On occasion, the women of 20th C design do get a certain amount of recognition. This rare aluminum pendant lamp by Eileen Gray, previously owned by Yves St Laurent, is up for auction at Christie’s and is estimated at US$1 million. Via dailyicon. We’ve written about Gray before, here and here.

Fantastic 1970s geometric supergraphic textile by German designer Elsbeth Kupferoth, who deserves to be much better known. Interesting short essay on her work and more photos at The Textile Blog. Her unusual colour schemes make these designs much less dated than the more common 70s combinations.

Nanna Ditzel is considered the “first lady of Danish design,” which is one of those informative yet cringe-worthy labels that just highlights the whole problem of accidentally ghettoizing designers who happen to be women by the very act of celebrating the fact that they’re women designers. You can’t win. One doesn’t want to go on about their gender, but it’s impossible not to want to, because one wants to give these groundbreaking female designers as much recognition as possible – 20th C design was a world women had to fight hard to win recognition in. In Ditzel’s case, at least, her work was and remains moderately well-known, and over her long career she did win major international awards and acclaim and her work for Georg Jensen has brought her additional attention. She was an extremely versatile designer, working in furniture, textiles, accessories and jewelry. She created textiles for the Danish firm Unika-Vœv, and the ”Stairscape” above was created in 1966 for their showroom, with her trademark split-level floor seating and low cushions. Her 1959 “Egg Hanging Chair” is now an iconic piece of modern design and doesn’t seem dated. We love her. And Eileen Gray. And Barbara Brown. And dozens of other female designers who deserve to be much better known than they are. 

Stainless steel “Swirl” money clip above is still available from Georg Jensen for US$40. More information on Ditzel here, here and here.

The Cave Room (above), the Projection Room, and the Xanadu Room (below) are from “The Bloomingdale’s Book of Home Decorating,” 1973, by Barbara D’Arcy. D’arcy was famous for her wild display rooms actually constructed inside the Bloomingdales store in New York in the 1960s and 70s. All her rooms had the classic 60s emphasis on lounging, pleasure, boldness, and an appeal to the senses that bordered on the psychedelic or the mind-altering – they were an Experience. But there was also a DIY component to D’Arcy’s approach. Many of the room elements were not expensive to build or buy, and that’s because most of her displays were directed at the “Saturday Generation” demographic, which she describes (in a tone that’s only funny because it’s so of its time) in a way that makes it sound a lot like the readership of Apartment Therapy or the current DIY movement in general, to which many of us probably belong:

The Saturday Generation. That’s what we call them at Bloomingdale’s, but they’re everywhere – all over the country, all over the world. We call them the Saturday Generation because they fill our stores on Saturdays. They’re young, they’re vital, they’re hardworking. And Saturday is about the only day they have to shop. 

Maybe you’re a member of The Saturday Generation. If so, we know you… Some of you are just starting out in your profession. You may have a roommate, you may be newly married, you may live in a bachelor pad. You’re informed, you’ve got taste (usually more taste than money, right?) and as far as today is concerned, you’re with it. (Click below for more…)

See also a nice post on this book from buildmeanest, which we first read as “build a mean nest.” Which also works, especially in this case.

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English textile designer Barbara Brown produced these superb textiles in the 60s and 70s. We found her designs by chance on The Textile Blog, a well-written site out of England covering “the history of interiors and interior furnishings over the last three centuries.” The writer is John Hopper, a trained textile designer from Cornwall. As he has also written here, Brown is one of his favourite designers. Brown was quite a prolific designer, and it’s odd that her name isn’t better known. Perhaps it has to do in part with the lingering stigma attached to the geometric prints of the 60s and 70s, a stigma we’ve never been able to understand.

The Textile Blog is one of those small islands of historical information in a sea of blogs that simply collect good design. Collecting is great, but it’s sometimes a relief to be provided with some historical context for design traditions and innovations. Perhaps it’s because objects are so decontextualized these days that there’s a strange kind of thrill when they begin to make sense again. Or maybe we’re just textile nerds. In talking about the short-lived 1960s flirtation with bold, futuristic design, Hopper argues

Brown embraced the new optimism and confidence that swept through Britain in the 1960s… This small period in British design history was a brief moment when Britain embraced the future… The oil crisis and following economic slump put paid to Britain’s flirtation with a confident future, and with the likes of Laura Ashley leading the way, Britain started looking backwards again to a nostalgic rural past that existed largely in the imagination.

Hopper’s post on Annie Albers is interesting too.