Happy Women’s Day!
To celebrate the talent, nerve and beauty behind each one of us girlies, I dug up an article I wrote in an old attempt to own and write a blog. Hence today we’re talking about women who not only worked in the design industry but shaped it by making literal history.
As usual, enjoy!
Yours truly
♡
I was looking for a new topic design-related for a new article, when I noticed that in my recollection very few names of women who were furniture designers of success. Despite knowing many, I noticed that in my mind emerged only men and that made me feel disappointed. As a female myself, unconsciously I wasn’t being truly sympathetic towards my “team”… not empowering at all.
Then I started thinking that I hadn’t to blame myself. It was only because the world of interior design was and still is male-dominated and only big names of the counterparts kept on popping out here and there. At the same time, amazing women who gave a lot of contributions to the industry were blatantly ignored.
Therefore, I started surfing on Google looking for some inspo when I chanced upon a very intriguing 2016 project: “Seats: Studies of Furniture Designed by Women”. It consists of a series of sketches by illustrator Leanne Shapton willing to highlight the diminished heritage of female designers. She paired up with Rachel Comey and they conceived the idea, after vainly looking for chairs by female designers to furnish Comey’s boutique in LA.
This failed hunt prompted them to ask why women in industrial design receive so much less recognition than their male counterparts, despite significant and often groundbreaking contributions to the field just like I did.
Thus, through that amazing idea, I came up with this article to underline the importance of these women and give them the credit they deserve for shaping the design industry.
Gae Aulenti
Hometown: Udine, Italy
Reasons to love her: As an inspiration to the next generation, Aulenti was one of the few women designing post-war Italy. Ranging among architecture, graphics, furniture, stage design, lighting and interiors her creative catalogue of work is a next-level example of women’s ability to multitask.
How the big break happened: As said Gae Aulenti was one of the most influential architects and designers of the post-war period. In the 1960s, her iconic creations – such as her “Locus Solus” series (1964), the “Pipistrello” (1965) and “King Sun” (1967, pictured below) lamps – played a big role in Italy’s global dominance of product design. However, she only gained international renown for her transformation of a train station into the Musée d’Orsay (1980–1986). This led to big commissions such as: redesigning the interior of the MNAM – Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris (1982–85), renovating Palazzo Grassi in Venice (1985/86), and rebuilding the Palau Nacional of Montjuïc in Barcelona between 1985 and 1992, which became the Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya. Although Aulenti realized over 700 projects, she is a relatively unknown outsider in the Italian context.
Fun fact: Aulenti’s furnishings for Palazzo Grassi derived from her set designs for Gioachino Rossini’s opera “Il viaggio a Reims”, which drew on her long-standing work as a set and costume designer.
Ray Eames
Hometown: Sacramento, California
Reasons to love her: If you’re a big believer in the classics being classics for a reason, you can’t not appreciate her work. Especially if you’re not the type to sacrifice function for style.
How the big break happened: She graduated from high school in 1931 and, two years later, from New York’s May Friend Bennett School, where she pursued her interest in fashion design. Thereafter, for six years, Ray studied with Hans Hofmann, an abstract expressionist. In 1937, Ray’s paintings were exhibited in the first group show of the American Abstract Artists, of which she was a founding member. After moving from Sacramento to Detroit to attend the Cranbrook Academy, Ray joined forces with Cranbrook teacher and mentor Charles Eames. Upon realizing their creative compatibility, they married and moved to L.A., where they opened an experimental design studio. There over the next three decades, they produced film, architecture, and a huge amount of life-changing chairs.
Fun fact: She and Charles Eames started by experimenting with plywood, resulting in their first mass-manufactured product; a moulded plywood leg splint that received 150k orders from the US Navy by the end of the second world war. Soon after, the husband-and-wife team went on to use their wood-moulding technique to create furniture incorporating other materials including fibreglass, aluminium and leather.
Charlotte Perriand
Hometown: Paris, France
Reasons to love her: She’s the mother of the hybrid between French Modernism’s clean lines and over sculptural, organic furniture.
How the big break happened: While working for Le Corbusier, Jean Prouvé, and Cassina, Charlotte went on to create a multitude of one-off design projects on her own, including the design of WWII military barracks, the interiors for Air France, and several high profile ski resorts in the Alps.
In the end, she went on to become one of the most influential furniture designers of the early modern movement, and an outstanding strike considering the extremely male-dominated era of architecture and design. Her designs, in particular the series of tubular steel chairs, are still sought after and admired today, and many of her creations are still being produced as part of the Cassina “I Maestri” series.
Fun fact: After a fresh graduation in design, Charlotte applied for a job at Le Corbusier’s studio where she was turned away by him saying: “We don’t embroider cushions here,”. Charlotte, then, went out and designed a rooftop bar for the 1927 Salon d’Automne. Within months of its completion, Le Corbusier had realized his error and offered her a job.
Zaha Hadid
Hometown: Baghdad, Iraq
Reasons to love her: Hadid captivated minds with her fluid, spatial designs that stand tall across the globe. She redefined 21st-century architecture.
How the big break happened: In 1983 Hadid gained international recognition with her competition-winning entry for “The Peak”, a leisure and recreational centre in Hong Kong. This “horizontal skyscraper” that moved at a dynamic diagonal down the hillside site, established her aesthetic: inspired by Kazimir Malevich and the Suprematists, her aggressive geometric designs are characterized by a sense of fragmentation, instability, and movement. this fragmented style led her to be grouped with architects classified as “deconstructivists”.
Her work included the Vitra Fire Station and the critically acclaimed Aquatics Centre for the London 2012 Olympic Games, with its instantly recognisable swooping roof.
Fun fact: She became the initial woman (and first Iraqi) to win the esteemed Pritzker Prize and the first to receive the RIBA Royal Gold Medal for outstanding contributions to architecture.
Dorothy Draper
Hometown: Tuxedo Park, New York
Reasons to love her: She was one of the earliest female interior decorators and one of the first to professionalise interior design as a fully-fledged career. In addition, she invented modern baroque! Her anti-minimalist style with a modern twist on classical aesthetics.
How the big break happened: She was born to a wealthy and privileged family, in one of the most exclusive communities. She was the first to establish, in 1923, the first interior design company in the United States, Dorothy Draper & Company, something unheard of and very daring. Known for the audacious style and groundbreaking colour combinations that deviated from the typically dark palettes of her time (think coral red, aubergine, chartreuse, turquoise blue), she was later commissioned to design high-profile public spaces, such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art and The Greenbrier Hotel in White Sulphur Springs.
Fun fact: Dorothy regularly gave decorating advice in her column for Good Housekeeping Magazine, designed fabric lines for Schumacher, furniture for Ficks Reed, Heritage and, other than her hotel and restaurant decors, she also designed theatres, department stores, commercial establishments, private corporate offices, the interiors of jet planes, automobiles (she did a “line” for Packard and Chrysler that included a pink polka dot truck!) – even packaging for the cosmetics firm of Dorothy Gray – on top of her residential designs for the houses and apartments of prominent and very wealthy society figures. She also designed her very own exclusive fabrics for her clients.
Elsie de Wolfe
Hometown: New York City
Reasons to love her: “The mother of interior decoration” is the bestselling author of “The House in Good Taste”, which offers timeless design advice still today.
How the big break happened: De Wolfe decided in 1905 to become a professional decorator. The same year a group of powerful New York women organized the city’s first club exclusively for women, the Colony Club. Its headquarters at Madison and 31st Street were designed by Stanford White, who got de Wolfe the commission to do the decoration. When the Colony opened, the interiors built her reputation overnight. Instead of imitating the heavy Victorian atmosphere of men’s clubs, de Wolfe introduced a casual, feminine style with an abundance of glazed chintz, tiled floors, light draperies, pale walls, animalier, antiques, and the first of her many trellised rooms. The astonished reaction of the members to her decoration put de Wolfe’s name on many lips and led to many commissions across the country.
Fun fact: She played a heroic role as a volunteer nurse in France during World War I and, even more surprisingly, married British diplomat Sir Charles Mendl in 1926 (she was 61).
Florence Knoll
Hometown: Saginaw, Michigan
Reasons to love her: In addition to being a great architect and a notable minimalist designer, she’s the creator of the Florence Knoll sofa: one of those mid-century markers, along with martini lunches and typing pools, that have come to exemplify the spirit of the post-war era.
How the big break happened: She was already a highly skilled designer and architect in her own right before she joined her husband’s powerhouse furniture company, Knoll, as an associate in 1943. Her work elevated the standards of furniture design and manufacture to a whole new level. By 1955 – when she became president of Knoll – her designs comprised nearly a third of Knoll’s catalogue offerings, many of which are still in production. Florence founded several landmark units within Knoll, including the Planning Unit (the brand’s in-house interior design studio) and the Knoll Textiles division. Her most famous pieces include the “Lounge Collection” from 1954, which included the Florence Knoll sofa and lounge chair.
Fun fact: As an architect, Florence believed her duty was to create spaces to satisfy people’s needs. The “Lounge Collection” should have been just a side project of her activity as an architect. Anyway, her sofa became a great classic, inspiring generations of designers. It was never meant to be a revolutionary piece nor catch the attention, but only to become a functional element of an overall project. “Meat and potatoes” creations, as they were ironically defined by Florence herself. Ration distribution of spaces, materials and colours chosen according to Gestalt principles: a consumption design, a filler, just like meat and potatoes consumed in everyday meals.
Nanna Ditzel
Hometown: Copenhagen, Denmark
Reasons to love her: With her postmodernist attitude and rebellion against tradition, Nanna became a trailblazer in the renewal of Danish design in the 90s. For Ditzel, the aesthetics of the chair were just as important as its function: “It is very important to take into account the way a chair’s appearance combines with the person who sits in it. Some chairs look like crutches and I don’t like them at all.”
How the big break happened: She trained as a cabinetmaker before starting to study at the School of Arts and Crafts and the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen. She was always inspired by the challenges of new materials and techniques, and in the 50s she experimented with split-level floor seating. After getting married and establishing their Copenhagen design studio in 1949, Nanna and her husband Jørgen Ditzel introduced the Hanging Chair in 1959 (pictured below). Comprised of wicker and shaped like an egg, the pod-like chair was a commercial and editorial success, allowing Nanna to continue pursuing her craft solo following her husband’s death in 1961. She then moved to London where she established the international furniture house, Interspace, in Hampstead. In 1989 she started a partnership with Fredericia, beginning with “Bench For Two”. The collaboration between Fredericia and Ditzel developed into a cooperation and the successful launch of the “Trinidad” chair marked a turning point in Fredericia’s history, establishing Nanna Ditzel as its second house designer.
Fun fact: Throughout the 1950s and 1960s Nanna designed jewellery for the Danish bigwig of silver crafting Georg Jensen. It consisted of a chunky, minimalist yet very sculptural collection of jewelry.
Afra Bianchin Scarpa
Hometown: Montebelluna, Italy
Reasons to love her: She signed every design with her husband Tobia Scarpa, representing a constant reference for the design world. Although she’s not as credited as her husband, she had the same importance in the designing processes of the duo. Furnishing from Afra and Tobia were noted immediately for their elegance and fine lines since the 60s, establishing them as leaders in industrial design, through collaboration with a great number of VIP design companies.
How the big break happened: Afra Bianchin Scarpa was an architect and designer. She graduated in 1969 from the University of Venice. She met her future husband Tobia and since then her activity has been tied to his since 1957, when they designed glass objects in Murano for Venini. In 1960 they started working for Gavina; the “Bastiano” sofa and the “Vanessa” metal bed – now in the Knoll international collection – were their most successful pieces. With Cassina, where they designed furniture exclusively for the house, success came with the “Soriana” armchair (pictured below), which won the Compasso d’Oro award in 1970, and the “925” chair, which in permanent display in the Museum of Modern Art in New York. In the 60s they also joined Flos and worked as designers with Castiglioni.
Fun fact: They started collaborating with the big fashion brand Benetton in 1964 with the design of the firm’s first factory. Since then, they have been responsible for all the industrial architecture of the group, like every shop, their factories and offices and Villa Minelli, their headquarters.
Gabriella Crespi
Hometown: Saronno, Italy
Reasons to love her: Crespi made handcrafted objects with natural materials and furniture with a futuristic aesthetic. She might not have been revolutionary, but her vision stands out as unique, blurring the lines between the bougie taste for expensive classic decor and the rules of modern design.
How the big break happened: Gabriella Crespi studied architecture at the Politecnico in Milan, where her work was permeated by her perspective on Le Corbusier’s and Frank Lloyd Wright’s design experience. Since the 50s, she dedicated herself to the creation and worldwide circulation of furniture and other objects that balance design and sculptural abstraction. A while after designing objects for her society friends, Dior asked to carry her goods in their Paris flagship. later, Gabriella opened her showroom in Milan. In the 70s her fame truly took flight with her Plurimi line, a series of polished brass tables. Indeed her signature style included elegant luxurious sculptures and furniture made of brass, as well as rattan boho elements.
Fun fact: In 1987, at age 65, Gabriella closed up shop to embark on a 20-year meditative journey in the Indian Himalayas. When a broken hip occurred, she returned to Milan permanently in 2007, where she took up design again and even exhibited at the 2015 Salone del Mobile.
Eileen Gray
Hometown: Enniscorthy, Ireland
Reasons to love her: Arguably one of the most underrated designers of the 20th century, Eileen Gray only truly received recognition at the end of her life. She was one of the pioneers to utilise steel tubular structures, and most of her works are still being produced by ClassiCon and Aram.
How the big break happened: After opening her gallery in 1922 in Paris, she moved into furniture, working closely with many of the outstanding figures of the modern movement, including Le Corbusier and J.J.P Oud. Her most famous piece is the E-1027 glass and tubular steel table, originally conceived as a height-adjustable invalid’s table, the lightweight piece became an instant hit at one point selling more than a thousand units per month. Gray later moved into architecture, working with Badovici to create the E-1027 villa in 1929, for which she designed both the architectural structure and all its furniture, drawing inspiration from Bauhaus theories.
Fun fact: History almost forgot Eileen Gray, who was more or less living in isolation by the time she was rediscovered. It was in 1972 – when Gray was 94 years old – that she was first “introduced” to audiences, by the art historian Joseph Rykwert. Writing in Architectural Review, he praised Gray’s “inventiveness” and “visionary intuition.”
Kazuyo Sejima
Hometown: Hitachi, Ibaraki, Japan
Reasons to love her: As one-half of the multi-award-winning partnership SANAA and a prolific designer in her own right, she has created some of the most memorable museums and public buildings in Japan, Europe and North America. To name a few: Dior Omotesando in Tokyo, the New Museum of Contemporary Art in NYC and the Serpentine Gallery Pavillion in London.
How the big break happened: When Sejima was a child, she saw a picture of a house designed by Kazuo Shinohara, and its beauty impressed her so much that wanted to study architecture at university to pursue the same career. She finally realized her dream in the late 1970s at Japan Women’s University and went on to work for internationally renowned architect Toyo Ito. In 1987 she decided to build a reputation alone and founded Kazuyo Sejima and Associates. Her success, though, came during the early 1990s, but it was not until Sejima chose to partner with former employee Ryue Nishizawa in 1995 that her fame took off.
Fun fact: Her clean, modernist aesthetic, has won the Pritzker Prize (the equivalent of the Nobel Prize of architecture). She’s also the director of the architecture sector for the Venice Biennale – the first ever woman in this position.
Lina Bo Bardi
Hometown: Rome, Italy
Reasons to love her: As if Lina’s extra famous Glass House in São Paulo wasn’t enough, you should love her because she was one of the most important and expressive architects of 20th-century Brazilian architecture.
How the big break happened: She studied architecture at the University of Rome, moving to Milan after graduation. In Milan, Bo Bardi collaborated with Gio Ponti, and later became editor of the magazine Quaderni di Domus. As a member of the Italian Communist Party, she met the critic and art historian Pietro Maria Bardi, with whom she would move permanently to Brazil. In 1950 she started the magazine Habitat, and one year later she designed her home, the Glass House, in Morumbi, Sao Paulo; the house is considered one of the paradigmatic works of rationalist art in Brazil. Later, she began to construct the new home of the Museum of Art Sao Paulo (MASP), where she suspended the building above a 70-meter-long square. Moving to Salvador to direct the Museu de Arte da Moderna da Bahia, Bo Bardi continued to design emblematic projects — including the Sesc Pompéia in 1977, and the Teatro Oficina in 1984. However, her work was not exclusive to architecture; she was also engaged in scenery production, art, furniture and graphic design.
Fun fact: Generosity was Bo Bardi’s call to order. She was not shy of opinionating in her work or writing for a new social reality where modernism fuses generously with landscape and communities. Beyond pat definitions of sustainability, Bo Bardi worked her buildings into neighbourhoods by earning people’s respect as a labourer.
Anna Castelli Ferrieri
Hometown: Milan, Italy
Reasons to love her: Anna Castelli Ferrieri was the first woman to graduate from the prestigious Politecnico di Milano. Castelli Ferrieri was a member of a generation of Italian designers who transformed the world of design with new technologies and materials.
How the big break happened: In 1949, Castelli Ferrieri and her husband founded Kartell, which became a leading furniture company known for its high-quality plastic designs. With the success of Kartell, the couple led the way in Italian modern design throughout the 60s, 70s and 80s. Additionally, she was also co-founder of the Italian Society for Industrial Design. Until the late 1960s, Anna Castelli-Ferrieri was principally active as an architect, designing amongst other buildings the Kartell headquarters. In 1969 Castelli-Ferrieri created her most famous furniture collection Componibili, a modular storage system.
Fun fact: After serving for several years as art director with Kartell she took up a teaching position at the self-same Politecnico di Milano where her career had begun.
Greta Magnusson-Grossman
Hometown: Helsingborg, Sweden
Reasons to love her: Greta Magnusson Grossman represents a literal link between European design and Californian modernism.
How the big break happened: In the late 1920s Grossman finished a one-year woodworking apprenticeship in her hometown and was awarded a scholarship to enroll at the renowned Stockholm arts institution. In 1933 Grossman received second place for furniture design from the Stockholm Craft Association, becoming the first woman to receive an award in that category. The same year Grossman and Konstfack classmate Erik Ullrich opened Studio, a store and workshop, in Stockholm. From Studio, Grossman took on numerous commissions designing unique furniture and interiors. Again, in the same year, she married jazz bandleader Billy Grossman and immigrated to the United States in 1940, settling in Los Angeles. The approach to Swedish modernism that she brought with her proved to be incredibly popular in the United States, allowing her to sell the designs to celebrity clients such as Greta Garbo, Joan Fontaine and Gracie Allen.
Fun fact: Through the 40s and 50s, Grossman exhibited her designs at museums worldwide, including MoMA in New York and The National Museum in Stockholm. Yet inexplicably, following her retirement in the late 60s her name all but disappeared from the design landscape.
Cini Boeri
Hometown: Milan, Italy
Reasons to love her: Ahe believed that beauty was the result of function and only took pleasure from adding useful, long-lasting architecture and design to the world. The aim of these objects, buildings and spaces, was to help people and make them happy.
How the big break happened: Boeri grew up in Milan and graduated from the Politecnico di Milano in 1951 with a degree in architecture. She interned for a short time for architect Gio Ponti and went on to collaborate with designer Marco Zanuso for many years, before founding Cini Boeri Architetti in 1963. In the 60s, she completed multiple vacation homes in Sardinia, including the brutalist, clifftop “Casa Bunker” and the snail-shaped “Villa Rotonda”, which were designed to create a dialogue with the surrounding landscape. During her career, Cini Boeri frequently collaborated with Arflex, the furniture brand for which she created some of her most acclaimed pieces including the monobloc foam “Bobo” chair and the famous “Serpentone” sofa. She continued to produce notable furniture designs throughout her life, including the “Ghost chair”, created for Fiam in 1987 from a single pane of glass.
Fun fact: Her interest in industrial design and economy probably came from her experience growing up during World War II. As a daughter to staunchly anti-fascist parents, at just 18 years old she was couriering important documents across the country for the opposition and even sewed herself a skirt out of parachute material.
Kelly Wearstler
Hometown: Myrtle Beach, South Carolina
Reasons to love her: She puts her twist on Hollywood serving decors with splatter-painted walls, sheets of polished agate applied floor to ceiling, and bespoke furniture and fabrics.
How the big break happened: After arriving in L.A. from New York, where she studied graphic design and architecture, Wearstler planned to get a job working for an interior designer. When a friend of a friend needed a few rooms in a Venice house, she changed routes. Soon after launching her firm, in 1995, she met Korzen, who brought her on to tackle his hotel projects, as well as his Hollywood Hills house. First, the Avalon then the Viceroy Santa Monica, completed in 2002, which gave her a lot of global recognition. Later on, manufacturers began approaching Wearstler for product collaborations. In 2008 she unveiled decorative objects at Bergdorf Goodman, an inaugural fabric line with Lee Jofa, and a collection of floor coverings with The Rug Company.
Fun fact: The queen of maximalism has not only become globally recognised for her distinctive interiors but also launched her lifestyle brand that includes everything from lighting and decor to wallpaper and jewellery.
Sources:
https://www.luxdeco.com/blogs/styleguide/iconic-female-designers-who-changed-the-game
https://www.google.it/amp/s/www.chairish.com/blog/female-furniture-designers-you-need-to-know/amp/
https://www.google.it/amp/s/www.livingetc.com/amp/whats-news/10-best-female-designers-time-189364
If you liked the article and would like to read more similar things, I wrote another one celebrating Miuccia Prada: