100 Objects from Century of the Child

Talwin Morris. School textbooks. 1900s

These books were published by Blackie & Son, a Scottish company well known for its close relationship with modern designers as well as specialism in educational and religious publications that were distributed throughout the British Empire. The cover designs–spare, linear, and derived from stylized plant forms-reflect the Glasgow Style, a local variant of the international New Art, which was applied to all types of modern design, including children’s clothing, furniture, schoolbooks, and schools. Scotland had a long-established reputation as one of the best-educated societies in the world, due in part to a Calvinist emphasis on self improvement and a broad-based education system spanning the arts and sciences that was developed during the eighteenth-century Scottish Enlightenment.

Learn more at MoMA.org/centuryofthechild