Designed by Women explores international design from 1900 to the present.

Interior designer Sheila Bridges created her Harlem Toile de Jouy wallpaper as a witty and satirical interpretation of the storytelling landscapes that characterize French eighteenth-century toiles des Jouy textiles. According to Bridges, “As an African American living in Harlem, I have always been intrigued and inspired by the historical narrative of the decorative arts, especially traditional French toile with its pastoral motifs from the late 1700s. I'm entertained by the stories these patterns tell and the questions they often raise... My original design, which lampoons some of the stereotypes commonly associated with African Americans, ultimately celebrates our complex history and rich culture, which has often been appropriated.”

A native of Quebec, Roseline Delisle moved to California in 1978, where she worked until her death in 2003. There, she created her porcelain vessels, decorated with stripes that echoed her wheel thrown technique. Delisle described the vessels in 1995, “My work evolves from the concept of the unity of opposites… black and white, strength and fragility, movement and stillness… Still maintaining the minimal qualities but desiring to add color, I experimented with vitreous engobes. Wishing to obtain the same smooth surface, I applied the engobes to the vessel while on the wheel. The stripe pattern was a natural outgrowth of the application process. It seems to capture the spinning quality which refers back to its initial means of conception.”

Although plastic was the preferred material for progressive furniture in the 1960s, designers such as Grete Jalk also explored bentwood, a material that Charles and Ray Eames had begun experimenting with in the 1940s. This chair is part of Jalk’s laminated furniture series initiated in 1962. Its design, reminiscent of origami or folded cloth, proved that new aesthetic results from bentwood were possible. Made from two pieces of plywood, one for the base and one for the back, the chair was easier to produce than chairs molded in three planes. Jalk studied at design schools in Denmark in the 1940s, as well as with the modernist Danish cabinetmaker Kaare Klint, before opening her own design studio in 1953.

Known for her minimalist functional designs in furniture and objects, Canadian designer Zoë Mowat intended these porcelain Trestle bowls to hold keys, jewelry and other small objects. The design of Trestle came from Mowat’s exploration of positive and negative space. The flat handle appears suspended - perpendicular to the circular form of the container - a graceful play between geometric shapes. The unified, seamless connection between handle and container was only possible through 3D printing. These trestle bowls were available in black, white or celadon, in two sizes in a numbered edition, and were produced on demand by OTHR, the Brooklyn based 3-D Printing firm, in business from 2016 to 2018.

Swedish-born Greta von Nessen graduated from the School for Industrial Arts in Stockholm. After her marriage to German designer Walter von Nessen, they immigrated to New York in 1927 and opened the innovative lighting design firm, Nessen Studio. The studio closed after Walter’s death in 1943, but Greta revived it two years later; it is still in business today, now as Nessen Lighting. As the name suggests, the Anywhere lamp could be mounted, suspended, or placed virtually anywhere. With a domed shade and curved tubular cantilevered support, it is a late example of American streamlining. The lamp’s fame as a mid-century icon led to its selection in 2011 for a US Postage stamp celebrating American industrial design.

Irish-born graphic designer Deva Pardue has used typography to create a striking graphic identity for the empowerment of women. In this poster, a single word gains visual impactful when it is repeated, and a condensed font forcefully fills the page with bold red letters against a pink background. Pardue established her freelance design business in 2016, after five years at Pentagram design studio. In the wake of the 2016 presidential election, she created For All Womankind, a design initiative to benefit organizations that advance women’s rights. Sales of this poster and its related designs raised funds for organizations such as The Center for Reproductive Rights, Emily’s List and Joyful Heart Foundation.

Beadwork is traditionally known as “women’s work,” a stereotype that Baltimore artist Joyce Scott celebrates. The narrative content of her work expresses the African American experience, often turning beadwork into a bold commentary on political and social injustices. This example is more subdued. The artist described it as “Pink dreams, kind of light; frosty daylight, crystal. Lady sleeping but barely awake...hazy colors of spring.” Scott began using beads after working with Native American artists at Maine’s Haystack Mountain School of Crafts in 1976. She builds undulating, dimensional figures and forms by using a Native American peyote stitch to connect thousands of colorful beads with no backing material.

SANAA, a partnership of two Tokyo architects, is known for its cutting-edge contemporary buildings, such as the New Museum of Contemporary Art in New York. These watches designed by SANAA, named Neko for the pointy cat ears flanking their faces and the band that gives the impression of two front legs below, were made in a range of vibrant colors—pink, green, brown, yellow and black. The flexible polyurethane strap wraps around the wrist without a fastener. The watches were made by the Italian manufacturer Alessi, which is known for its avant-garde designs and has long engaged prominent architects to design everyday products. Watches by distinguished architects were part of Alessi’s offerings from 1987 until 2018.

Designed for the 2017 Women’s March, the iconic Pussyhat was worn by protestors throughout the world. It has become a symbol of political activism, demonstrating design’s important role in helping to shape events. Krista Suh and Jayna Zweiman co-founded the Pussyhat Project, partnering with Kat Coyle of The Little Knittery, who knitted this example. Their goal was to create a simple pattern so other activists could knit their own hats. According to the Pussyhat Project, the name was chosen “in part as a protest against vulgar comments Donald Trump made about the freedom he felt to grab women’s genitals, to de-stigmatize the word ‘pussy’ and transform it into one of empowerment, and to highlight the design of the hat’s ‘pussycat ears.’”

Born in Italy, Lella Vignelli graduated from the University of Venice’s School of Architecture and in 1959 joined Chicago’s famed architectural firm, Skidmore, Owings and Merrill. In 1971, the year she and Massimo Vignelli established Vignelli Associates in New York, Lella designed a carafe as part of a strongly architectonic bar set. The following year, they designed these four bar tools to accompany it. Despite differing functions, the bar tools are all flat, rounded, and pierced forms — as graphic as the bold Helvetica typeface the Vignellis favored in their designs. San Lorenzo, the manufacturer of these bar tools, specialized in producing hand-made silver designs by architects such as the Vignellis.