“The Space Between”: Rediscovering the Folly Cove Designers

This essay examines the formation, organization, and ethos of the Folly Cove Designers group. Led and trained by illustrator Virginia Lee Burton, the Designers were a group of Massachusetts craftswomen whose shared interests in draftsmanship, pattern, and New England material culture united them across class and ethnic backgrounds. Their artistic and commercial success printing their designs onto textiles energized and legitimized their group, both as a collective of women and as an artist’s cooperative. The essay argues for the Folly Cove Designers (active 1938-1969) to be seen as a forerunner of the women’s groups and professional organizations that fueled feminist social change in the following decades.