Diamond, Freda
Ms. Diamond was born in New York City, the daughter of a theatrical costume designer. She majored in design at the Women’s Art School at the Cooper Union, and taught there for a few years before continuing design studies in Europe. Upon her return, she worked at William Baumgarten furniture store on 5th Avenue, and then with Stern Brothers Department Store, where she was a furniture buyer, stylist, and assistant merchandise manager. In the late 1930s, she launched her own career as a design consultant and consulted with many US and international manufacturers and department stores in consumer home furnishings, including Libbey Glass (for 37 years) starting in 1942. By 1951 she managed a staff of fourteen artists, craftsmen and design specialists. She wrote The Story of Glass in 1953. Libby sold 25 million of her glasses by 1954 and her glassware designs won a number of MoMA "Good Design" awards. She designed kitchen canisters for Continental Can, which sold 12 million, and designed wrought iron furniture for Baumritter, which sold 75,000 pieces in 1954, the year she was named "Designer for Everybody" by Life Magazine. She worked abroad as advisor to Italian craftsmen after WW II, to the Japanese government in 1957, to Israel in 1969 and for the World Trade Organization 1973-1981. She was on the advisory board to the Cooper Union Museum, which became the Cooper-Hewitt. In 1997, she donated the bulk of her papers to the national Museum of American History’s Division of Ceramics and Glass, and the Freda Diamond Collection, ca. 1945-1984, is available for research in the Archives Center of the National Museum of American History.