anonymously, the book citing the periodical's headquarters as "London: office of 'The Warehousemen and Drapers' Trade Journal,' 148 and 149, Aldersgate Street, E.C." The book adapted was published by the now defunct W H & L Collingridge publishing house, at the City Press located on the same street.
The preface to the book states that it was created in response to numerous inquiries to the proprietors of The Warehousemen and Drapers' Trade Journal for a comprehensive work on window-dressing, and goes on to promote itself by stating the following:
"No such book in connection with the drapery trade has, so far as they [the journal proprieters] are aware, been hitherto published, with the exception of a small prize essay published several years ago in connection with the same journal."
According to Google Books and a library stamp seen on its facsimile of the guide, an extant copy of the first edition was found in the Bodleian Library at Oxford University, first placed in the library's collections on 9 March 1987. This copy appears as a full-view readable version on that website, digitised on 1 May 2007.
Illustrations provided in the first edition of the work are, like the author, also uncredited.
Contents
The first edition of the book had been divided into a preface, a table of contents and 15 chapters following them. These are chronicled as follows:
Preface
Contents
Chapters
I (1) — The Importance of a Good Window
II (2) — Qualifications to Attain Success
III (3) — Colour
IV (4) — The Silk Window
V (5) — The Print Window
VI (6) — The Fancy Dress Window
VII (7) — The Drapery Window
VIII (8) — The Mourning Window
IX (9) — The Costume Window
X (10) — The Mantle Window
XI (11) — Fancy Windows
XII (12) — Trimming and Haberdashery Windows
XIII (13) — Mixed Windows
XIV (14) — Fittings and Tickets
XV (15) — Door-Dressing
Each section of the book addresses different aspects of window-dressing and their respectable applications, and puts forward a common aesthetic value for distinct types of windows and window display.
References
External links
Full, online, photocopied text and illustrations of A Guide to Window-Dressing – formatted from the original edition (1883)— via Google Books