Bertoia Bench by Knoll

Knoll History

The Knoll Company was founded in 1938 in New York by furniture craftsman Hans Knoll, and is today a leading U.S. manufacturer of classic residential furniture as well as office chairs, files, storage and full office systems.

In 1946, Knoll married designer Florence Bassett, who had been trained as an architect, and who would ultimately be recognized as one of the most influential women in 20th century design. She played a key role in the company's development, championing the Bauhaus approach and recruiting some of its most famous luminaries (such as Mies van der Rohe, Eero Saarinen and Marcel Breur), resulting in Knoll becoming the only authorized seller of some of the world’s most revered Mid-Century furniture designs.

Beginning in the 1940s, Knoll pioneered the concept working directly with corporate clients and designing to meet their needs. In the ensuing decades, the company introduced tables to accommodate electronic technology, and office chairs with a fresh premise: rather than the sitter constantly adjusting the chair, the chair would adjust to the sitter! The result of this approach was a line of innovative office chairs combining ergonomic support with intuitive adaptability. In addition to acclaim as a design leader, Knoll is today also acknowledged for its sustainable, “green” environmental policies.

In recognition of Knoll's contributions, the Louvre's Musee des Arts Decoratifs in Paris staged a 1972 exhibit devoted solely to the company's furniture. Knoll also currently has more than 40 pieces in the permanent Design Collection of The Museum of Modern Art in New York.

Harry Bertoia

Italian-born sculptor, designer and jeweler Harry Bertoia (1915-1978) showed an early interest in the art of jewelry making. In 1939, he received a scholarship to the Cranbrook Academy of Art, where he would meet future design collaborators Ray and Charles Eames, and where he would later launch his professional career teaching metal work and jewelry design. Due to the shortage of metal throughout the war years, he concentrated more on jewelry making during this period, although the forms and metal-working techniques he developed would later emerge in his large sculpture work. In the late 1940s, Bertoia learned welding at Santa Monica City College in California, and immediately began to experiment, producing wire and platform sculptures as his first attempts.

“If you look at these chairs, they are mainly made of air, like sculpture. Space passes right through them.”
— Harry Bertoia

The Knoll company hired Bertoia in 1950 to develop new designs for chairs. Bertoia had recently studied what was then called Body Dynamics (today we might call it ergonomics), and the knowledge he gained contributed to the success of his classic, form-fitting welded wire chair in 1952, the Diamond chair. For his entire line of welded wire chairs, he not only created the airy designs, but also devised the production molds used for mass manufacture.

Bertoia then returned to working on wire and platform sculptures, which evolved into panels and screens, leading to his early public pieces. It is estimated that the astonishingly prolific Bertoia created an estimated total of 50,000 sculptures!

Most of Bertoia’s designs, whether they are chairs or sculptures or sounding pieces, were born on paper first. He loved the quickness and spontaneity of the medium, and continued experimenting with his colorful monographics into his last year, 1978. Harry Bertoia won numerous architectural and artistic awards for public sculptures throughout his career, including the Architectural League of New York gold medal and the Craftsmanship Medal of the American Institute of Design.