The authors of various recent expert publications, concerned with either the theory or the history of design, scarcely found in the book market in Slovakia, the Czech Republic and the whole Euro-Atlantic part of the world, criticise in their introductory texts the shortage of accessible scientific literature concerned with the problem of industrial design from the theoretical and methodological point of view. Although design as such must be understood in the whole of its wide range of activities, which now touch nearly all aspects of our lives, it is not the role of this dissertation to research all these aspects. However, since no expert literature, which scientifically analyses and evaluates the correlations, overlaps and inter-penetrations between design production (design of three dimensional objects -- products) and free creative sculpture (sculptural artefacts, objects and installations), is known to me, it is the aim of the Ph.D. thesis to research and analyse their mutually positive and negative influences. By analysing various issues such as form and function, the process of design and of mass production -- unique, doubled and multiplied objects, the concept of the work and the language of the product, and by searching for the justification of craft and material principles alongside the contemporary dematerialized tendencies in the arts of both design and sculpture, in the period from the first use of the ready-made principle to the present, it is the aim of this article to clarify the causes leading to the consistent loss of the need to strictly define the boundaries of these fields. The designer's means of expression and morphological elements through the ready-made principle have widened the possibilities for statements by sculptural media. Therefore it is necessary to trace the development of the sculptural view in the context of design from the use of this principle by Duchamp until the present. These connections between design and sculpture are usually only marginally mentioned in various academic texts about the theory of art or design, and in publications mapping their historical development. However, the medium of the sculpture is often conceived as one of many media integrated into the conglomerate of the visual arts. If somebody wants to name the concrete connection between at least two fields of human activity, he must also be able to describe the differences. What is actually the difference between sculpture and the design of three dimensional products? The modern British sculptor Henry Moore also referred to this questionable element of functionalism between sculpture and architecture. Therefore, if we evaluate the relationship between design and sculpture through the prism of the modernists, we must identify substantial differences. However, if we look at the given problem through the prism of present-day post-modern design practice, where the main criterion is the conceptual message, we must state that there are clear connections. In fact, free visual art has used the content of the work through the whole of history. The fact that the attention of designers is ever more concentrated on the content, rather than on the actual function of the product, that for the user it is a bearer of a message by means of use of the language of signs and symbols, raises design into a medium that is able to communicate. A further problem in the search for connections between sculpture and the design of three dimensional products could be the difference between the process of industrial production and artistic creation. Industry introduced the automated production line for mass production. Sculptural creation is generally regarded as an autonomous activity of the sculptor -- artist and "producer" of the sculptural work in one person. However, on the contemporary artistic scene, many sculptors work in a similar way to their colleagues in the field of design. They no longer consider it necessary to make the works they "design" with their own hands. Pop artists such as Andy Warhol or Arman accepted the so-called series as a principle of their art, and created whole cycles of sculptural objects by replicating motifs. The trends in contemporary design are such that the attention of designers is beginning to concentrate not only on mass production, but also on limited series or even unique objects, which have added value. The problem of dematerialization of the work of art in contemporary visual art is already penetrating into the sphere of design. The conceptual artists of the mid-sixties already contributed to this loss of interest in the material aspect of the work. The traditional understanding of the work as a comprehensive whole composed of an idea, which is translated into material form by means of craft work, was divided into the idea and matter. It is a fact that these two branches of art -- sculpture and design -- lent each other morphological signs of expression, content elements of the artwork or material-technological procedures, whenever it was essential for their existence. Thus it explicitly follows from the facts mentioned above that in essence, these correlations between sculptural art and designer practice have a natural origin derived from their three-dimensional material existence.