25 Facts About Candace Wheeler

Candace Wheeler, traditionally credited as the mother of interior design, was one of America's first woman interior and textile designers.

Candace Wheeler helped open the field of interior design to women, supported craftswomen, and promoted American design reform.

Candace Wheeler did editorial work and wrote several books and many articles, encompassing fiction, semi-fiction and non-fiction, for adults and children.

Candace Wheeler used her exceptional organizational skills to co-found both the Society of Decorative Art in New York City and the New York Exchange for Women's Work ; and she partnered with Louis Comfort Tiffany and others in designing interiors, specializing in textiles, then founded her own firm, The Associated Artists.

Candace Wheeler was born Candace Thurber on March 24,1827, in Delhi, New York, west of the Catskill Mountains, but spent her first seven years in Oswego, New York, on Lake Ontario.

Candace Wheeler's parents were Abner Gilman Thurber and Lucy Thurber.

Candace Wheeler was the third born of eight siblings: Lydia Ann Thurber, Charles Stewart Thurber, Horace Thurber, Lucy Thurber, Millicent Thurber, Abner Dunham Thurber, and Francis Beattie Thurber.

Candace Wheeler ensured that the family never used any product made by slaves: the family used homemade maple sugar instead of cane sugar and linen woven from flax they grew on their farm instead of southern cotton.

Candace Wheeler attended an "infant school" in Oswego, where at age six she stitched her first sampler.

Candace Wheeler was the brother of the Thurbers' minister's wife, whom Candace admired as the first "cultivated" person she had known.

Candace Wheeler was impressed by the Royal School of Art Needlework's elaborate display, including designs by her favorite designer, Walter Crane, as well as by an exhibit of more practical items embroidered by English women.

Candace Wheeler hired the recently widowed Elizabeth Bacon Custer as secretary: the two women became fast, life-long friends.

Candace Wheeler called on prominent New York society matrons to support a shop in which the high-quality, custom-made goods could be sold to produce income; they had five hundred subscribers within three years.

Candace Wheeler helped to start branches in Chicago, St Louis, Hartford, Detroit, Troy, New York and Charleston, South Carolina.

In 1878 Candace Wheeler helped launch the New York Exchange for Women's Work, where women could sell any product that they could manufacture at home, including baked goods and household linens.

Importantly, they incorporated one of Candace Wheeler's award-winning work, known as "Honeybee," into this renovation effort.

In 1883 Candace Wheeler formed her own firm, specializing in textiles and mainly involving women, under the name Associated Artists.

Candace Wheeler consciously created American designs based on local plant forms.

The Associated Artists' signature needle-woven tapestry was a combination of loom weaving and handwork that Candace Wheeler had invented and patented in 1881.

One of Candace Wheeler's touted achievements was the creation of a vacation community in the Catskills, Onteora, still ongoing.

Candace Wheeler commissioned her son Dunham, then a fledgling architect, to design several of the early buildings.

Candace Wheeler greatly expanded her originally modest house, Pennyroyal over the years, and cultivated a garden which became the point of departure for her delightful book, Content in a Garden.

In 1893, at the age of 66, Candace Wheeler agreed to take charge of the interior of the Woman's Building at the Chicago World's Fair, and to organize the State of New York's applied arts exhibition there.

Candace Wheeler's widely read paean to the Columbian Exposition, "A Dream City," appeared in Harper's Monthly.

Candace Wheeler spent much of her later life, mainly there and at Onteora, writing books and articles on decorating and the textile arts, as well as fiction and poetry.