Nancy Vincent McClelland

Nancy Vincent McClelland (1877–1959) was the first female president of the first US national association of interior designers, the American Institute of Interior Decorators (A.I.D), which is now called the American Society of Interior Designers (A.S.I.D.) and was one of an early group of female interior decorators practicing during the first decades of the 20th century. McClelland was also an expert on the European/American antiques. She was a writer for interior journals such as: ''Collier's'', ''Country Life'', ''House Beautiful'', and ''House and Garden''. She was an expert on wallpaper and the Scottish furniture designer Duncan Phyfe of New York. She received several rewards for her work. Being multilingual gave her the opportunity to be internationally active and to be known beyond the US as a writer, speaker, interior decorator, wallpaper designer, and collector of antique furniture. She traveled widely and met figures of the time such as Picasso.

Throughout her career she was an advocate for the professionalization of interior decoration throughout various means such as training, experience, and professional organizations. Although not formally schooled in interior decoration, Nancy McClelland believed that her on-the-job training and study of architecture and antiques abroad, along with her experience, made her a professional. And she may have helped to write AID's 1931 definition of an interior decorator: "A decorator is one who, by training and experience, is qualified to plan, design and execute structural interiors and their furnishings, and to supervise the various arts and crafts essential to their completion."

Throughout her long career, she wrote and lectured about the necessity of training for decorators, which helped to separate professionals from the amateurs. In 1922, Harold Eberlein and she published a correspondence course called''The Arts and Decoration Practical Home Study Course in Interior Decoration'' for both home and professional decorators''.'' By the 1930s, she advocated a college education and, later, worked with AID to develop a four-year university curriculum that was "equivalent in scope to the comprehensive course in architecture" offered in universities. Provided by Wikipedia