In Here we are! Women in design. 1900-Today the eighteen pieces created by Jeanne Toussaint, the impulsive and decisive creative director of Cartier from 1933 until the early 1970s, belonging to the Cartier Collection, shine resoundingly.
The expression of Toussaint, the creator of the mythical panther of the fine jewelry brand, could not be missing in this exhibition, created by the Vitra Design Museum and expanded by the Disseny Hub of Barcelona that offers a critical study on the successes and conditions work of women who have worked in the world of design from the beginning of the modern movement to the present.
The exhibition is made up of furniture, lighting, graphic design and ceramics and also jewelry created by and for women, a chapter in which the emblematic designer Jeanne Toussaint (1887-1976) stands as the main protagonist.
Intrigued by her taste and her uniqueness and after a decade of friendship, Louis Cartier asked this limitless creator to join the House in 1920. She arrived as the person in charge of leather goods, but soon her creativity, her ingenuity, her different look and Deliciously feminine allowed her to first take charge of the entire accessories department and then, in 1933, she took over as creative director of Cartier. Nicknamed “the Panther,” she strived until her retirement in the early 1970s to work for jewelry capable of empowering whoever wore it.
With an unusual freedom for the time, an inexhaustible obsession with drawing inspiration from the most distant continents and an absolute predilection for curves, reliefs, flora, fauna and ergonomic and flexible pieces, he created the famous Toussaint style that still exists today. shines in the House today. A style that deeply marked the history of Cartier and that of 20th century design.
Her work, her luminous and organic jewels, coexist in this Vitra exhibition with other iconic design objects as well as some little-known works signed by other talented women about whom history often forgets. They are Clara Porset or Charlotte Perriand. Businesswomen like Florence Knoll or Armi Ratia. And also activists like Jane Addams.
And also today’s brands such as Matali Crasset, the Spanish Patricia Urquiola and Julia Lohmann, as well as groups that are successful in a feminine key such as Matri-Archi(tecture) and Futuress.