Women in Design: Gertraud von Schnellenbühel (b. ? – d. ?)

Scores and scores of books have been written and exhibits have been presented featuring many well-known designers of the Art Nouveau style. But one designer, in particular, has been forgotten. Her output was not great, but one of her creations...

A masterpiece: 19” high silver-plated brass 24-light candelabrum created in 1913. This is the only work by Gertraud von Schnellenbühel known to survive. A profusion of swirled spirals organized in a rational manner -- it is rhythmic, mesmerizing and creates a sort of restrained freedom. The metal branches seem buoyant which defies the weight of the material.

Her creation was dubbed: The Flowering Tree.

So what happened to Gertraud von Schnellenbühel? How can one designer create something so brilliant, so striking yet there is barely any information about her?

This work was shown in 1914 at the Cologne Werkbund exhibition and received very positive reviews. Most Jugendstil designers harmoniously married elements of both Arts + Crafts with Art Nouveau styles. They merged whiplash lines and organic forms with medieval motifs or geometric silhouettes. Although Gertraud’s work follows the style, it is a creation indomitably its own.

The painter Wilhelm von Debschitz and the sculptor Hermann Obrist opened a private school in Munich’s Bohemian area on January 3, 1902 and called it The Debschitz School. It offered to artists and amateurs foundation courses combined with hands-on workshops. The school was a fertile seed for the emerging industrial design boom to come forth in Germany. It served as an important model for the Bauhaus – well known for integrating art and design education. The school was sold in 1914.

By 1913, The Desbchitz School had grown into the largest institution of its kind. By this time, 240 students were enrolled -- the majority women – and among them Gretraud. Students who attended this school thirsted for something new. They wanted to learn under different teaching methods and to actually make the creations they drafted on paper come to life.

What of Gertraud? One hit wonder? Married and became a haus frau?

It is interesting to note that the candelabrum ended up in the possession of Hermann Obrist, the schools co-founder and Gertraud’s teacher…

(images from Hiesinger and Marcus, Landmarks of Twentieth-Century Design; Beate Ziegert, "The Debschitz School, Munich: 1902-1914", Design Issues :The MIT Press, 1986 .)

Inga Sempé (b.1968)

A French furniture designer who created a small, compact sofa to work in proportion with smaller apartments. This design caught my eye when I was craning my neck to read the Financial Times House & Home Section over the shoulder of someone sitting on a plane. The sofa is light and airy. Made from a beechwood frame, it is upholstered in a sort of quilted duvet with cross-hatching of interrupted seams. She named her work: Ruché.


Although it looks as if a comforter cover was simply thrown over a stiff frame, the construction of the sofa is much more complex. It similar to a mattress and has a combination of layers of memory foam for comfort and sprung steel grill for stability. Sempé wanted her sofa to appear uncomplicated -- raised from the ground by a simple structure supporting a comfortable seat. The legs terminate in beveled feet which lends to more of a refined shape.
The height of the armrests is the same as the back. And if the thought of nestling yourself in a duvet cover while watching your favorite BravoTV show wasn’t enough, the armrests are mounted on elastic webbing which allows you to lean back comfortably while you sip on some wine and munch on white cheddar cheese flavored popcorn.



Ruché also is available in a one-arm settee version with an integral table surface at the end so you can conveniently place your bottle of wine without having to wait to get up during the commercials to pour yourself another glass.


This is a great idea for a narrow room or a small space -- a sofa and table all in one. Made for Ligne Roset, Ruché marries the unusual and the traditional; comfortable and practical. You can choose from a few velvety colors and stained or natural wood finish.



Her former employer? The design doyenne Andrée Putman.



Sempé pictured above (love her tights). See Sempé's site with many more great designs: HERE.

(images from DesignBoom and Sempé's site)

Sophia Hayden Bennett

The Board of Lady Managers ended up awarding Sophia a gold medal "for delicacy of style, artistic taste, and geniality and elegance of the interior hall." There was a dedication ceremony for the buildings, but Sophia wasn’t there. Rumors began to spread that she suffered a mental breakdown, which plainly indicated why women should stay at home and not wander into the realm of men.

Critics dealt her another blow when they insisted the building was too feminine. One said regardless of her technical knowledge, the structure with its “graceful timidity or gentleness” was clearly designed by a woman.

The Women's Building was torn down after the Exposition ended. Sophia, frustrated with the way she had been treated, retired from architecture. She later married William Blackstone Bennett, an artist. Sophia never designed another building after the 1893 fair, and lived a quiet life in Massachusetts until her death in 1953.

(first image: Exterior of The Women's Building, period photograph, Boston College Digital Archive; second image: MIT)

Women in Design: Sophia Hayden (1868 - 1953)

Born in Santiago, Chile. Her father was an American from New England and her mother was South American. When Sophia was six, she was sent to Boston, Massachusetts to live with her paternal grandparents. She became interested in architecture in high school. In 1886 she was the first woman to be accepted to the architecture program at MIT; she graduated with honors in 1890.

Front elevation of Hayden’s thesis project: A Fine Arts Museum, 1890. (from MIT)

Floor Plan and Section, 1890. (from MIT)

After graduating, Sophia could not find employment as an architect; she accepted a position teaching drawing at a Boston high school. The following year, she entered a design competition for the World’s Colombian Exposition of 1893 in Chicago. Her design was for the Woman's Building -- a structure given to various social causes such as church groups, temperance societies, a model hospital ward and kindergarten, a sanitary kitchen and a library. It was also to house exhibitions of embroidery, knitting, lace, fans and crockery. Sophia won the competition with her design of a three-story, white building in the Italian Renaissance-Revival style with arches and columned terraces. For this she was paid a modest sum of $1,000 for her design, while men who one competitions for the fair were paid 10 times as much.

Exterior of The Women's Building, period photograph (1894?) Boston College Digital Archive

Sophia traveled to Chicago to produce the final drawings, leaving the execution to Daniel Burnham. Burnham was very pleased with her work describing her as having great adaptability and being a hard worker. She returned six months later to direct the interior and exterior designs of the buildings. At that same time, she discovered another woman was involved in the project. Her name was Bertha Palmer, and she had other ideas.

Bertha Honoré Palmer (1849-1918) Chicago History Museum

A statuesque socialite with well-coiffured wavy hair, Bertha Palmer was a power to be reckoned with. She was not easy to approach. She demanded calling cards be passed scrutinized and screened by several of her servants before any visitor could speak with her. Being of Huguenot descent, no one ever contradicted her. But that was to change once she met the twenty-one year old Sophia.

Officers of Board of Lady Managers, portraits of 10 women. Key: 1. President Mrs. Potter Palmer 2. Mrs. Ralph Trautman 3. Mrs. Edwin C. Burleigh 4. Mrs. Charles Price 5. Mrs. Katherline L. Minor 6. Mrs. Beriah Wilkins 7. Mrs. Flora Beall Ginty 8.Mrs. Russell B. Harrison 9. Mrs. V.C. Merideth. 10.Susan Gale Cooke. 1896. (image via the Field Museum's flicker account.)

Mrs. Palmer was elected President of The Board of Lady Managers for the 1893 Fair. Born in Louisville, Kentucky, Mrs. Palmer (née Honoré) met her husband, a wealthy dry goods owner, while she was shopping in Chicago with her mother. Potter Palmer was 23 years her senior. He moved into real estate and became immensely wealthy. Mrs. Palmer enjoyed their North Side mansion with a roof-top ballroom and picture gallery filled with Impressionist paintings she brought back from Paris. She also loved diamond jewelry.

Paul V Galvin Library: The book of the Fair

For Sophia’s building, Mrs. Palmer had invited prominent women to donate architectural elements to adorn the building. Mrs. Palmer believed the building would be better with these donations. Sophia disagreed. A mishmash of elements would dilute her vision, her concept and overall design aesthetic. As the doors, window grilles, columns, wood paneling, balustrades, slabs of onyx and black marble, granite steps, sculpted figures, and tapestries came pouring in, Sophia turned each one down. This hurt the feelings of the high-society donors, which didn’t sit very well with Mrs. Palmer. Sophia explained to Mrs. Palmer her schematic program for the structure -- the exterior and interior -- and why these random donated elements would not work. But Mrs. Palmer wouldn’t hear of it. She fired Sophia from the project and reassigned the final decoration to Candace Wheeler.

Paul V Galvin Library: The book of the Fair

Sophia walked into Burnham’s office, described what happened and from exhaustion began to cry. Burnham quickly called a doctor. Sophia was placed in an ambulance and driven away with the rubber wheels quietly crunching along the gravel road towards the sanitarium. Sophia was said to have a “… violent attack of high nervous excitement of the brain.”

(top image from Penn Libraries.)

Women in Design: Nancy Vincent McClelland (1877-1959)

Series: Women in Design

In 1988 ASID reported that 72% of women were interior designers. By 1998, the number increased to 81%. Yet at that same time, 70% of the 120 designers admitted to Interior Design's Hall of Fame were men. The number of women attending design school has gradually increased over the decade (I’m trying to find statistics for 2008/2009), however, estimating the number of women currently practicing in the field is difficult to find. Estimating the number of who are industrial designers is even more difficult.

One explanation for this is that many women are in and out of the workforce turning their attention to their families. Another reason, I was told, was that women lacked self-promotional, business and management skills to raise their profiles.

Oh really?

Or has the media let them down.

Why is this?

Women have been crucial to the development of interior design as a discipline and profession. The active participation of women in the history of interior design has yet to be seriously treated by scholars and historians (with the exception of Penny Sparke, Pat Kirkham, Beatriz Colomina and others who have made extraordinary contributions.)

After all, what is a well-decorated room compared to an acknowledged work of art? Or the architectural design of a building? The interior design of a room is fleeting, composed of everyday objects -- paint, fabric, ornaments, furniture and knickknacks. They can change as quickly in color and detail as the leaves on a tree. While the initial visual impact may be memorable, its longevity is limited and subject to the whims of popular taste. The study of the history of interior design is only recently being taken seriously.

A second reason women have been largely ignored is that, unfortunately, the attitude towards women having an innate knack for "decorating" has not seemed to change much over the centuries. Women were recognized as having a natural instinct for the placement of color and objects; the activity was also deemed suitable for them. And so it began, slowly at first, but steadily thereafter -- women as the arbiters of taste in their fine new houses that sprang up everywhere in America.

I propose to post a series of posts with your help -- dear readers -- about women interior and furniture designers, some names we have heard of, but others who have been forgotten by time. I would like to uncover these women, dust off their names and give them the attention they deserve. Some of this information is difficult to find, but I think as a collaborative effort we can... and, therefore, begin to rewrite history.

Designer: Gertrude Jekyll (1843-1932)

Glass has been made in a variety of shapes and styles for more than 5,000 years -- the styles reflecting the trends of the time. When we look at the glass vase above, our thoughts probably drift to a similar vase we have seen today.

But place this vase in the context of its time. It was created during Victorian England when the reigning taste was all about clutter, bric-a-brac and passementeries.

Gertrude Jekyll designed this vase. I was unaware of it until a friend, Paul Shutler, from across the pond educated me. He has one. An unusual one.

A garden designer and writer, Jekyll designed her gardens very carefully, demonstrating a sensitive and sympathetic relationship between a house and its surroundings. She believed each plant should be studied for habit, foliage and color to achieve a practical, harmonious effect that was most appropriate for its area.

She demonstrated the same theory in this vase.

Gertrude Jekyll was asked by the London retailer James Green to design a series of flower vases. The result: “Munstead Range” after her own cottage Munstead Wood which was designed by the young architect Sir Edwin Lutyens.

The vases are the only objects designed by Jekyll. Neither an architect nor an industrial designer, she designed an object intended for the general public – so people could enjoy a bit of nature when they didn’t have the acreage. Jeckyll’s vision and theories were well ahead of her time.

The vase’s form is functional and the lines are essential. She wanted to create something appropriate for cut flowers and foliage. She didn’t want something unnecessary or overwhelming or overly designed. It was different from the usual Victorian vases painted with unsettling colors, or cut with heavy patterning. It wasn’t a clunky form, but perfectly fit for its purpose.


During her career, she carried out over 400 commissions for clients in the UK, Europe and even America. She ran a prosperous nursery garden business at her home well into her eighties. And she was a prolific writer publishing 13 books -- starting after her 55th birthday!

A picture of Gertrude Jekyll sketched by Lutyens c.1896 (from the Museum of Garden History)

Munstead Woods images from garvenvisit.com and the Astoft collection of buildings in England; Vase image and tear sheet courtesy of Paul A. Shutler)

Lilly Reich: "Behind every great man, there is a great woman."

Lilly Reich played an enormous role in the development of Mies van der Rohe’s designs. Though she has been credited in a few scholarly journals, we have largely forgotten her name today. Google any piece of furniture by Mies, and you will usually see his name as the creator alone.

It is interesting to note that Mies did not fully develop any furniture designs successfully before or after his professional and personal relationship with Lilly Reich.

Barcelona Chair

Brno Chair
MR Chair

Reich co-designed these chairs with Mies.

After all, architecture and industrial design were considered men’s work. There were male as well as female practitioners, and yet we know mainly of the men who created things. Is it a question of quality? Were women just not as technically inclined as their male counterparts? Was it Mies name that brought validity to Reich’s work? Was she disregarded because she was sharing a bed with him?

Born in Berlin to a well-to-do family in 1885, Reich began her career as a textile and women’s clothing designer -- an acceptable trade for a woman in those days. In 1912, she became a member of the Deutsche Werkbund which was an organization dedicated to the promotion of German made products and designs and sponsored by the government. Had she not studied there and seen the wide range of activities open to women, then we might have not been graced with the legacy of her designs.

Reich flourished as a textile, clothing and furniture designer. She was also an architect and exhibition designer. Her achievements are matched by few women contemporaries of her time such as Charlotte Perriand and Eileen Gray. In 1920, she was appointed the first female director of Deutsche Werkbund. She is known for her collaboration with Mies from 1925 until 1938 – but his fame overshadowed hers.

In 1927, the couple collaborated on “The Velvet and Silk Café” for The Women’s Fashion Exhibition held in Berlin.

The space was defined by supple silks and velvets in the color of gold suspended from rods giving the effect of flowing into one another.

In 1929, Mies was chosen to design the German Pavilion for the International Exhibition in Barcelona. He chose Reich as his co-collaborator. Reich was responsible for the curvilinear forms and vivid colors of Mies work. She brought sophistication to her work.

Reich continually explored the visual as well as tactile qualities. She explored the contrasts between polished metal and textured surfaces.

Reich was responsible for the cane seat and back on the MR Chair. (This is not exactly the right image – I’m still looking for it.)

In 1930, when Mies was chosen to head Bauhaus, he took Reich with him to head the weaving studio and interiors workshop. She also became the first woman (at a time when few women were teaching) to teach interior design which included also furniture design.

When Mies left Germany in 1937, she continued to manage his personal and business affairs. An absolute professional, she was talented and she was keen. She remained indispensable to him long after his departure to the US. She took care of his office, of his legal disputes and saved all the drawings he left behind. She helped his family financially – his ex-wife and three children who had been left behind. During their partnership, Reich reportedly bowed to his authority leaving the overall concepts to him while compulsively attending to refinements and details.

In September 1939, Reich visited Mies in the United States. She and Mies spent a few weeks together. She wanted to stay, but Mies did very little to persuade her to remain. She managed to get back to Berlin at the height of the war where she faithfully began a long and dutiful correspondence with Mies. But she never saw him again.

Table: Tubular steel and beech veneer over brick plywood, (1931).Manufactured by Shea & Latone, Inc., Pennsylvania. MoMA.

Reich is credited for this enameled tubular steel and wicker chair. It was this design that was altered for the Villa Tugendhat to be used as a dining chair.

(Top image from "Collaborations: The Private Life of Modern Architecture" by Beatriz Colomina, The Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, September 1999. Above cafe image from "Lilly Reich: Designer and Arcitect" by Mathilda McQuaid, Museum of Modern Art and Abrams, 1996)