Margaret E. Knight's Paper Bag at MoMA is the Daily Pic by Blake Gopnik
Designing Woman
In 1871, Margaret E. Knight helped birth a design classic.
(Museum of Modern Art, gift of Duro Bag Manufacturing Company)
Could this classic, flat-bottom paper bag be the most important, influential object ever conceived by a woman? In MoMA’s show called "Designing Modern Women", the 1871 patent for the machine to make it is credited to one Margaret E. Knight, working at the Union Paper Bag Machine Company, in Philadelphia. More eyes must have settled on such a bag than have ever taken in the Mona Lisa or Michelangelo’s David. And could you carry your lunch to school if all you had to wrap it was a Monet?
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