Ruth Adler Schnee, whose ebullient fabric designs and avant-garde home furnishings store in the heart of Detroit introduced midcentury modernism to baffled yet delighted Midwesterners, died on Jan. 5 at her home in Colorado Springs. She was 99.

Born in Frankfurt, Germany in 1923, the family’s comfortable, cultured life ended in the fall of 1935 when the Nuremberg Laws deprived Jewish citizens of their rights. Ultimately, the family escaped Germany, sponsored by a family in New York City, who promised her father a job in Detroit.

Later, she married Edward Schnee and together they opened a store to showcase Ruth’s textiles as well as furniture by their friends Florence Knoll, Charles and Ray Eames, Eero Saarinen and George Nelson, and later Scandinavian designs from Marimekko, Dansk and Orrefors — familiar and much sought-after names today, but “a mystery to a public used to French provincial furniture and flowery chintzes,” The New York Times said. The couple didn’t just sell these odd objects, like Japanese hibachis, they taught people how to live with them and use them. In 2015, the Kresge Foundation honored her with its annual Eminent Artist Award.