Mid-Century Female Glass Designers: Shattering Ceilings
I got a set of retro-mod drinking glasses as a gift this year. While very, very cool, they aren’t particularly noteworthy from a collector’s perspective. They have no manufacturer’s marks and, judging by the wear patterns, they were used, which I love.
As I admired the mid-mod pattern, I wondered if any women of the era helped to shape glassware just like these. If they had, I’d never heard of them. Which felt very fucking typical. So, I did a little digging.
A Legacy of Female Creativity
In the 1950s and 1960s, consumer preferences shifted from a choice between pure function (simple, durable products like this washboard) to pure form (ornate Victorian…well, anything that was effectively useless but beautiful) to a blend of the two. The women in glassware design who interpreted these trends into their work were often cloaked behind the scenes, overshadowed by men in their industry. Again, fucking typical.
It also isn’t lost on me that the mid-century glassware trends that shifted things to what I’ll call “fancy functional” are reflective of other trends of the era, including “cocktail culture”, home entertaining and even Christmas tree design.
Let’s Meet These Glass Trailblazers
Clara Driscoll (1861–1944): Breakfast at Tiffany’s?
Clara Driscoll held a management position at Tiffany & Company, where she led the women’s glass cutting department. The “Tiffany girls” in her department (I hate that grown-ass women should be referred to as such) were responsible for selecting, cutting and assembling the tiny glass pieces that went into the intricate designs that Tiffany is known for.
These Tiffany women (yeah, I said it) handled every step of production except soldering, a type of welding. Heating tools were not considered “appropriate” for women to handle. I beg to differ. Just check out this history of sad irons. Moving on.
The Tiffany glass designs by Clara Driscoll were heavily influenced by nature, with butterflies, dragonflies and flowers featuring prominently. Her designs are still loved today: in 2015, one of her dragonfly lamps sold for over $2M at a Sotheby’s auction. Not too shabby for a girl.
As is so often the case, Driscoll was not recognized in her time. The son of the founder of Tiffany billed himself as the lead designer, and thou shalt recognize no other designers before him, it seems. My main source for this article is NY Times piece that is quite literally named, “Overlooked No More: Clara Driscoll, Designer of Visions in Glass for Tiffany.”
So even though her work was more about lamps than kitchenware, I want to give Driscoll her moment here.
>>Read more about bad-ass historical boss women.
Freda Diamond (1905–1998): Communist Designer for the Masses
Freda Diamond’s story is delightful, as evidenced by the title of my main source: Women in Glasshouses: Communism in a Juice Glass – the designs of Freda Diamond. The very first sentence sets an ominous tone: “In the decades after the second world war, millions of Americans unknowingly allowed a communist into their homes in the shape of innocent housewares.”
Color me interested. I discovered that Diamond was raised by a Russian Jewish immigrant mother who was both a costume designer and an anarchist (unexpected). Her father left the family when Diamond was just three years old, and her mother became friends with a man named Moe Goldman, another anarchist, who became in some ways like a surrogate father.
Professionally, Diamond was an industrial designer with Libbey Glass, a glass manufacturer that had been focused on supporting the military and the war effort and was now looking to Diamond and her female coworker, Virginia Hamill (1898-1980), to determine where the company’s market focus should go next.
Diamond and Hamill took off on a cross-country research tour, visiting over 80 retailers to discuss consumer demands live and in person. As a marketer myself, I found this fascinating. These intrepid ladies were among the first ever to perform this type of on-the-ground market research.
They learned that women weren’t interested in the ornate setups of their mothers and grandmothers. They wanted simple, affordable, functional glassware for their busy homes. But, they didn’t want to give up on traditional designs in their kitchens.
And Libbey delivered, manufacturing a plethora (like 80+ lines) of affordable glassware designs by Freda Diamond. They flawlessly blended mass-manufactured style with screenprinted designs that harkened back to earlier time periods.
The combined mass appeal and affordability is how a suspected (though not confirmed) Communist became, and I quote, the “designer for everyone” in a country that was absolutely terrified of Communism.
A Look at My Mid-Century Glassware Set
My mid-century glassware set with possible atomic dot pattern in aqua, orange and gold
Here’s my glass set. The pattern is similar to “atomic dot”, a popular design of the time. Based on the style, colors and shape, they may very well be Libbey, but I’m not able to confirm that. Whether they are or not, the sleek, functional design owes much to the skill of female glass designers like Freda Diamond.
So, next time you take a sip from a mid-century glass, either yours or at your great aunt Ida’s house, take a moment to think of the unknown women who helped shape its form.
