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Notes £Iud COl1l1UeutPhoto: Cll988 The Rathbun GaUery/shaker; courtesy of Bernice $tc:inbaum Galleryl( ,A exhibit of work by prominent women designersand fu rnituremakers included the70-in. -high curly maple, Swiss pear and hollychest of drawers, above, by Wendy Stayman;a 33x50x14-in. wenge-and-holly windowseat, top right, by Kristina Madsen; a Lucite,wood and upholstery side chair, near right,designed in 1939 by Elsie de Wo lfe; andtwo tape-seat chairs, fa r right, by EldressSarah J Collins and Sister Lillian Barlow.Women furniture designers and makersWoodworking may still be a male-dominatedfield, but some of the nicest and most innovativework being done today is by women.According to Nina Stritzler, curator of anexhibit entitled "Pioneer & Pioneering: 20th­Century Women Furniture Designers andFurniture Designers/Makers," women beganto play a substantial part in the design andmaking of furniture for the first time in Westernhistory during the 20th century. Previously,women were sharply inhibited intheir development as artisans, she said."They entered tl1e male-dominated Europeandesign world at the beginning of thecentUly, and by d1e outbreak of World War II,they were firmly established as importantfigures in the development of modernism.During the past 10 years, a new generationof American women have moved beyond therole of designer to pioneer a professionalplace for themselves as furnituremakers,"Stritzler said.In a catalog detailing the exhibit, which wasshown last summer at d1e Bernice SteinbaumGallery at 132 Greene St., New York, N.Y.,Stritzler cited d1e Shakers as one of the firstgroups to end d1e sexual division of labor d1athad so long made it virtually impossible forwomen to develop as independent artisans inmale-dominated fields such as woodworking.Stritzler's research indicated that by theturn of the century, Shaker women were anessential part of the communal-sects furnitureindustry. This is not too surprising ina community that credited the deity withfeminine as well as masculine attributes andenjoyed songs with lines SUd1 as, "My motheris a carpenter."At the Mount Lebanon, N.Y., Shaker community,for example, chairmaking operationswere directed for 60 years by Eldress Sarah J.Collins, who died in 1947. She and Sister LillianBarlow are credited with tape-seat chairs,shown in d1e bottom, right photo above.The first half of the 20th century saw the114 Fine Woodworking