an environment that can be kept clean and livable without a retinue of butlers and maids…She requires simple, polished surfaces on her tables, chairs, chests etc. that can be cleaned easily and do not collect dirt. No intricate carvings please, says the modern housemaker who does her own work.”2 The black-and-white Micarta “Harlequin Table” (1945) and the coffee table with extension (1952), both for Glenn of California, are made with plastic, wood, and sleek brass bases, totally uncluttered and easy to clean above and below [PLS. 11, 14]. These tables were designed to fit harmoniously within the indoor/outdoor open plan houses and apartments that were prevalent in Southern California at the time. Grossman says about her furniture, “The general effect is one of mellow, golden surfaces, of lightness and airiness and informal comfort.”3 Her direct impact on the Southern California design aesthetic can be traced through the work of her fellow colleagues and associates in Los Angeles such as Charles and Ray Eames, Pierre Koenig, and John Lautner, all of whom adopted and furthered the philosophy of “Good Design” in the United States as a means to develop their own vernacular. One other essential legacy of these drawings is that they provide important documentation of Grossman’s contributions as a woman to the field of industrial design. Other than Eileen Gray, Eva Zeisel, Ray Eames, Florence Knoll, Anni Albers, and Dorothy Liebes, few other female architects or furniture or textile makers received as much recognition or press, or had their work available on such a wide scale. Grossman was strikingly described as “tall, handsome and youthful-looking with a kind of Viking intensity.”4 She was clear about the inequities afforded to her gender and she rallied against the conservative idea that men were better designers than women. As Grossman herself exclaimed, “The old idea that women are not as good as men at mechanical work is stuff and nonsense. The only advantage a man has in furniture designing is his greater physical 2
3 4
32
Rose Henderson, “A Swedish Furniture Designer in America: An Interview with Greta Magnusson Grossman,” American Artist, Vol. 15 #1C issue 150 (December 1951), 56. Henderson, American Artist, 57. Ibid., 53.