The Professional Decorator
week 3
Sparke, Penny. “Elsie de Wolfe and Her Female Clients, 1905-15: Gender, Class and the Professional Interior Decorator.” In Women’s Places: Architecture and Design 1860-1960, edited by Brenda Martin and Penny Sparke, 47–68. London, U.K.: Routledge, 2003.
Expression of Identity in Interior Design: Elsie de Wolfe and Her Legacy
Summary In the article Elsie de Wolfe and her female clients, 1905-15, Penny Sparke asserts that Elsie de Wolfe helped to create the female-dominated profession of interior decoration as we know it today by providing wealthy, upper-class women with distinctly feminine...
Feminine Identity in Interior Design
Summary: In Elsie de Wolfe and her female clients, 1905-15, Penny Sparke argues that de Wolfe professionalized interior decoration by associating it with elite feminine identity. Instead of rejecting domesticity, de Wolfe used it as a platform for women to showcase...
Draper + Stewart
Summary: The article "Elsie de Wolfe and Her Female Clients, 1905–15: Gender, Class and the Professional Interior Decorator" examines how Elsie de Wolfe, America's first professional interior decorator, navigated the intersection of gender, class, and the emerging...
The Growth of the Role Women Have in Interior Decoration
In “Elsie de Wolfe and Her Female Clients, 1905-15: Gender, Class and the Professional Interior Decorator” By Brenda Martin and Penny Sparke, the argument of how de Wolfe’s career as a professional interior decorator was deeply connected to the gender and classes of...
Elsie de Wolfe Conquering Gender Norms In The Interior Design Field
A key point I would like to highlight in “Chapter 3 of the book Elsie de Wolfe and Her Female Clients, 1905-15; Gender, Class and the Professional Interior Decorator” is how the work of Elsie de Wolfe challenged gender norms and issues in the history of Interior...
Elsie de Wolfe: ‘taste’ maker, blurring past and present
Summary Penny Sparke’s chapter, “Elsie de Wolfe and Her Female Clients, 1905-15: Gender, Class and the Professional Interior Decorator” introduced the work of interior designer and decorator, Elsie de Wolfe and the immense influence she had both on American ‘taste’...
Feminism and Fashion: The Foundation of Interior Decoration
In the article, “Elsie de Wolfe and Her Female Clients”, the author, Penny Spark, tells the story of the beginnings of the profession of Interior Decorator through Elsie de Wolfe. As described in the article, Interior decoration was heavily built on the ideals of...
The Implications of an Interior Designed by Women
Summary Women’s break out into the modern working world, began with the occupation of the interior decorator. Penny Parke, in In Women’s Places: Architecture and Design 1860-1960, highlights the working life of Elsie de Wolfe as an argument that an interior decorator...
Spaces for Women Designed by Women
Summary The point I wanted to focus on was how interiors for women were more successful when designed by women, specifically Elsie de Wolfe. A woman would understand how to design spaces for women because they experience those spaces fairly similarly. This was a...
Self Expression in Interior Design
Reading Summary/Takeaway: In this chapter, Sparke explores Elsie de Wolfe’s revolutionary role as a woman and a visionary in the field of interior decoration in the early twentieth century. de Wolfe’s approach to interior decoration stood out as she created spaces...