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Candace Wheeler: design by women
An exhibition which pays homage to a female American entrepreneur, before even to the notable mix of design and fine arts that she was able to create. We are talking about an exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York on Candace Wheeler, a textile designer with sophisticated taste who in the mid nineteenth century worked with Louis Comfort Tiffany to create luxurious settings for the rich middle classes. A company which she left in 1883 to found her own – producing fabrics which were highly innovative both in terms of production technique and design as well as being to suit all budgets – in which only women worked. A dynamic woman, therefore, who promoted the idea that the world of art and design could provide some valid opportunities for women beyond being just a hobby.
Amongst other things, she was responsible for the founding in 1877 of the New York Society of Decorative Art, conceived to help American women to acquire the necessary knowledge in the world of applied arts. And, a year later it was also Wheeler who set up the New York Exchange for Women’s Work (still active), where women could sell food they cooked and their own linens.
In the exhibition at the Met, over 100 objects have been collected, ranging from fabrics to wallpaper, drawings and paintings as well of photographs of interiors and furniture.
