A guide to design’s top female makers

Independent and avant-garde women have been shaping the field of design for centuries, whether it’s through imagining dazzling glass lamps for Tiffany Studios or producing modern furniture for the masses. Below, discover the female makers you should know through past lots and upcoming works featured in Christie’s Design sale on 10 June in New York.

Claude Lalanne

When minimalism and abstraction were the prevailing 20th-century aesthetics, Les Lalanne (the husband-and-wife-team of Claude and François-Xavier) stayed true to their vision, imbuing design with humourous, surreal and enchanting expressions. While François-Xavier’s creations were more often inspired by the animal kingdom, Claude favoured the botanical. Her designs were as inventive as her processes, which often entailed a process called galvanoplastie, a process of electroforming where objects, typically organic materials, are transformed into metal through an electrolytic bath. Whether in the form of a cabbage with legs or an apple with a mouth, Claude’s distinctive sculptures and jewellery remain highly covetable today.

Charlotte Perriand 

Charlotte Perriand was one of the most acclaimed figures to have emerged from the circle of Le Corbusier, despite the sexist response she first received when applying for a job at his studio (‘We don’t embroider cushions here’). The French architect and designer eventually won him over and collaborated with the era’s leading figures, from Pierre Jeanneret to Jean Prouvé. Amongst her most famous creations were those made of tubular steel, for example, the chaise longue B306 (1928/29), as well as wooden forms that reflected her reverence for the refined simplicity of Asian design. Above all, Perriand believed that good design should not only be affordable and functional, but that it should also be an intrinsic part of the human experience.

Eileen Gray

The name of Eileen Gray has acquired a legendary status in the annals of the applied arts of the early 20th century. Having made her professional career in Paris, the Irish designer and architect achieved her initial success through luxurious figurative panels, furniture and objects in lacquer. Trained under Japanese master Seizo Sugawara, she developed an exceptional mastery of this demanding technique. Her work became increasingly abstract, as she embraced radical modern design, eventually turning to architecture during her late 40s. Completed in 1929 in Roquebrune-Cap-Martin, France, Eileen Gray’s first building, E-1027 remains her most celebrated work, thanks to its adaptable features, complemented by modular furniture.

Line Vautrin

Dubbed ‘the poetess of metal’ by Vogue in the 1940s, Line Vautrin was a French jewellery designer and decorative artist known for being endlessly inventive. Born into a family that owned a bronze foundry, Vautrin taught herself metalworking skills at a young age — by 21, she had designed her first jewellery collection. After a brief spell working for the studio of Elsa Schiaparelli, she began making boxes, ashtrays, powder compacts and paperweights, often inscribed with her signature allegories, metaphors, symbols and visual puns. She also patented her own signature material, a modified cellulose acetate resin, which she registered under the trade name Talosel. During the 1950s, Vautrin began making her now iconic sculptural mirrors, frequently displayed in constellations.

Clara Driscoll

Born in Ohio, Clara Driscoll moved to New York City and enrolled at the Metropolitan Museum Art School, where her designs caught the attention of Louis Comfort Tiffany. In 1888, she was hired for Tiffany Glass Company (later known as Tiffany Studios), where she worked on and off for more than two decades. Driscoll rose to head of the Tiffany Studios Women’s Glass Cutting Department, where she managed a team of ‘Tiffany Girls.’ She also conceived many of the company’s most iconic designs, including the ‘Wisteria’ and ‘Dragonfly’ lamps.

Florence Knoll

Having grown up in Michigan, Florence Knoll studied under Eliel Saarinen at the Cranbrook Academy of Art, where she befriended his son, Eero, who would further expose her to the 20th century’s foremost architects. After studying under Walter Gropius, Marcel Breuer and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Florence moved to New York in 1941 and met Hans Knoll. She began working at his namesake company and married him in 1946. That same year Florence launched the Knoll Planning Unit, revolutionary for encompassing a complete design service — for Florence, the architecture of a space mattered as much as its furnishings and textiles. She became renowned for not only modern furniture, but also for modernising the postwar office with open-plan spaces. After her husband’s death in 1955, Florence successfully led Knoll as president.

Ray Eames

Amongst the 20th century’s most influential creative partnerships was Charles and Ray Eames, who worked not only in furniture design and architecture, but also films, education, toys, computing and international diplomacy. Prior to meeting Charles at the Cranbrook Academy of Art, where her was head of the industrial design department, Ray had studied painting and was a founding member of the American Abstract Artists group. Moving to Los Angeles with Charles in 1941, Ray increasingly included graphic design amongst her interests. Crucial to the Eames’ evolution as designers were their experimental plywood sculptures and objects, which revolutionised the post-war furniture industry by their ability to be mass produced.

Agnes Northrop

Agnes Fairchild Northrop was one of Tiffany Studios most important designers. She joined the company in 1884 and eventually became responsible for designing many of its most important window commissions. Like Tiffany, Northrop was fascinated by all aspects of nature. She was known for the precision and accuracy of the flowers and plants in her window designs, which she learned by long study in drawing and photography at the various nurseries in Flushing, Queens. Tiffany granted her a privileged status, including her own separate private studio. Northrop worked at the Studios until it closed in the late 1930s.

Ingrid Donat

French-Swedish sculptor and designer Ingrid Donat is one of today’s most influential living artists working in decorative arts. Born into a family of artists and architects, she was encouraged by her friend Diego Giacometti to produce her own sculptural furniture during the 1980s. Donat continues a long legacy of exquisite French craftsmanship with her commanding, highly textured bronze and wooden designs, which draw inspiration from myriad sources and movements, ranging from Art Nouveau and Art Deco to Africa, Oceania, South Asia and other world cultures.