For centuries, women have organized, supervised, and labored in the households they ran, but only during the last hundred years or so did they begin to have a say in how homes and furnishings were designed. Now, in this richly illustrated survey of design and design movements from the 1860s to the 1980s, women gain their rightful place in the history of design. Isabelle Anscombe illuminates the contributions of women to the Arts and Crafts Movement in Britain, the Glasgow School of Art, and the Bauhaus school, and discusses the great interior decorators of the 1920s and 1930s. Drawing on original interviews and on social and art history, Anscombe shows how the textiles, tableware, and furniture created by designers such as Vanessa Bell, Sonia Delaunay, and Elsie de Wolfe revolutionized ideas about the form and function of the home. Thoroughly researched and written with both wit and authority, "A Woman's Touch" is an important addition to the literature of design. -- From publisher's description