Wanamaker, and Brooke Astor. Her best-known employee was Billy Baldwin, whom she hired in the 1930s and who eventually became known as "the dean of American decorating". According to Baldwin, Wood's professional credo was: "The final judgement in decorating is not the logic of the mind, but the logic of the eye." Ruby Ross Wood was seen as somewhat a new breed of female designer. She was not a wealthy socialite like Dorothy Draper or as glamorous as Rose Cumming. She was often said to be a chain-smoker, sharp tongued, impatient, and a "working" girl. Although she spent much of her life writing articles for design magazines, she was just as much of a designer then any of the others she is compared to. In her own work Ruby Ross Wood ranged widely in terms of period, espousing 18th-century French furniture, Italian Directoire, English Regency, and English Georgian, as well the work of Jean-Michel Frank and other modern designers, though sparingly. "She was a designer that chose the comforts of the past rather than the relative austerity of modernism." (Interior Design and Decoration, 5th ed. by Sherrill Whiton and Stanley Abercrombie; Upper Saddle River, NJ. Pearson Education, Inc.: 2002. p. 575). Ruby Ross Wood was also one of the first designers to use the Etruscan style furniture that was designed by a seldom heard, French designer Marc du Nicolas du Plantier. She also loved brown and white geometric Moroccan rugs, and one of, if not the first to import cotton print designs by Paule Marrot. Although her popularity in the design world seems small, she has had quite an impact in the New York City design scene. Ruby Ross Wood died of lung cancer. See also The Great Lady Decorators: The Women Who Defined Interior Design, 1870-1955 by Adam Lewis (2010), Rizzoli, New York. 1881 births 1950 deaths American designers Deaths from lung cancer in New York (state) American interior designers