‘Here We Are’ shows women as great innovators of design ★★★★☆

The first design at the exhibition Lord We Are is immediately hit. A graceful illustration shows a woman in messianic pose with a ribbon in her arms outstretched with Votes for Women. Behind her head glows a radiant sun, which like a halo represents her sacred mission. The creator of this catchy statue is Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence (1867-1954). For a campaign for women’s suffrage, this British designer introduced a visual identity in 1908 with a bright color palette of white (cleanliness), purple (dignity) and green (hope). Mind you: disciplines such as advertising and even graphic design barely existed. Despite this pioneering work, her name remained largely unknown.

This fate befell the majority of the more than a hundred designers featured in the exhibition in the Kunsthal in Rotterdam, about the role of women in design from about 1900 to the present. Already in 1909 the instruction book appears Box Furniture, with which low-skilled working-class families can disassemble wooden packaging crates and reassemble them into handy furniture, including a list of necessary tools, on the basis of accessible construction drawings. It will then take another quarter of a century until Gerrit Rietveld introduces his crate chair. The maker: Louise Brigham (1875-1956). Her name also remained virtually unknown. Painful.

It was not the qualities of these women. To what then? A lack of opportunities makes Lord We Are clear. This inequality of opportunity started with education. For example, even at the progressive Bauhaus design school in the 1920s, women were almost automatically referred to the weaving room. But meanwhile, in 1919 – the same year that Bauhaus was founded and also in Germany – two women started the Loheland School, an education exclusively for women and with a unique curriculum of gymnastics and crafts. There are hardly any scientific studies devoted to this school. Lack of recognition is apparently a persistent phenomenon.

The nearly a hundred designs on Lord We Are range from ‘female’ wall hangings to a complete space capsule for Russian cosmonauts. In the 1950s, the American car manufacturer General Motors appointed a female design team to give the interiors of their limousines a female-friendly look. This one damsels of design (a name that the designers themselves loathed) are at the origin of the modern family car.

Women were also great innovators in business more than once. Who transformed Cartier from a watch brand for men into the leading jewelry house after the Second World War? The flamboyant art director Jeanne Toussaint, recognizable by her sturdy riding boots and cigarette pipe. The creator of the groundbreaking ‘Tupperware parties’? The quirky Brownie Wise, who laid the foundation for the worldwide success of plastic kitchen containers with these housewives’ sales parties in the 1950s, but was nevertheless brutally pushed aside by founder Earl Tupperware.

Is there such a thing as a feminine look in design? In the tasteful exhibition design you could easily see a feminine touch in the harmonious colors and graceful shapes. But then suddenly there is the Dutch Marjan van Aubel, who uses a lot of technical ingenuity to equip a lamp with solar panels and thus generate its own electricity. If there is a similarity between all those female designers, it is that they prioritize social necessity over personal fame. They also work – often out of necessity – with extreme dedication and concentration. And yes, they also have a good sense of aesthetics. Whether it’s from a car or from a protest poster.