She is regarded as revolutionizing California design, and for her advocacy of craft as an art form.

Continuing her long-standing interest in crafts, in 1961 she took over the Museum’s series of California Design exhibitions, changing them from small, annual shows of furniture into "a blockbuster juried triennial" of virtually anything designed or made in California.

[2] She has been credited with turning the Pasadena Art Museum's annual California Design show into a "blockbuster juried triennial".

[2] "The social as well as the physical climate of California in the 20th century has presented the ideal breeding ground for the new, and more broadly based wave of humane declaration, which we call the New Craftman's Movement.

With remnants of the do-it-yourself need of the frontier spirit still intact, and with the sense of individual worth and identity from that experience still within memory, there was little in subjugation or established pattern to overcome.