Very talented women have left their mark on the history of design in the 20th century. Yet, less well paid than their male counterparts, even less rewarded, too few of them achieved the notoriety they deserved during their lifetime. An injustice that experts and curators are trying to repair. The proof is in the retrospectives devoted to Charlotte Perriand in 2005-2006, then more recently to Eileen Gray in 2013, by one of the most influential cultural institutions in contemporary art, the Centre Pompidou.
At a close look at the pivotal periods in the history of design, there have always been innovative and inspired female designers: from the Bauhaus era to the 1980s, through the development of industrial design after World War II. This article looks back at the great female figures in the history of design, and the somewhat lesser known ones, often to a fault.
One of the first great female figures in the history of design is named Eileen Gray (1878-1976). Born in Enniscorthy in the south of Ireland, Eileen Gray was determined to pursue an artistic career and gave up marriage with the determination to enter art school. She entered the Slade School of Fine Art in London, then decided to go alone to live in Paris. In 1902 she exhibited a watercolor at the Grand Palais, then a painting in 1905 for the Salon de la Société des artistes français. She gradually moved into arts and crafts and in 1910 opened a workshop with the master lacquerer and sculptor of Japanese origin, naturalized French, Senzo Sugawara. She then began to exhibit decorative panels, combining lacquerware and rare woods, geometric abstractions and Japanese-inspired motifs.
The early 1920s marked a turning point in Eileen Gray's career. She became aware of the Dutch avant-garde De Stijl movement and the early steel tube designs of Marcel Breuer, which led her to abandon the Art Deco style. She then began to design furniture. She is, with Marcel Breuer, René Herbst, Charlotte Perriand or Gerrit Rietveld (design-market link), one of the precursors of tubular steel structure furniture. Then came the great project of her career: she built, from 1926 to 1929 with her partner the Romanian architect Jean Badovici, the villa E 1027, considered one of the masterpieces of modern architecture of the time. She collaborated on the structure of the house with Badovici, and also created all of the furniture.
She was one of the great figures of the Bauhaus School (1919-1933) and invented modern tapestry. Anni Albers (1899-1994) remains, however, rather unknown. Born into the Berlin bourgeoisie, she enrolled in the Hamburg School of Applied Arts, which she left unsatisfied, to try the Bauhaus (design-market link) in 1922. The woman who was still called Annie Fleischmann first tried her hand at wood and metal workshops, but reluctantly had to switch to textiles, as she suffered from a neurological condition called Charcot-Marie-Tooth disease. Inspired by the courses of colors of the painter Paul Klee (1879-1940), Albers concretizes the objectives of the Bauhaus by conceiving tapestries halfway between the piece of furniture and the painting, between the single piece and the multiple. She made weaving an avant-garde art form in which a powerfully colorful language of abstract patterns developed.
Of course, among the pioneers of design is Charlotte Perriand (1903-1999). Noticed in the 20s by Le Corbusier, she will collaborate 10 years (1927-1937) with the brilliant Swiss architect and his cousin Pierre Jeanneret to design the interior furniture of buildings designed by the 2 architects. Thus, we owe her the famous Chaise Longue model LC4 also called "Chaise Longue Le Corbusier". But Charlotte Perriand is much more than this shortcut. Close to the European, Japanese and Brazilian avant-gardes, she led an intense career for 75 years that led her to create rational and elegant furniture, to carry out numerous interior designs for some of the most daring projects of their time, until devoting nearly 20 years of her life (1967-1989) to the design of the resort "Les Arcs".
A name that resonates in post-war design history and still today: Knoll. Florence Knoll (1917-2019), presided from 1955 to 1965 over the destiny of the very famous American furniture and office equipment publisher Knoll, founded in 1938 by the man who would become her husband, Hans Knoll. Considered by some to be the "founding mother of technological design", Florence Knoll, along with her husband, imposed a "Knoll" style that blended interior architecture, design, production, textiles and graphic design in office furnishings. Gifted, she was a student of German designer and architect Mies van der Rohe and worked with Walter Gropius (1883-1969) and Marcel Breuer (1902-1981). He is credited with many pieces of furniture characterized by elegant and functional design.
Beyond these 5 great female figures of modern and contemporary design, for the sake of completeness, it is worth mentioning the German designer and interior architect Lilly Reich (1885-1947), who worked for many years with Mies van der Rohe. Eino Aalto née Marsio (1894-1949) was not only the wife of... and did not only create glasses (the Bölgeblick line of tableware for Iittala). With her husband, Alvar Aalto (1898-1916, married in 1924), one of the most famous Finnish architects and designers, she designed from the 1920s not only buildings, but also interior surfaces, furniture, lamps, furnishings and glassware. In 1935, the Aalto's, along with Maire Gullichsen and Nils-Gustav Hahl created Artek, a company that sold lighting and furniture designed by the Aalto's, which still exists (owned by Vitra since 2013).
Great country of design, Italy has also seen the emergence of 1er designers and visual artists; among them, Anna Ferrieri (1918-2006), artistic director of Kartell from 1976 to 1987, Lina Bo Bardi (1914-1992), Gae Aulenti (1927-2012) and Afra Scarpa (1937-2011). On the Scandinavian side, let's mention the Swedish Greta Grossman (1906-1999), who was behind the Grasshopper and Cobra lamps. Finally, the Englishwoman Lucienne Day (1917-2010), wife of designer Robin Day, was one of the most influential textile designers of the 1950s and 1960s.
To read about the recognition of women in design history:
The Voice of Women by Libby Sellers, Pyramyd Edition
Women Designers: A Century of Design by Marion Vignal, Editions Aubanel