ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the tension between freedom and constraint that design epitomised carried a particular resonance for professional creative women who sought to strike a balance between the expectations of gender ideology and their own professional and artistic aspirations. Although both Day and Redgrave speak of the designer as 'he', throughout the 1850s and 1860s, the art schools and the principles of design they promoted became increasingly associated with female labour as the art-industries came to be seen by many as a perfect solution to the problem of the redundant woman. The intellectual and artistic reputation of the types of art generally associated with women, namely the practical arts, suffered as a result of their association with both female labour and with industry, but the chapter reveals that design offered creative women a different, more productive, positive model of professional work.
