Lillian Palmer opened The Palmer Shop, focusing on art-metal, in San Francisco in 1910; it stayed in business until 1918. Palmer was born in Connecticut and her interest in metal work might have emerged from her father’s interactions with blacksmiths as part of his mining career. At The Palmer Shop, women and men were paid equally in a profit-sharing arrangement that lasted until the outbreak of WWI, when a national effort to conserve metal forced Palmer to close the shop. (Source: Women Designers in the USA, 1900-2000, Diversity and Difference, by Pat Kirkham.)

“As president of The Palmer Copper Shop, Miss Palmer leads one of the most successful electric fixtures organizations in this vicinity. Organized in 1916 on the co-operative basis, The Palmer Cooper Shop specializes in designing fixtures which not only attain the desired lighting effects in a given room, but also conform to the style and contour of the room and the usage to which it is to be put. Its substantial and widespread success is indicated by the fact that its electric fixtures are sought for and shipped to New York, Alaska and Mexico. Last year the exhibit maintained by The Palmer Cooper Shop at the Varied Industries building of the Exposition was one of the stellar exhibits displayed.”

Source: San Francisco Chronicle, “California Women in Public Life,” 17 January 1917, page 51.