Council members

DCA/8 contains a substantial body of biographical information about the Council members it documents. The files contribute to an understanding of the Council"s membership and the range of interests it represented over time. A sequence of files numbered 792 have survived from the 1970s: one per Council member and including individuals as different as Asa Briggs, Huw Wheldon, Mrs. Roy Jenkins and Mary Quant. However many of these contain no more than a brief biography on a single page. In addition, there are compilations of brief biographical details spanning Council membership from the 1950s to the 1980s, with a small amount of correspondence. These are supplemented by files on the Council"s Scottish Committee, its assessors (government representatives), and the annual Chairman"s Dinner.

From its inception there were two constituent parts of the functioning Council, a group of selected individuals serving terms as members of Council and contributing to the shaping of Council policy, and full time staff members, who carried those policies into effect. Great care was taken to ensure a balance of interests across the Council, with members being chosen from among manufacturers, educators, retailers and commentators.

The surviving files have been retained in their original numeric order as allocated by the Council"s Registry. This means that records in a series do not necessarily have consecutive file numbers, and may not be located together.

Limited information about staff members may be found in Series 3.

Russell, Gordon, Designer's Trade: Autobiography of Gordon Russell, London: Allen & Unwin, 1968.

Whitworth, Lesley, "The Housewives' Committee of the Council of Industrial Design: A Short-lived Experiment in Domestic Reconnoitring' in Elizabeth Darling and Lesley Whitworth (eds), 'Women and the Making of Built Space in England, 1860-1950', Aldershot and Burlington: Ashgate, 2007, 180-196.