Celebrating International Women's Day
This International Women’s Day, we want to shine the spotlight on a talented female creator who has been largely forgotten in the history of 20th century design, but really deserves to be remembered.
Betty Joel (1894–1985) was a powerhouse of the interwar years. She didn't just design furniture, she built an empire, defined a modern British look, and then, at the absolute height of her fame, personal circumstances led her to end her career. She left behind a legacy that we are only just beginning to rediscover.
Betty’s career started with a very relatable frustration: she couldn’t find any furniture she actually liked for her own home! Without any formal training, she bypassed the rules and started designing for herself.
By 1921, she and her husband David had established ‘Betty Joel Ltd’ on Hayling Island. Her work sat in the cross-over between the sturdy, hand-built heart of the Arts and Crafts movement and the sleek, optimistic geometry of Art Deco.
She eventually moved to a massive factory in Kingston upon Thames, whilst her name, literally in lights, shone over her shop at 25 Knightsbridge.
Betty didn't just hire workers, she championed her team of over 80 craftsmen as artists in their own right.
Because her first workshop was near Portsmouth, she hired local men trained in yacht and boat fitting. This maritime influence is why her furniture feels so tactile. Those famous curvilinear edges reference a ship’s hull, and the recessed finger socket handles that are practical on a boat, also never snag your clothes!
Betty was a fierce advocate for the integrity of the maker. She insisted that every piece of furniture bore a label not just with her name, but with the signature of the specific craftsman who built it. In an age of faceless manufacturing, this radical act of respect is something we strive to mirror today by celebrating the weavers and the traditional mills that bring our own designs to life.
At her peak, Betty was a design celebrity. She socialised with Gertrude Stein, exhibited Matisse in her own gallery, and won accolades from the Royal Academy to the Met in New York. Her client list read like a Who’s Who of the 1930s, including Winston Churchill, the Savoy Hotel, and the Daily Express building.
With the breakdown of her marriage in 1938, and the business officially dissolved in 1939, Betty withdrew from the design world entirely. While David continued the furniture business under his own name (David Joel Ltd), Betty never returned to the industry. Because her departure was abrupt, and because history often conveniently relabelled female designers as mere decorators, her name began to slip through the cracks. Her individual genius was frequently folded into the broader history of the firm she shared with her husband and she was forgotten for almost 60 years.
Today, Betty Joel is being ‘found’ again by a new generation of admirers, from fashion designer Marc Jacobs, who treasures her rugs, to the curators at the V&A, and of course, us!
A comprehensive new book by her great-nephew, Clive Stewart-Lockhart, is bringing her story to light using her own diaries and unseen archives. This research, supported by ongoing work at the University of Portsmouth, is a rescue mission for a female legacy. They are piecing together her sketches and order books to prove that Betty wasn't just a figurehead, but a pioneering entrepreneur and a technical trailblazer. The book was released in April 2025, to coincide with the centenary of Art Deco, as well as the 40th anniversary of her death.
We can celebrate Betty’s legacy today by following the example she set in her own workshops.
Just as she championed her boat-builders and craftspeople, we can celebrate the human hands behind the products we chose, acknowledging that the labour is as important as the design itself.
By staying curious and sharing the stories of these once-forgotten creators, we can ensure they stay found and take their rightful place in history.
Above all, we can choose longevity in our purchases and what we fill our homes with. Betty’s ‘honest design’ was always intended to last for generations, and opting for quality over the fleeting nature of fast fashion or disposable interiors is the ultimate tribute to her philosophy.
