Betty Baugh,
FIDSA
President of the Industrial Designers Society of America
(IDSA), 2001-2002
Betty Baugh grew up in San Antonio, Texas and attended Stephens College in Columbia, Missouri for an AA Degree in Liberal Arts, later transferring to the New York State School of Industrial Ceramic Design at Alfred University, New York. She spent a school summer throwing pottery at the Whitte Museum in San Antonio, Texas and received her BFA degree cum laude from Alfred in 1953.
She formed a partnership and moved to West Virginia, where she designed hand-blown glass, her own house and furniture, and taught a ceramic class at the Huntington Museum. In New York City she designed new products for manufacturer's representatives at their showrooms and traveled to trade shows to build a solid client base.
In 1963 Betty located to Columbus, Ohio, creating designs for West Virginia and Ohio glass companies and worked with a San Francisco import company, developing designs for the many Asian manufacturers they represented and traveling to Japan and Taiwan for research. During this period she joined IDSA in the Ohio Valley Chapter.
Betty settled in Tiburon, California in 1972 with her partner, and, by then, with their four children. In 1986, she relocated to Mill Valley, California and formed a one-person independent consultancy, Betty Baugh Designer. She created food service product designs for Libbey Glass; L.E. Smith Glass and Grainware; tabletop designs for Villeroy & Boch, Wilton Armetale, and architectural glass concepts for USG. Other clients included advertising, photography, local architectural installations and manufactured gift products.
In 1993 she moved to Kirkland, Washington and continued to develop houseware products with Progressive International in Seattle. Betty became very active in IDSA, as Chapter Chair, Women's Section Chair, Western District Vice President (1995-1996), National Secretary/Treasurer (1997-1998), Executive Vice President (1999-2000), and President (2001-2002). She represented IDSA abroad at two ICSID Congresses, published articles, lectured at design schools and juried the NHMA Annual Student Competition.
In 1999 Betty returned to San Francisco and her one-person design practice. Her glass platter and Tower grater were shown at the 2000 Tacoma Washington Museum Show, "Fast Forward: The Shape of Northwest Design," and her designs were shown at the Toledo Museum exhibit,"Toledo Designs For a Modern America." Her Tower grater won an Award of Merit in the 2000 Northwest Industrial Design Invitational Competition in Seattle, Washington. In 2001, LG Electronics invited her to serve as a juror for the Electronics Competition in Seoul, Korea. In 2002 she began teaching at the California College of Arts and Crafts in Industrial Design of Glass Production, and served as a juror for the Lexmark "Design of Business Printer of the Future" competition in Lexington, Kentucky. In 2003, Betty became IDSA's Chairman of the Board.