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That the holdings of archives are important for the posterity, to acknowledge and to research upon history, is evident. The lack of an archive for an artist, designer or manufacturer means that less of their stories will be known to the future, fewer exhibitions will be made, less research conducted. To a greater extent than for male designers, women’s documents such as drawings, models, letters, economic papers, etc, are not saved. Many reasons for that could be raised. However, in a recent book (in Swedish), Arkivism. En handbok (Archive-ism. A Handbook, 2021) by Lina Thomsgård (et.al.), the gaze is turned towards our times. It encourages contemporary female designers, writers, entrepreneurs, and so forth, to find, save and organise documents for the future, theirs’s own and others. It is a reminder not to forget that history is written from the present, and what we save today has impact on future design stories.

That archives are needed for research is of course not a new claim, but the effects for the hidden histories of gender in design is worth bringing to fore. In my presentation I will make some remarks on how even successful designers might be more or less totally forgotten when there are few documents left in the archives. My example is the woodcarver, textile designer and Swedish Arts & Craft entrepreneur Selma Giöbel (1843–1923). The discussion to follow might expand in many directions: What about colonial gender design-stories, seldom kept in our archives? What about female assistants to “greater” men, how to negotiate gender when their stories are lacking? All the women that were not, for some reason, concerned about saving and organising, how to include them in history? And what are we doing ourselves, to save contemporary gender design stories in the archives?