"Better Than Silver and Gold": Design Schools for Women in America, 1848-1860

Abstract

During the mid-nineteenth century, schools of design for women in Philadelphia, Boston, and New York formed the core of a mid-nineteenth-century movement to educate women in the theory and practice of industrial design. A diverse cross section of educated Americans—women's rights advocates, intellectuals, merchants, and philanthropists—supported an effort promising to elevate the status of women and to benefit the growth of American industrial arts. Design schools trained hundreds of future artists and teachers in artistic professions, while providing such female intellectuals as Elizabeth Palmer Peabody and Ednah Dow (Littlehale) Cheney the opportunity to discuss women's issues in a public forum. From written records describing the great hope invested in female education and the professional status that became a possibility for women at midcentury, historians can begin to reassess the position of nineteenth-century women involved in the arts.